UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

Free Advice
From your experience with CDs, is
there a particular label (FIM, Audioquest,
Chesky, etc.) or CD format ( XRCD,
XRCD2, HDCD, SACD, Hybrid SACD,
DVD-A) that excels from the Red Book CD
or LP records?
Do CDs recorded in digital (DDD)
sound better than those recorded in analog
(ADD or AAD), or are these a matter of
quality in the mastering process? If a disc has
been transferred to SACD from an analog
recording, how is this superior to an LP?
Jerome Chionglo
MARKHAM, ON
SACD is defi nitely more than a marketing
tool, Jerome. Or at least it is when
the original recording was made with
something more than 16 bits and 44,100
samples per second. We mention this
because some mainstream labels have
re-released Red Book CDs as SACDs
by the simple expedient of upsampling…
making up new data and charging you
extra for it. And we thought Enron and
Worldcom were isolated instances!
Though DVD-A is also way superior
8 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
to Red Book CD, we believe that SACD
has won the war. Pretty much all recent
SACDs are hybrid, with a Red Book layer
readable by conventional CD players.
The presence of that layer doesn’t seem
to harm anything. Any SACD player will
let you hear the increased dynamics and
“liveliness” of well-recorded discs, but
getting full musical satisfaction means
picking your player carefully…and, alas,
paying way more than the minimum
cost.
It is a (fairly) well kept secret that
a lot of music producers long ago
returned to analog recording for their
masters, believing that analog, at the
very least, wouldn’t leave them with a
pounding headache after a long day’s
work. An SACD made from an analog
original can sound better than the LP
because it won’t have the well-known
(and acknowledged) defects inherent
in cutting and playing back an analog
record.
Which leaves the question of what
we call “transitional technologies,”
such as HDCD and XRCD. Both were
intended to tide us over the sometimes
painful age of CD by maximizing the
medium, and in the former case sneaking
extra information past the medium’s
limited resolution. We like them both,
and we are especially fond of HDCD.
However that technology now belongs
to Microsoft, not traditionally known as
a high end audio champion. The future
is spelled S-A-C-D.
Here is one that I am sure you’ve been
asked before: the lifespan of a laser. We know
that a cartridge’s stylus can last for a very
long time if it is properly aligned and kept
free of debris. The trouble with cartridges
is that the metal (forgot the term) where
the stylus is mounted can become weak with
time. I need to know the approximate lifespan
of a laser on a good quality machine like a
Karrik. In the past we kept hearing numbers
like typically 1000 hours, but shouldn’t the
same principle from cartridges apply to lasers
as well?
Nick Lakoumentas
MONTRÉAL, QC
Yes, we’ve been asked that before,
Nick, but it was a long time ago, and the
answer has changed.
In the early days of digital, the estimate
was that a laser pickup might have
a life of 2000 hours, which meant an
expensive repair after playing less than a
couple of thousand discs. In slightly later
mass market machines it could mean a
new player, since pickup were often glued
in place permanently. We don’t know
whether that was a good estimate, since
in many a player the mechanism will
fail before the laser does. We’ve seen
estimates of as much as 20,000 hours,
which we presume is a guess (though
it sounds more convincing than saying
“really, really, really long”).
In practice, the lifespan may depend
in part on how “hot” the laser is run.
The laser in a car player may run quite
hot, since it must perform under diffi cult
conditions, whereas a high end player
may have its pickup set up for longer
life.
Phono pickups also used to be rated
at an estimated lifespan of 2000 hours,
meaning that it would take that much
play to cause perceptible wear of the
diamond stylus. Modern stylii have a