I
remembered happily I went home and ripped some audiophile and classical music
recordings into WAV format and uploaded to the new toy. The original intention
was to compare the sound quality of the Shuffle to the audiophile CD player.
But much to my disappointment, the Shuffle’s performance was far from
audiophile standard, and I then used vintage PCDP to do the comparison instead.
They were compared on my home audiophile system on speakers. The PCDP won hands
down in sound quality.
I was
pondering about the music performance of the Shuffle.Not being a computer
expert, I was not doing the most careful ripping that could be done. Might be
that messed up things a little. I did not spend time later on the Shuffle, and
it was sold to my colleague at a later date. Every day still I am listening to
music with my PCDP: better music and I do not need to spend time ripping music.
Few years later in 2008 came a new colleague who is a computer craze. He asked me
one day whether I would be keen to do a blind fold test between Apple iPod and
my PCDP. I happily agreed.
This colleague of mine was using a 5th generation Apple iPod Video. Again I selected WAV as the format for comparison. My colleague went all out for the comparison. In his computer he put in as much vibration isolation as possible, and was using bit by bit CD ripping to prepare the digital files on the hard disk. The music for comparison was Carmina Burama from Deutsche Grammophon.
On the
day of the battle of the iPod and PCDP, my Philips PCDP ran into some problems,
and a Technics PCDP (which I felt was not as good as the Philips) was used
instead. Sound Devices HX-3 was the headphone amplifier, and the headphone used
was Sennheiser best HD-650 with Clou Red headphone cable.
I was
not feeling very easy as I do not actually have audiophile ears. So I was blind
folded, and my colleague did the swapping of source and the playing of music.
Only track 8 Chramer, gip die varwe mir was used. At first with the vocals I
could hear the difference but still could not decide which was better. Then
came the percussions and at that instant I differentiated the PCDP from the iPod
.......... again PCDP won hands down!
I was
wondering then that iPod sound quality should be of a good standard. Source
wise WAV should not be too far off from original CD. Could it be then the DA
conversion of the iPod not as good as the Technics? But iPod and Technics are
almost 10 years apart in terms of manufacturing date, and I assumed also in
terms of technology. Could it be the present cost effective and mass production
approach degraded the circuit design? What ever it was, I did not figure out a
good answer. But let’s look at the much matured CD technology. Audiophiles can
still easily differentiate CD and XRCD recordings, and some even can
differentiate US cut CDs from others. So it should not be a big surprise PCDP
is superior to iPod, right?
Now
every working day I spend 40 mins on the train ride, and these are precious
time for me to enjoy my classical music. You know at home with 4 young kids it
is so difficult to find time for serious music listening. Classical music can
run about 10mins to half an hour, and I do not have the need to store thousands
of music on MP3 player. Just a few CDs and a PCDP will be a very nice portable
set up for me. I save all the CD ripping time, and get the best sound effect.
Technology advances so quickly. Maybe one day we can get MP3 performance close to CD?