DACs and reproduced sound

Also, measured distortion is only one among many criteria that determine sonics, whether in loudspeakers or in CDPs

Agreed good point - like phase for example - you can get a big difference in soundstage/imaging even though timbre may be the same and distortion negligible.

if all components are imperfect, they exhibit coloration.

the fact that coloration is unintentional and a consequence of many factors implies that configuring a stereo system is essentially creating a balance among colorations.

Dear Dgarretson,
I wasn't claiming that a "perfect DAC" would be too revealing of the underlying flaws of the CD Format. Every Recording, Analog-Digital Conversion, and Playback peice of Equipment damages the original to varying degrees. They all still damage the original never the less. There are going to be some that greatly damage the original signal magnitudes greater than others. There are huge Sound differences between DACs; however, there is even a greater disparity in Sound Quality from one CD to another, that is clearly discernable even with the worse DAC. The only explanation for this huge disparity, is that the Analog/Digital Conversion does most of the damage to the Harmonic Content of the Recording. Magnifying this damage by increasing the accuracy of the DAC ten fold, might ameliorate some of the damage that the DAC causes, but won't even put a dent in the damage that the original Analog/Digital Conversion has caused. Such Damage is so severe, that the only solution might be to err in the opposite direction in the Analog Output Stage. Certainly, this means modifying the original, and not being ever more faithful to the accuracy of the severly damaged original signal. Being ever more faithful to the original signal, could even end up distorting the Music even more severe, by compounding the damage that was done during the Analog/Digital Recording Process. It may sound counter intuitive, but I believe that there is more going on in our Analog Output Stages, than just being faithful to the original signal.

Pettyofficer - Many analog tapes were digitized with jittery clocks and less than perfect A/D converters (long time ago). Recorded jitter cannot be suppressed and the only remedy is to digitize it again with better equipment (if analog tapes still exist). Recorded jitter is pretty much the same as hiss on analog tapes (jitter=noise in time domain). I only hope we're going in right direction.

Pettyofficer, in the long course of modifying my CDP I found that every RBCD sounded better than before-- including some '80s masters that I had written off completely. Various magazine reviewers have made similar observations regarding the better players. I can't recall a reviewer ever stating that a top player made a CD sound worse than before. Admittedly there are wide variations in the quality of A/D and D/A. However, good luck finding one CDP that can "euphonize" the defects of a poorly mastered CD, while sounding resolving with a well-mastered one. A player should be both highly resolving and musical.

When the discussion turns to the theoretical "damage" done in A/D and D/A conversions, I fall back on my empirical results modding the SCD-1. There have been some big leaps forward with this machine to the point that RBCD rivals vinyl. And yet of all the changes, the one that matters the least is toggling between the five digital filter options. So to the degree at least that the stock player allows variability in the way digital is handled, it is much ado about nothing.