REG: Solid but Different !!
JPH-22 -- Thu, 07/17/2008 - 12:52
Mr. Greene certainly is a respected writer for TAS. But his latest comments might cause a stir. He says that digital is a "solved problem". Mmmm....I certainly hope so !! It's just that everytime someone thinks we can't improve, we have improvement. This esp. with digital. How many times have we thought that Redbook CD couldn't get any better - only to have it improve, sometimes dramatically ? Recent breakthroughs with digital include atomic master clocking and memory player units. The Germans claim to have a breakthrough in digital processing with the GTE Trinity DAC (for two years salary !). It's going to be interesting to see how far 16/44 can go........
Next is REG's assertion that recordings have "a long way to go". But do they really ? I thought with 20-bit plus resolution, it couldn't get any better - esp. with labels like Chesky, Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, DG, Telarc, etc.
REG also insists that Blumlein - or its close-miked cousins - are the only way to capture acoustic musical performances. Maybe, but those spaced-miked Jack Renner's and Keith Johnson's don't sound too bad to me !! But we all hear different...and REG seems to be in the minority who think that one-point mike techniques are superior to spaced.
We must not forget that REG has been quite good on his articles he wrote for TAS. His best was his 1985 article explaining the virtues of digital and defending it at a time when few else did. Also, his reports on the new digital formats in 2001 - great !!
But his strong beliefs - esp. on the virtues of "forward radiation only" (above 200hz) and the line-source speaker principle have been challenged in recent years. Dipoles, esp. the open-baffle variety, have proven to be a legitimate method of loading soundwaves into a room. And point-source speakers, too, have prevailed - thanks to Peter Walker (and 95% of the current high-end loudspeaker market).
But discussion (and opinions) are healthy for science to advance. With no-one talking, not much would get done...........
[REG seems to be in the minority who think that one-point mike techniques are superior to spaced]
That minority includes Peter McGrath, J.Gordon Holt, Jerry Bruck, and myself.
If phase-coherant recording, be it two channel or more, is the goal, then spaced omnis ain't gonna do it.
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
Hi Steven,
Perhaps as they have commonly been used (way too far apart in my view) but in my experience a well done spaced omni recording can provide a more realistic picture of the space than any coincident pair I've ever heard. Directional microphones bring their own colorations to the table. To my ears, they'll get the front of the stage fairly well (not as good as a matched pair of good omnis about 15" apart, separated by an absorbent baffle) but the downstage area gets narrower as it recedes.
As to phase coherence, I believe "better" applies to coincident mic'ing when the end result is going to be combined for mono. For stereo listening, using mics with a fast impulse response (like the Earthworks), I've never heard anything provide a more coherent rendering of the space.
Further, coincident recording techniques utilize only one of the three cues our brains use to localize sounds: amplitude.
I believe if Nature could have gotten by with fewer than the three it supplied us with (amplitude, phase and frequency), it would have. Therefore, I seek to utilize all three when I make recordings and so far this has paid off (big time) with the most faithful rendering of spatial information I've yet heard.
Just my take on it.
Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com
I also respectfully disagree with REG's assertion that CD playback is a "solved problem." The recent introduction of players with sophisticated digital filters (the "Long Filter" in the Spectral SDR-4000 Pro, and the "apodising" filter in the Meridian 808.2---which requires DSP horsepower of 150MIPs to realize) I think shows how harmful conventional digital filters are, and suggests that they are largely responsible for CD's characteristic sound. There's still more information to retrieve from the CD format.
Hi Robert,
I'm in full agreement with your disagreement. ;-}
While the Benchmark is certainly a nice unit, (unless I was misinterpreting the text) I felt the review suggested other designers might as well quit at this point. The only thing is I've heard some converters that should cause the Benchmark's designer to lose some sleep.
One example, at a not very different price is Metric Halo's ULN-2. While it does need to be connected to a Mac to set it up, once that is done, it provides D-A conversion that to my ears, easily surpasses the Benchmark. And the ULN-2 is not at all the best converter I've heard. (As an added bonus for Mac users, the ULN-2 "throws in" a pair of superb microphone preamps, A-D conversion and an 80-bit software mixing console that puts just about any million dollar hardware console I've heard to shame.)
Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com
No doubt, one-point miking is good but it's not without its own problems - mainly in the low frequencies. The main argument against spaced miking are the phase issues that can arise. But this is not the case if they're done proficiently.
REG has also been a big propagator of room "correction" units. While these can help, in all honesty, there are other ways to achieve the end results. Mainly with setup or passive speaker controls. A little room treatment works as well. Then we have correction-EQ units that work with *the bass* - like the Meridian and DEQX systems. Bass-EQ is apparently a superior way to "correct" the speaker/room interface - vs. the tonal correctors that REG raves. Tonal adjusters work only for a tiny area in a room - usually not more than a few inches wide !! But REG doesn't mention this in his reviews.....
A very different writer for sure...........
Quote:
"The main argument against spaced miking are the phase issues that can arise. But this is not the case if they're done proficiently."
When capsules are spaced any farther apart than the width of a human head (at which point spaced mikes only produce wide mono) the arrival times are no longer phase-coherent. It has nothing to do with proficiency, merely physics. The best, but expensive solution is to use the Scheops stereo sphere microphone which introduces physical boundaries to tailor the pickup patterns of its two omni capsules to reduce phase issues.
The only possible solution to the physically induced problem regular spaced omni microphone's phase incoherence is through digital time correction. But this is an imprecise solution which introduces its own set of sonic issues. Depending on the actual location of each source the amount of time correction needed will vary...that's very messy to correct for.
Bass response issues are FAR easier to correct than time coherence issues, which is why point-source set-ups make more sense if soundstage precision matters.
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
I just find it hard to believe that Jack Renner and Keith Johnson don't share your views concerning realistic miking techniques....
Maybe we all should be listening to Trifield - which gives us what you say we need - a more solid and substantial center image. This is what the creators of stereo wanted - three (full-range) channels. But even here, people like J. Gordon Holt disagree. He says that surround is "stereo times two" - two fronts and two sides. This is not the case for serious music playback........
I read REG somewhat differently than some of you do. He says, quite clearly, that "no problem in audio is perhaps ever totally solved". But he goes on to say that the D/A problem, with the right converter, is a small problem in comparison to others like speaker-room interactions and recording quality.
The unwillingness to understand this viewpoint -- that there are big problems/improvements and small problems/improvements -- is I believe at the heart of some people's difficulty with audiophiles and the audio hobby. Everything seems to matter equally, which is simply counter-intuitive. I don't think this line of thinking is really controversial at a logical level, but reading some discussions on this forum I'd have to say I'm in the minority.
REG says something elsewhere in his review of the Benchmark DAC that is perhaps more worthy of debate: with really well-designed DACs, much of what we hear as improvements are simply different filter tradeoffs. This reminds me of how I feel about preamps. I doubt that one good preamp is hands-down better than another. That doesn't mean I don't prefer one over the other in my system, but I would be hard pressed to claim outright superiority in a lot of cases.
Well, REG did state that digital is looking like a "solved problem". But if more of us heard what (codeless) memory playback, atomic master clocking and the GTE DAC could do, than *none* of us would say this....
This statement joins a litany of others that REG has made over the years. His dogma on how speakers should "radiate forward only, above 200 hz" is but one example. Line-sources are superior to points, tonally adjusting our speakers (as the "biggest breakthrough since stereo") is a must for all. And now two newer statements - concerning digital and recordings (how "vast improvements" remain possible in the later) join the list.
This gets tiring to read after a while - especially when much of it turns out to be wrong. How many other writers in high-end make such strong statements ?
REG almost looks like an objectivist...and so do you...if I may indicate respectively. Objectivists are mostly concerned with recordings and loudspeakers - that's it. And the room interface, of course. Components are down on the list, hence REG's *never reviewing* them !! At least since 2000, he's reviewed speakers and recordings only. REG even admitted (in an e-mail that someone shared with me) that he is mostly interested in the "scientific aspect" of music reproduction. Subjectivists, like me, usually don't like this type of folk. But REG seems good enough with his listening impressions - esp. on the Jamo speakers and the TacT corner-bass system - for him to publicly report as a subjectivist but privately be an objectivist.
Fair enough ?
I certainly first read REG's comments and thought they were controversial. When I re-read his words, I could see that his remark was more nuanced than my initial takeaway and your summary. He didn't say digital was solved, he said Red Book CD with a specific set of DACs was mostly a solved problem. And he clearly defined "solved" as meaning that the remaining improvements wouldn't be big. I don't think he offered much evidence for that view, nor do I know exactly how to define 'big' and 'small' but this thought got our attention and made us think, so I found it useful and I hope you did too. And certainly, as he admits, new evidence could make his statements wrong (for example, I haven't heard the system you refer to and I'm guessing he hasn't either and any rational person allows for this).
'
Given that, and not knowing the full context of his 'wrong' statements, I can't really comment on the other items you mention. But, I'll bet he's been wrong from time to time!
Where I agree with REG is this: I hear far more difference between recordings (more obvious and more dramatically closer or farther from the sound of live music) than I do between, say, preamps or DACs. Whether recordings can be improved, I don't know exactly since I'm not a recording engineer, but the big differences in quality of recordings would seem close to proof that this could be done. My only issue with this analysis is that it is frustrating because it is out of the listener's control.
Where I also agree with REG is: I've heard multiple demonstrations of room correction that made a dramatic difference, mostly for the better, in sound. Again, these are much more complete and noticeable than the differences between say an ARC Ref 3 and an mbl 6010D. That seems less like proof to me because there seem to be tradeoffs with this approach, but it suggests that on this he might not be wrong.
One thing that I should make clear in this commentary is that 'big' differences and 'meaningful' differences are not the same. I have written extensively on this elsewhere on the forum and in some reviews. What I think many TAS reviewers have done a good job of is suggesting that small differences can be musically meaningful. I wholeheartedly agree.
I think REG is trying to balance that perspective by suggesting that big differences may indicate areas for future work (he is a university mathematician by profession, so this would be a natural perspective). If he is interested primarily in the 'big' and scientific aspects of audio, I think that gives him a valuable voice. RH can comment, but I think we would all agree that while we don't want a whole staff with his resolutely scientific perspective, it is helpful as part of the mix.
I'm not sure I mean the same thing by 'objectivist' and 'subjectivist' as you do, so I'll reserve comment until I understand better.
Thanks for the comments.
Quote:I just find it hard to believe that Jack Renner and Keith Johnson don't share your views concerning realistic miking techniques....
They don't and that is fine. Both prefer a more "romantic" rendition of the musical event that sacrifices imaging accuracy for tonal euphony.
Quote:Maybe we all should be listening to Trifield - which gives us what you say we need - a more solid and substantial center image. This is what the creators of stereo wanted - three (full-range) channels. But even here, people like J. Gordon Holt disagree. He says that surround is "stereo times two" - two fronts and two sides. This is not the case for serious music playback........
Since I've been recording live concerts with Gordon for quite a few years I'm quite familiar with his views on surround. I also use Trifield regularly. From experience I can state unequivically that if a recording is not phase-coherent Trifield will not help it. Gordon and I used to regularly listen to our two-channel recordings in Trifield, Logic-7 and other derived-surround modes. If they didn't sound more realistic in surround we knew we had made a mistake with our M-S matrix settings.
As to speculating on what the "creators" of stereo wanted; three channel recording was always a pro format, not intended for consumers. And three omni mics did nothing to solve the problems of omnidirectional pick-up pattern's spatial issues.
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
I agree that the quality of the recording, along with the loudspeakers and their placement in the room, are perhaps the two most significant factors in sound quality.
In my experience, "small" differences in D/A converter quality are also quite meaningful. As I've pointed out in the past, there's not a linear relationship between the magnitude of a sonic difference and the musical signficance of that difference. For example, the Spectral SDR-4000 Pro CD player, with its "Long Filter" realized with custom software on a DSP platform, resolves extremely fine detail that other digital front-ends simply miss. The objective difference in the signal must be miniscule, but hearing that low-level detail resolved with such natural ease makes it so much easier to forget that one is listening to an electro-mechanical reproduction rather than to music itself.
Meridian Audio co-founder Bob Stuart and I have on several occasions discussed his idea of "The Increasing Importance of the Smaller Difference." Bob points out that in any enthusiast endeavor, small differences can be the most important. He cites dog shows, and how breeders, judges, and show-dog enthusiasts revel in making very fine discriminations in a dog's appearance. It's not the differences between breeds that are most interesting, but slight variations that hold our fascination.
To all: I agree that recordings are supreme. Without them, a high-end experience would not be possible.
TM: I just disagree that "vast improvements" remain possible with recordings. Numerous recording engineers have told me that we hit a limit as to what can be captured. Now, it's all miking technique and the venue. And if REG thought that many recordings lack a certain perspective, then I accept his opinion. But with the barrage of audiophile labels we have worldwide, I am not complaining - nor are most audiophiles. The *Blumlein crowd* seems to be complaining and this would be a very-small minority, sorry to say....
And yes, (tonal-based) room correction can work, as I've stated. It's just that they are other ways - mainly with electronic bass adjustment, like the Meridian. Room setup and/or treatment can work wonders as well...but each room-speaker is different.
SS: Again, I just wish more people could hear what you and Gordon do as to miking. Not that Blumleins are "wrong", far from it. But it's always healthy to have variety of opinion...and good recordings !!
As for Stereo, the (American) creators did indeed desire three channels, as RH points out in the latest edition of his "Complete Guide" book. But it never took off - LP grooves and room setup made it impossible. Some of the first (public) demos of stereo were three channel.
On a separate note, "space" being an answer to all our ills, Holt was mostly wrong. He was right that the two-channel format *with the speakers we had at the time* was wholely insufficient to re-create the experience of live omni-radiating music. But the bigger problems, as it turns out, was the lack of a center channel and the box speaker itself. Yes, we had panel-dipoles, but these didn't really help the experience. Only with an open-baffle speaker (like the latest Nola's) can we experience anything with true depth and height - the way a real presentation sounds. And something sorrily missing with the box speakers of our day. True, we had OB's 15 years ago ("Alon) but only in the last three years have they advanced enough to become serious contenders.
Box speakers, with their cut-out, aperature presentation, "makes us" desire five, six or whatever number of extra channels. What we needed was a whole new way to launch sound waves into a room...and a full-range center speaker........
Re: recordings. I don't know if "vast" improvements are possible vs the best recordings, but I'm virtually certain that vast improvements are possible vs the average recording. And average is pretty close to what we end up listening to, if we choose music first (i.e. anyone who listens to the best pop/rock music).
TM: I agree. REG should have clarified what he meant by "vast improvements". With what type of music ? And from what angle - technology or miking-venue ?
RH: I look forward to your Spectral and/or Meridian reviews. Your descriptions are usually so complete, I feel like I could hear the technical details myself !!
Is Red Book forever ? Looks that way...at least from the consumer optical-media standpoint. But then we have full-band downloads........
The CD is likely the last mass-market, packaged-media music carrier.
robert_harley6 wrote:I also respectfully disagree with REG's assertion that CD playback is a "solved problem." The recent introduction of players with sophisticated digital filters (the "Long Filter" in the Spectral SDR-4000 Pro, and the "apodising" filter in the Meridian 808.2---which requires DSP horsepower of 150MIPs to realize) I think shows how harmful conventional digital filters are, and suggests that they are largely responsible for CD's characteristic sound. There's still more information to retrieve from the CD format.
With this listening room set-up, it's obvious why REG thinks CD playback is a "solved problem
This setup (which is not actually what I am doing currently--I switched the speakers to the long wall to get them even further apart) actually had one of the flattest in-room responses that I --or pretty much anyone else--had ever seen. I was using no DSP correction--none was needed! Flat and truthful was what was going on here, no matter what it looks like.
When John Atkinson came upon the listening- position measurement of this set-up, he expressed amazement that it could be so good, and said that such unifomity was usually only seen when one did spatial averaging(which I was not doing). I think that anyone who understood in room remasurements would say the same.
Of course it looks odd in terms of decor--this is not a domestic room but rather an audio lab(my living room looks quite different --elegant! Art works, antique rugs,etc.).
But the proof of the pudding is the listening. Super- flat and neutral is what this produced. Why anyone would suppose that super- flat and neutral speaker set -up would lead to anything but correct results about CD playback or anything else is a mystery to me--unless one thinks the function of CD playback is somehow to fix up what is wrong about speakers, a strange idea indeed.
REG
http://www.regonaudio.com/Harbeth%20Monitor%2040.html
This is a link to the in-room measurement of the Harbeth M40s in this set-up, for those who are curious(second graph--first one is anechoic response).
This is quite hard to object to unless you are just totally averse to a little extra warmth around 250 Hz(which I rather like--though I could get rid of it by moving things slightly if I did not like it).
Assuming that one is familiar with how in room measurements usually look, I think the point here will be obvious. This is quite remarkably smooth and uniform--what one hears is basically what is there.
Try this on your own system if you are not impressed by this!
REG
Indeed, this shows how different REG is....His wide (and sharp tow-in) set up is effective for listening to Blumlein recordings - however few there are.
We still have a good way to go before CD playback is maxed-out...but big leaps also await us for loudspeakers. And this is where I *agree* with REG. With most audiophiles listening to direct-radiating (box) loudspeakers, they're missing a whole new world of high-resolution sound - namely from horns. REG is not advocating horns...but he should be. The latest designs from Sunny, in particular, were a revelation to me. But there must be others - Zingali, Calix, Acapella, etc.
The new-generation horns demand to be heard........
I did do Emerald Physics in TAS. Nuforce(waveguide tweeter),.too and Cerwin Vega CLS 215(a lot better than you might think! A lot better)
I am working on it!!
REG
jph-22 wrote:
We still have a good way to go before CD playback is maxed-out...but big leaps also await us for loudspeakers. And this is where I *agree* with REG. With most audiophiles listening to direct-radiating (box) loudspeakers, they're missing a whole new world of high-resolution sound - namely from horns. REG is not advocating horns...but he should be. The latest designs from Sunny, in particular, were a revelation to me. But there must be others - Zingali, Calix, Acapella, etc.
The new-generation horns demand to be heard........
This demand to be heard is stronger than you might imagine.
With the introduction of the acoustic loaded (horn) microphone, this becomes a question of obselecence, not upgrade.
The direct-radiator is, in effect, obsolete, both in speakers and microphones.
Try the mp3 files (horn-loaded recordings) in my signature via some horns (either modern or from 1937) - this will illustrate the mechanical advantage and demonstrate the obsolecence of the direct-radiator.
Andy
www.SimpsonMicrophones.com - Next Generation Microphones
www.SimpsonMicrophonesArchives.com/Early_Music_A.mp3 - www.SimpsonMicrophonesArchives.com/Early_Music_B.mp3
jph-22 wrote:To all: I agree that recordings are supreme. Without them, a high-end experience would not be possible.
TM: I just disagree that "vast improvements" remain possible with recordings. Numerous recording engineers have told me that we hit a limit as to what can be captured.
To an extent this is true - as far as it concerns the previous generation of transducers (microphones).
You can expect this attitude to change over the coming years.
Also, the filtering down of this will be helped greatly by the fact that the motion picture industry already has horn-loaded playback in every theatre in the world.
Things will start to sound real in the cinema, without any upgrade of the playback system (which is already mechanically suitable).
Andy
www.SimpsonMicrophones.com - Next Generation Microphones
www.SimpsonMicrophonesArchives.com/Early_Music_A.mp3 - www.SimpsonMicrophonesArchives.com/Early_Music_B.mp3
Thanks to all for all the comments. I am happy that people are paying so much attention!.
There is one point that I would like to clarify:
The Benchmark is to my mind quite close to the "solved problem" version of DAC performance in a rather specific content namely linear phase reconstruction. I would not for an instant suggest that nonlinear phase reconstruction filtering might not sound different and might indeed sound better in some sense of the word better, depending on the sense of the word.
CD is a standard that sails quite close to the wind, as everyone has noticed with SACD and high bit rate PCM. If nothing else, it is far easier to get those high bit rate standards to sound good! I went through this on the Water Lily recordings I worked on-- SACD and high bit rate PCM just work without a struggle. Getting CD to sound as good as it can is a lot more of a struggle(especially 16 bits is a problem at the recording end).
Given the CD standard, there really is an issue about the phase behavior of the reconstruction filter. The linear phase approach has the following property: If one starts with a signal that has no content above(a little short of) about half the sampling rate, say above 20k for CD standard, sample it with proper dither, and then play it back with a linear phase reconstruction filter than the result will be the same as the original signal, except for a little added noise. The system will be amplitude flat and linear phase as a combination.
But in the real world, music does not come with 0 energy content above 20k and all kinds of oddball stuff can arise by pushing it into that context. In this situation, it is quite possible that in audible terms the whole chain is more musically effective if nonlinear phase reconstruction filtering goes on at the end.
I think it would be really interesting to try a combined A to D and D to A chain on a live mike feed in this context, to see which version of the chain could be made most nearly transparent. But of course in terms of listening to commercial recordings as they are, the outcome of such a test might be of the proverbial academic interest. We all have to listen to commercial recordings as they are!! If a little "phase EQ" helps....
The Marantz player I reviewed for TAS a few issues back had switchable reconstruction filters(for CD). These were all good in a sense, but they were surely audibly different. I have no doubt in princple that the apodising filters would also sound different(none of the Marantz's filters were of that type). I think it would be cool--and apparently not too too hard to judge from that Marantz--if players would offer a variety of filters, in a switchable way. It seems a bit inefficient to have to buy completely different hardware to check out filter differences--inefficient and to some extent not really an adequate test since other aspects of the players come into play in addition to the filter choice.
Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing the apodising filters at some point soon. And please do note, all, that the near perfection of the Benchmark that I claimed was near perfection to the linear phase standard. That I still firmly believe, that the Benchmark does an amazingly good job of doing what it was intended to do, namely realizing CD digital to analogue with linear phase reconstruction filter. Whether linear phase is what you want or what sounds best to you--that is another question!
But once again,I agree completely that different filters sound different. Indeed, given that I commented in some detail on the different sounds of the Marantz filter choices(which I checked DBT that I could tell apart!), I hope that people took that viewpoint as one I held from the start!
Thank you for your attention
REG
PS I shall leave comments on Blumlein, direct radiation emphasis from speakers and the other points for later on, if I may..
Gee, after a year, you finally found this thread....LOL
I'll bet you still haven't heard any DACs with apodising filters or tried the USB input on the DAC-1.
Digital - when you said this, was not a "solved problem". Besides post-ringing filters, removing the error-bits from playback and continual improvement in layout-construction will make future systems sound even better. 16/44 is a "solved format" as I have tried to show in other threads. Now for the playback to catch-up !!
Hi Reg,Steve et al,
Ironically, the best recordings ever made were made [mostly 60's] with spaced omni's and 4-5 mike setups - DECCA TREE, or etc. And as a veteran of recording [over 300+ concerts and still counting], the more I learn, the less I realize I know! So I don't agree that ANY problem has been solved - particularly with Digital recording.
For example, I was in Vienna 3 weeks ago listening to a concert in the Musikverein - what a revelation! I now almost feel that I'm wasting my time recording in "lesser" halls.
For the FIRST time, I've heard what a recording space shouldn't do. And it's a pity that the buggers who run this joint are so arrogant and difficult to deal with.
My advice for serious students of the art - have a listen.
rgds
Kostas
Hey - if you like recordings with tape hiss (hence lower resolution)...made with older mikes that had resonant peaks in the lower midrange, then be my guest.
Digital solved at least four major problems that analog recording/playback had. First, digital is a more precise recording process, allowing for pitch-accuracy on playback. Second, by making different (and more stringent) demands on miking - it "forced" better mike techniques . This, for acoustic music - I can't say what happens with pop-rock music...but I don't care anyway.
Third, digital is a lossless mastering-replication process. Finally, we hear *no loss* on copies from the master - something we can't say for analog. Lastly, digital is far easier and cheaper to realize its full potential on playback. Analog has been improving since the AR turntable in the early 1960's. Digital has already caught up (and even surpassed LP, in my experience) in just over 20 years of improving. All this with 16/44 recordings......
To get the best out of your analog recordings, you'll need one hell of a system to do it - one costing 50-80K or more. In contrast, we now have complete digital systems for 10-15K that are whipping LP, on playback. Even LP at astronomical prices !! I"ve been pretty vocal on Meridian's 808.2 - a player I'm convinced does it, big-time. But now I've found another - the Ayon CD-5. I've also heard *super* things about Chord's new Red Reference MkII player just out.
Let 16/44 digital be heard !!
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