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atomicAdam
05-18-2010, 08:02 PM
I realized tonight have I have some features with my equipment I've never used.

For instance, I have a SACD player and have never heard an SACD. So I ordered Heifetz's Brahms, Tchaikovsky: Violin Concertos on SACD. I have the 18bit 96kHz AudioNote DAC One Sig, so I figure, for $14 why not see what SACD is all about.

After that, I realized the Elecompaniet PC-1 has a 24bit/192kHz DAC from Cirrus Logic. That must mean I can play 24bit files. So found some freebees (http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html) online in FLAC and WAV format. I'm downloading five tracks at the moment. Mozart, Beefoven and Vivaldi. I suppose, I just need to burn these to CD and see what the PC-1 will play. Right?

I'm curious to find out what I'll have in my hands here in another couple minutes. I heard a 24bit DVD audio classical track at a PSAudio event in the South Bay Area a while back and was surely impressed. And at the DYI event in San Rafael I heard another 24bit track with some Passlabs amps and bling bling baffle speakers. I was knocked out.

Maybe I can get close to god at home now.

atomicAdam
05-18-2010, 09:05 PM
well, unfortunately disc one and two don't appear to play on the PC-1.

I'll have to do some research but I was sure it would with try two.

Electrocompaniet says the PC-1 will play WMA-CD types. I made, using dBpoweramp a WMA-Data-CD (only WMA option) CD with these options selected.

Codec: Windows Media Audio 9.2 Lossless
VBR Quality 100
96 kHz
2 Channel 24 bit VBR
using Windows Media Audio 10 CD Compression

burning options
File System ISO 9660 + Joliet
other files system types are ISO 9660:Level 1 | ISO 9660:Level 2 | ISO 9660:1999

Anyone have any ideas on how to get this player (http://www.electrocompaniet.com/products/prelude/pc-1.html) to play these 24bit (http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html) files?

pixelthis
05-19-2010, 10:55 AM
You might just want to play these files from your computer.
BUT if you insist on playing them from a CD on the pc-1 the best thing to do
would be to dwnrez them when you convert them from flac to something playable.
Playing them at standard rez for a CD will still sound pretty good.
Also, WMA lossless is not very compatible, I'm afraid.
I have my collection in that format and have to burn a 192khz when I want a file for my MP3 player, it wont handle it.
If you CD player has any age whatso ever it wont play it either, maybe a firmware upgrade?.
Sometimes you do the best you can.
FLAC stuff I download sounds great, BTW.:1:

Feanor
05-19-2010, 03:59 PM
well, unfortunately disc one and two don't appear to play on the PC-1.

I'll have to do some research but I was sure it would with try two.

Electrocompaniet says the PC-1 will play WMA-CD types. I made, using dBpoweramp a WMA-Data-CD (only WMA option) CD with these options selected.

Codec: Windows Media Audio 9.2 Lossless
VBR Quality 100
96 kHz
2 Channel 24 bit VBR
using Windows Media Audio 10 CD Compression

burning options
File System ISO 9660 + Joliet
other files system types are ISO 9660:Level 1 | ISO 9660:Level 2 | ISO 9660:1999

Anyone have any ideas on how to get this player (http://www.electrocompaniet.com/products/prelude/pc-1.html) to play these 24bit (http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html) files?
aA, check what "WMA-CD" really means. Seems to me it might mean, in effect, a data CD with WMA files. Nevertheless CD implies no higher than 16/44.1, so maybe you just ain't going to play 24/96 files on that machine.

rakeford
05-19-2010, 05:16 PM
Popcorn time. :)

I hope you work it out.

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 06:54 AM
well - i've tried several different other versions of the WMA-CD to no avail.

I am a little put out because even after asking the manufacturer rep how to get 24bit WMA CDs to play on the system, they said they weren't sure. Which makes me wonder, WTF would you have the "latest 24bit/192kHz DAC from Cirrus Logic" and say you can play "Audio Playback - Disc playback media: CD-R, CD-RW, MP3-CD, CD, MP3-DVD, WMA-CD" if in fact you can only play 16bit CD only.

I don't get it. There has to be a way to get these things to play.

I've yet to try just a straight up Data CD w/ the files in there.

I'm also trying to download a trail version of Nero, but the one I had doesn't extract and it appears the software has become bloated and slow. 299mb for burning software? WTF? Nero.

Anyways, not giving up, not more disc to waste.......

Feanor
05-20-2010, 07:45 AM
well - i've tried several different other versions of the WMA-CD to no avail.

I am a little put out because even after asking the manufacturer rep how to get 24bit WMA CDs to play on the system, they said they weren't sure. Which makes me wonder, WTF would you have the "latest 24bit/192kHz DAC from Cirrus Logic" and say you can play "Audio Playback - Disc playback media: CD-R, CD-RW, MP3-CD, CD, MP3-DVD, WMA-CD" if in fact you can only play 16bit CD only.

I don't get it. There has to be a way to get these things to play.

I've yet to try just a straight up Data CD w/ the files in there.

I'm also trying to download a trail version of Nero, but the one I had doesn't extract and it appears the software has become bloated and slow. 299mb for burning software? WTF? Nero.

Anyways, not giving up, not more disc to waste.......
I'd have thought that EC could give you a proper explanation ... but apparently not. A quick Google didn't turn up a definition of "WMA-CD" per se. Speaking of WMA Lossless, Wikipedia says, "The first version of the codec, WMA 9 Lossless, and its revisions support up to 96 kHz, 24-bit audio for up to 6 discrete channels ....". So (1) does your burn software support converting 24/96 to WMA Lossless at that data rate, and (2) is the EC able to interpret hi-rez WMA? We don't know, eh?

Bear in mind is that the fact that the Cirrus Logic DAC chip will handle 24/192 doesn't mean that a player that uses the chip will necessarily do so necessarily. Somewhere upstream of the chip there could be one or more bottlenecks that prevent interpretation of the hi-rez source file. I'm can only speculate about the EC instance, but Cirrus Logic DAC itself doesn't read WMA, rather the EC has to have other decoder hard/firmware the converts WMA into raw PCM format, and that component might not be able to handle hi-rez WMA even if it can handle lossy or 16/44.1 WMA.

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 08:53 AM
Feanor, it appears that maybe being put off isn't EC fault, it could be just something that is a limitation of CD play back.

The software I am using allows for specifically setting up 24bit lossless files and should burn a 24bit lossless WMA-CD. So I assume the CD is formatted as a 24bit WMA-CD.

I was giving another explanation which I'm not sure I agree with, but I was told that the CD player lazer itself can't read a 24bit lossless file because of pit size and cd formats. Which to me seems weird, because a file is a file, zeros and ones, lazer reads it, software should translate it. That is how I understand it but maybe I am wrong.

So, it appears at this point, the EC PC-1 is using a 24bit DAC for sound value only. There must, as u point out, be a bottle neck some where. Weather on accident or just because to technoloy limitation.

Which is a dissapointment, but maybe just the way things are.

The EC PC-1 does sound really good, I guess I just got my hopes up that it could sound better with a miss-understanding.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
05-20-2010, 10:20 AM
Feanor, it appears that maybe being put off isn't EC fault, it could be just something that is a limitation of CD play back.

The software I am using allows for specifically setting up 24bit lossless files and should burn a 24bit lossless WMA-CD. So I assume the CD is formatted as a 24bit WMA-CD.

I was giving another explanation which I'm not sure I agree with, but I was told that the CD player lazer itself can't read a 24bit lossless file because of pit size and cd formats. Which to me seems weird, because a file is a file, zeros and ones, lazer reads it, software should translate it. That is how I understand it but maybe I am wrong.

So, it appears at this point, the EC PC-1 is using a 24bit DAC for sound value only. There must, as u point out, be a bottle neck some where. Weather on accident or just because to technoloy limitation.

Which is a dissapointment, but maybe just the way things are.

The EC PC-1 does sound really good, I guess I just got my hopes up that it could sound better with a miss-understanding.

The player conforms with Red Book standards, so it is impossible for it to play anything more than 16/44.1khz bit and sample rates.

Welcome to marketing 101 where you taught a 24/192khz chipset in your marketing spiel, but the player is limited to red book playback. If it does not upsample the audio to 24/192khz, then the chipset is a waste of money as it does not benefit lower resolution digital data.

Actually it is not as simple as a laser reading data, there is pit size and depth the laser must read, and read through. 24bit burns pits much closer together than 16 bits does. They are more dense, and the laser on this player can only read red book standard pit density.

RGA
05-20-2010, 10:42 AM
Atomic Adam

No Audio Note CD player plays SACD discs. Well I should say they will play the discs if there is a Redbook code on them but they are not SACD capable. Peter Qvortrup bought all of the world's best SACD machines - hates them all and said no thanks. Which may or may not be the opinions of many but more sampling and upsampling run counter to what Peter believes in. So in order to do a comparison what I would suggest is getting Constantine to give you a dedicated SACD machine and comparing it to a similarly priced Audio Note.

Bob Neil used to be a reviewer for Positive Feedback and liked the CD replay so much he quit being a reviewer and became a dealer - he directly compared his own SACD machine with a nice Naim CD player and the AN combo. It should be noted that the AN CD replay system measures quite a bit differently (though it's not necessarily worse - see UHF's results) than every other player out there. http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue8/audionote.htm (and since that review they no longer have any analog filtering either which sounds even better). Less is often more. Simpler is often better because nothing is lost in all the extraneous circuits and noise shaping after the fact corrections. If you don't make a mistake at the outset you don't need to correct it. And that's the difference IMO you don't need to "oversample" if your player gets it right the first time. It requires higher quality parts - and if you're going to pay large money - you should get higher quality parts no cheap error correction!!

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 11:13 AM
RGA - I have a DVD/CD/SACD/DVD-A player I use as a transport for the DAC One Sig. But, maybe, if I pop a SACD into it and transport it out via digital to the DAC, it will only be playing the CD data off the hybrid disc.

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 11:22 AM
STtT - so let me see if I get this right.

If I burn a 24bit WMA-CD off my laptop, it funamentally will not work because the lazer inside the EC PC-1 is purely a CD only lazer. Where if I took that burned 24bit WMA-CD and stuck it back in my laptop, or, maybe a DVD drive, it will read the disc because it is using a lazer capable of reading those 24bit pits.

So, what I assumed, but appears isn't so, is that just because the player is capable of reading a WMA-CD and has a 24bit DAC, doesn't mean the player is capable of playing a 24bit WMA-CD.

Gheeze, w/ DVD players at Walliemart costing $30, seems it would be too expensive to drop a 24bit readable lazer in and get the codec to work. But maybe I ask for too much....

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 11:25 AM
Btw - thanks for the clearification folks, only a couple CDs were harmed in the process of my education.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
05-20-2010, 11:42 AM
STtT - so let me see if I get this right.

If I burn a 24bit WMA-CD off my laptop, it funamentally will not work because the lazer inside the EC PC-1 is purely a CD only lazer. Where if I took that burned 24bit WMA-CD and stuck it back in my laptop, or, maybe a DVD drive, it will read the disc because it is using a lazer capable of reading those 24bit pits.

This is correct. A DVD player in your computer can read a disc with 24/48khz bit and sample rate, a regular CD player cannot.


So, what I assumed, but appears isn't so, is that just because the player is capable of reading a WMA-CD and has a 24bit DAC, doesn't mean the player is capable of playing a 24bit WMA-CD.

It is not even able to read a 24bit disc, it's out of Redbook spec. Anything with CD in its name is limited to 16bit audio coming off the disc. It may up sample that 16bits to 24bits, but it cannot read a 24bit disc.


Gheeze, w/ DVD players at Walliemart costing $30, seems it would be too expensive to drop a 24bit readable lazer in and get the codec to work. But maybe I ask for too much....

I seriously doubt that a $30 DVD player can output a true 24bit signal even if it can read it off the disc. The DAC may be there, but the signal chain is probably too noisey to even come close to that level of resolution.

poppachubby
05-20-2010, 11:43 AM
Adam, you have the CD-1 hooked up with it's RCA outputs? Just throwin a guess out, but perhaps it can read and output 24b digitally w/ toslink/coax, but can only output 16b with it's own processor.

This was my gripe in a recent thread about digital music. These players and servers all say 24bit but at the end of the day, most only output in 16.

Feanor
05-20-2010, 12:15 PM
STtT - so let me see if I get this right.

If I burn a 24bit WMA-CD off my laptop, it funamentally will not work because the lazer inside the EC PC-1 is purely a CD only lazer. Where if I took that burned 24bit WMA-CD and stuck it back in my laptop, or, maybe a DVD drive, it will read the disc because it is using a lazer capable of reading those 24bit pits.

So, what I assumed, but appears isn't so, is that just because the player is capable of reading a WMA-CD and has a 24bit DAC, doesn't mean the player is capable of playing a 24bit WMA-CD.

Gheeze, w/ DVD players at Walliemart costing $30, seems it would be too expensive to drop a 24bit readable lazer in and get the codec to work. But maybe I ask for too much....

Interestingly the spec for the EC says the it will play "MP3-DVD". Hummm ... so what exactly is that? Anyway, as I understand it, many (most?) CD players to day actually use DVD drives, (remember, DVD drives also read CDs). In any case the EC spec seems to imply that the player can read DVD-sized bits.

Also, I'd still like to know exactly what a "WMA-CD" is ... If in reality it is a data CD with WMA files, then it could carry any data rate in what really a computer file. If it is actually a data CD then the size of the pits has nothing to do with the audio bit rates, although, of course, you would be limited to a max. capacity of 800 MB, the normal size of a CD.

Feanor
05-20-2010, 12:23 PM
This is correct. A DVD player in your computer can read a disc with 24/48khz bit and sample rate, a regular CD player cannot.
...
It is not even able to read a 24bit disc, it's out of Redbook spec. Anything with CD in its name is limited to 16bit audio coming off the disc. It may up sample that 16bits to 24bits, but it cannot read a 24bit disc.
...
Sir T, an audio CD can't carry a 24/96 file, but a data (computer ROM) CD can. Could it be that the so-called "WMA-CD" is actually a data CD with WMA files??

As I understand there are CD devices that can read data CDs with, e.g., MP3 files. I also gather that some or most CD players today actually use DVD drives, in that case it would be conceivable that the EC actually has a DVD drive and could, with the right down-stream circuitry, read DVDs. (Of course I could be wrong on these points.)

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 01:07 PM
Sir T, an audio CD can't carry a 24/96 file, but a data (computer ROM) CD can. Could it be that the so-called "WMA-CD" is actually a data CD with WMA files??

As I understand there are CD devices that can read data CDs with, e.g., MP3 files. I also gather that some or most CD players today actually use DVD drives, in that case it would be conceivable that the EC actually has a DVD drive and could, with the right down-stream circuitry, read DVDs. (Of course I could be wrong on these points.)

Yes, that is exactly what I was saying/though. A data file w/ a 24bit wave file should still be read off a CDROM drive. As a file, but u would need some special software to play it. Like, let's say u record a song in ProTools at 24bit. U should be able to burn that protools file to a CD. Or the 24Wave file or AIFF, right?

And what the heck is a MP3-DVD?

Sir Terrence the Terrible
05-20-2010, 05:47 PM
Sir T, an audio CD can't carry a 24/96 file, but a data (computer ROM) CD can. Could it be that the so-called "WMA-CD" is actually a data CD with WMA files??

Anything that uses the CD or compact disc trademark is relegated to follow strict red-book standards during playback. Even if he was to use a CD rom, and the drive could actually read it, it will be still down rezzed to CD standards before playback if the laser could read it at all. If the player had a DVD drive, it would have played the disc back without any problems. If the laser in the player was only meant to read CD audio signals, then it would be impossible no matter what format for it to read or playback anything higher than a 16/44.1khz file. If it was a CD/DVD drive, it would not have had any problem with what AA was trying to do. A WMA-CD has the same pit size as regular CD, as WMA is only a codec that is made to play audio files in the windows media player, it does not change the standards. CD players use a laser with a 780nn wavelength, DVD is 650nn, hence why a DVD pit are closer together and it can playback 24bit 96khz sample rate files.

WMA is


As I understand there are CD devices that can read data CDs with, e.g., MP3 files. I also gather that some or most CD players today actually use DVD drives, in that case it would be conceivable that the EC actually has a DVD drive and could, with the right down-stream circuitry, read DVDs. (Of course I could be wrong on these points.)

Apparently this player does not have the downstream circuitry(or a DVD drive) to read anything other than a CD, or AA would not have been given the information he did, and the player would have read the burnt disc with no problems. So this whole excersize no matter what drive is in the player is essentially moot. In the end, it cannot play anything higher than redbook CD because of limitation in its laser.

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 08:30 PM
So this whole excersize no matter what drive is in the player is essentially moot. In the end, it cannot play anything higher than redbook CD because of limitation in its laser.

So, it is kind of like a processor. No matter what, if the physical hardware isn't there to process 24bit it won't.

And I wouldn't say this exercise is moot, apparently there is still a large gap in common knowledge when it comes to format and bit rate.

atomicAdam
05-20-2010, 09:26 PM
Adam, you have the CD-1 hooked up with it's RCA outputs? Just throwin a guess out, but perhaps it can read and output 24b digitally w/ toslink/coax, but can only output 16b with it's own processor.

This was my gripe in a recent thread about digital music. These players and servers all say 24bit but at the end of the day, most only output in 16.

Hey PC - good attempt, but the EC only has RCA and XLR outs. No digital.

Sir Terrence the Terrible
05-21-2010, 06:40 PM
So, it is kind of like a processor. No matter what, if the physical hardware isn't there to process 24bit it won't.

$100 bucks to double A!


And I wouldn't say this exercise is moot, apparently there is still a large gap in common knowledge when it comes to format and bit rate.

ooopps, my bad then.