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Differences in optical out

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On studio equipment (including a handful of MD decks) Coaxial digital connections can carry a purer signal (less potential distortion) than the optical digital connection, even though some people claim to prefer the "cleaner" sound of optical. AES-EBU supposedly carries the best signal but that's only what I've read, I can't confirm it since I never had access to such expensive equipment. Overall I doubt you could hear it unless you had a million dollar studio/audiophile set-up.

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Not to mention million dollar ears.

Or a cheap sound card with an optical in, that will easily demostrate that the signal transferred from a $50 CD player is bit-identical to the signal from a $500,000 set-up.

Edited by Avrin
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Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Optical outputs do differ. The simplest example is the optical output of a PC. It never outputs the actual signal read from the CD. Before being output, the signal passes through various circuitry, has its level changed, and probably gets resampled a couple of times. Remember that track marks for non-stop albums are always lost when recording via optical from a PC? That's because what is output is not the original CD signal.

Other devices (PS3, Xbox, etc.) may also change the signal before output. Even some CD players actually do that.

In any case, the presence of track mark information in the optical signal reliably indicates that a device outputs the original signal. Luckily for us, any MD recorder can be used to check that.

And CD-TEXT is just an extension of the standard. Previously unused bits are employed to transfer text information from capable devices. This does not change the audio part of the signal at all.

So in short, are you saying that my old CD recorder deck is probably producing the most identical signal via optical output?

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Didja check the date on that article, namely the month? ;)

I never noticed that! It all makes sense now, somewhat unfortunately. There have been a bunch of similar MD pranks on 4/1 through the years, though.

http://www.minidisc.org/april_1_1999.html

http://www.minidisc.org/pony_mp3n1_interview.html

http://www.minidisc.org/mztst1.html

Edited by bluecrab
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