Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Music Fidelity A3 CD Player (Read 4543 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

I have a A3 Cd 24 bit player passed down to me from my uncle. I know for its time it was a great piece of equipment. In reality, I know nothing about audio. Anyone have some input if this equipment is still relevant now-a-days?

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #1 –
There is not much difference between CD players.  If you just want to play CDs and don't care about anything else its probably fine.

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #2 –
I still have (and use) the 1st CD player I ever bought more than 20 years ago.  ...Yours is not as old as mine.

If you don't hear any defects (noise, distortion, skipping), it's probably just as good as a new one.  It might even be more rugged/reliable than a newer one!!!  Realistically, if something goes wrong it should be obvious...  Something like skipping/playing problems, no output from one side, etc.

Unless there are features you want and don't have (MP3 capability, smaller size, multi-disc changer, etc.) there is no value in upgrading.

Since most DVD & Blu-Ray players also play CDs, many people just use their video player to play CDs.  When my CD player dies, I probably wont replace it.

Quote
I have a A3 Cd 24 bit player
FYI - Audio CDs are ALWAYS 16-bit.    I don't know what "24 bit" means, but it's marketing hype.

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #3 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Audio CDs are ALWAYS 16-bit. I don't know what "24 bit" means, but it's marketing hype.

Or it does some sort of upsampling? I highly doubt that would be beneficial though...

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #4 –
Why would they increase the bit depth? The only reason for adding more less-significant-bits is if you’re going to alter the audio to put something there, and if 24-bit is being used here as a marketing buzzword to imply high fidelity, these two things don’t jive at all.

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #5 –
The unit uses a 24 bit delta-sigma chip. It may use 24bit for the digital filtering. In this case their marketing would be right.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #6 –
Quote
The A3CD utilizes the same Burr-Brown PCM1716 24-bit Delta-Sigma D/A converter employed in Musical Fidelity’s X-Ray CD player. The DAC automatically upsamples 16-bit data to 24-bit/96kHz,....

Specs from the manual:

Code: [Select]
DAC architecture
24 bit Delta-Sigma (Bitstream)
8x oversampling

Frequency response
10Hz - 20kHz +- 0.2dB

S/N ratio
> 96dB unweighted
> 105dB 'A' weighted

THD
< 0.006% 10Hz - 20kHz unweighted
< 0.003% 10Hz - 20 kHz 'A' weighted

Total correlated jitter
< 170 pS

De-emphasis error
< + 0.1dB

Linearity
< + 0.2dB to -80dB

Wow and flutter
Unmeasurable
http://www.musicalfidelity.com/uploads/man...nglish/a3cd.pdf

All in all pretty good specs, but doubt is the 16->24 bit upsampling helps. The D/A chip used is 24-bit (Possibly to be forward compatible with 24-bit material? It was made in 2000.) so any input needs to/will be upsampled to 24-bit. Better market this as a good thing. Higher number = better,...right? Doesn't come cheap though. $1000 for a cd player, those were the times.


**edit** As it oversamples 8x, raising word-length to 24-bits first might help reduce dither noise... Am I right? Won't the noise now be in less significant bits. Or Am I mixing stuff up here?

Music Fidelity A3 CD Player

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Propheticus on
doubt is the 16->24 bit upsampling helps.
More to the point, increasing the sampling rate after oversampling seems even more frivolous. What can that achieve? Oh, great, an extra 26 kHz of bandwidth, to preserve bits of the very same images and quantisation noise that the oversampling exists to push away into the higher frequencies…seems legit. Am I missing something? Or is this just another case of big numbers and the magic word upsampling being marketed on their own merits, regardless of sense?