Your CD player uses LOSSY data compression (maybe)
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Thursday January 2, 2025
David Mellor
David Mellor is CEO and Course Director of Audio Masterclass. David has designed courses in audio education and training since 1986 and is the publisher and principal writer of Adventures In Audio.
@rienpost replies to @AudioMasterclass: AFAIK professional CD-players used buffers as well (for pitch and speed adjustments for example) but without compression. Cheaper CD-Walkman models on the other hand, yes, I wouldn't be surprised if they compressed the data.
@ruley73 replies to @AudioMasterclass: It is true that the data was constantly streamed through the buffer, but only if ESP was turned on. On the earlier models it could be turned off. I don't recall hearing any noticeable difference in sound quality with ESP turned on from a CD player made by one of the mainstream brands like Sony, Panasonic, JVC, or Aiwa. If yours was one of the cheaper brands like GPX, Memorex, Koss, or Emerson you could definitely tell the difference. One perk of ESP that I distinctly remember is that badly scratched discs played more smoothly on them. I assume it's because the buffer enabled more/better oversampling.
@JMG72ARG: as a discman enthusiast, I am noticing that the sony discmans with ESPmax sound better than those with sony G-protection, which came shortly after.
@VintageGearMan: "Another very enlightening video!" I have a subject that I would love to hear you cover if you are so inclined? "Uv22 Super Cd Encoding". I have never heard of this process. Is it all that, or just smoke and mirrors? I have a Count Basie CD coming in soon that was processed this way. ( Uv22 is listed on the CD cover ) I will be curious to hear it. This idea/process is used in mastering as I understand it. Supposedly this mastering tool is used quite a bit but it is almost never listed on the CD cover itself. Anyway,,,,,,,,
@scrunchgumpgins4711: I have a 2003 Sony D-NE710 which has "1" and "2" settings for G-Protection. The manual states that the "1" is a shorter but "CD quality" sound, implying lossless of course. Funnily enough, my Sony seems to have a better implementation of anti-skip than the 2024 Fiio DM13. Fiio Willson on Head-Fi confirmed that the DM13 uses LOSSY ESP, can you believe that s#!t?
@AudioMasterclass replies to @scrunchgumpgins4711: I think that in 2003 'CD quality' actually did mean CD quality so I'm inclined to believe it. I'm still not going jogging though.
@yl9154: I had one, and it had an attachment in the shape of a cassette that could be inserted in a car's cassette player and fed the signal to the tape head. That was nice! I used it while commuting to work, then brought it in the office. Last I know, it is still working and occasionally still being used by a sibling. Never skipped whether driving or walking.
@spectrelayer: Very good video - as usual. Nice comments below - very informative. If you want to know if your CD audio is being compressed before output - simply play it thru a spectrum analyzer and watch the high end. Compression throws away more data in that region so a lossy hi-end has very distinct frequency bands that spring in & out of existence & are much more animated in amplitude variances than the low end. Once you see this difference, it's easy to tell if the audio is lossy.
@ModernClassic: I remember my friends having car CD players that would skip, but by the time I bought my first one in the very late 80's (a Clarion pullout model, though I don't remember the model #), there was skip protection being advertised and I had to really work hard - like taking my 1980 Camaro on a poorly maintained dirt road - before I could get mine to skip even a little bit. I don't know if it was just using rubber bumpers but I thought I remembered reading that it had a 3 second buffer. This pretty neatly corresponds to about a 256K buffer at full CD bit rates, which wouldn't have been tiny in those days but also wouldn't have been ridiculous for a relatively decent quality (ie. not cheap) car CD player. It's hard to make a 1:1 comparison to other consumer products from that era but my first PC that I got in 1992 came with 4MB, so 256K wouldn't have been crazy a few years earlier for a relatively expensive car stereo (which I bought at cost, since I worked at a stereo store).
A few years after that I replaced my Clarion with a Pioneer (that only required me to remove the faceplate, not the whole unit) that advertised 10 seconds of skip protection, which would be around 1MB at full quality. Again, that doesn't seem totally unreasonable for a $500 car stereo in the early to mid 90's. This was also before most compression schemes were ubiquitous and I don't know what Pioneer would have even had access to (certainly not ATRAC!). So I'm thinking the buffer was just buffering uncompressed.
It wouldn't surprise me if compressed buffering was mostly a Sony thing for a good while.
@molotulo8808: Old cd players skipped when hitting a bump in the road. For the car, I liked cassette tapes. I know... hiss. I lift weights because I owned a car and hate walking. I still prefer listening to cd's in my car over Bluetooth... no advertisements.
@williamfinch2777: What is a cd and how do I download it?
@AudioMasterclass replies to @williamfinch2777: You get someone to fax it to you.
@TheFibtastic: Without the inclusion of 'portable' in the title, this really strikes me as click-bait. Who is using portable CD players anymore? I don't see a lot of fit Luddites out there on the jogging path.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @TheFibtastic: Haha, now this is clickbait - https://youtu.be/cxoRcsmb2Ww
@sheldonkupa9120: Just found this gem of a channel. What a contrast to so many sellers on yt👍👏
@johanneswerner1140: Bloody brilliant! 😂 Happy new Year!
@humblestever24: Thanks for your Christmas message which I've only just seen.
Audio Phil (somehow) mentioned the tribute to Neptune on crossing the Equator. You feel silly as a sailor but its better to be safe than sorry.
His breadth of knowledge is impressive but I'm sure Debbie and Betty could do as well given Half a Chance!
@stigbengtsson7026: Why not bring back good old Sony Walkman (tape)
Instead ? 😅 Analog
@aurelioramos8463: From my recollection, G-Shock did not use the same data compression as ATRAC (mini disc) but the wordlength of each audio sample was shortened by using something akin to mu-law (non-linear samples) and the downside was increased noise and distortion as opposed to the artifacts, tweets and chirps of ATRAC (when it was experienced at its worst). Although the noise was always audible, depending on the masking present by the music itself. Additionally, the compression didn't only apply to skipped sections. Rather, when G-shock was enabled, the entire stream was compressed and on "the ready" to handle a skip. The noise was audible to me in a critical listening setting, but worth it for the benefit of avoiding skips. In car use or in environments where headphones were likely to be used, such as jogging, the added noise was even harder to notice.
@laurentzduba1298: Besides the Genesis Digital Lens, most mid to late 1990s Discman that I had the first hand experience in listening to have this "Minidisc type compression sound" whenever the anti-skip button is engaged.
@Bassotronics: I remember not liking the quality of the audio when it skipped.
Sounded like it went from 44.1khz to 22khz. High frequencies sounded aliased and odd.
@pandacongolais: Up to 1:20 : reminds me of my first MP3 on CD player I used in my car in the early 2000s. It had a buffer to avoid interruptions in case of road bumps. But it was implemented the other way around, I think : it ensured interruption each and every time a bump occurred ! OK, I known, most interesting story of the year … Or not …
Ha ! The rest of the video is about buffers !
Well, as a software coder, I would say that : if you feed a buffer with lossy compressed data, because memory is expensive, you always lossy compress, feed the buffer, and play lossy data. There would be no room for complex software that would play lossless data when conditions are optimal, and lossy data in degraded conditions.
@leecampbell9498: If I recall... I think I remember that "audiophiles" were up in arms over the buffering of music as interrupting the signal path lol
@Speed-Daemon-123: WOW! Sooooooooo much misinformation here.
First, the "jogging craze" was in the 1970s, not the '80s. And it started even before then. But "health food" and jogging was a '70s phenomenon, while health clubs were more of the '80s.
As for the skip buffer, that's nothing but magical thinking. There is no magic buffer that stores skip-proof data. That's bullshit. If true, the CD would be totally unnecessary, as the magic buffer would know the full contents of the CD beforehand. But that's not how CD players or reality works.
Finally, the pure assumption that Sony must have used ATRAC on the raw data coming off the CD (data that's already Huffman coded and eight-fourteen modulated, but why let facts get in the way of fantasy?) has no factual basis. It's a claim, and a claim with no supporting evidence. The faulty logic of "if they have the technology, why not use it?" is an unanswered question. I can think of many answers, cost and feasibility leading the way. But totally failing to answer the question seems to make it true? No. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Whether or not "audiophiles" can "hear" this completely fictional technology is nothing but a red herring, as there's zero evidence it even exists as claimed. A real CD player reads data off the disc, and the disc only. A real buffer uses data read from the disc, and not a secret, magic place. Real buffering works by reading ahead of what's being played. And skips are prevented by using increasingly sophisticated reading technology, including multiple laser beams to take in multiple tracks at once, and getting back on track before the buffer runs out. I vote "yes" for reality, and "no" to bullshit.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Speed-Daemon-123: Haha you’re fun. Not entirely living in reality but fun nonetheless.
@Speed-Daemon-123 replies to @Speed-Daemon-123: @@AudioMasterclass oh my! A creator has called me names! I must hide in shame!
Hold on... you're only calling me names, not proving me wrong. There's a big difference in that. Proving me wrong requires actual evidence, and you have none. Meanwhile bullshit only shows what you are made of...
@artysanmobile: The error correction for the Red Book Compact Disc was exceptionally robust. I believe it accounts for some 18% of all the data on the disc. The reasoning was that this might be the make or break of digital acceptance and Phillips wanted to really impress the end user with its durability. Of course, people tested that as hard as they could and then, and only then, was the Compact Disc lossy. They must’ve overlooked its use as a doorstop.
I recall the CD being manna from heaven to me as a producer; just endless depth to the stereo field and low frequencies became an entirely new weapon for the producer and writer. Now, 40 years later, they still sound fantastic, which of course was the promise of digital recording in the first place. I loved the flexibility of which I could avail myself in mastering; the enless dynamic range. It really changed me and it did not wear out its welcome. Not ever. It was a very busy time in my career and I loved that programmers could hear my work as I intended with a simple envelope in the mail.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @artysanmobile: You are not wrong. CD seemed like something from the mid to late 21st century back in 1982. When you say ‘lossy’, that would be when error correction kicked into error concealment. But those who chose not to drill holes in their discs, nor fingerprint them, would probably never experience that.
@artysanmobile replies to @artysanmobile: @AudioMasterclass Drilling holes could be catastrophic for the laser, shining down into the abyss, finding who knows what trouble down there.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @artysanmobile: Your eyeball, if you’re trying to see what’s going on.
@earthoid: I forgot the brand of the portable CD player I had (possibly Teac) but the anti-skip feature ruined the sound. Thankfully I never jogged with or without the player so it didn't matter.
@joelcarson4602: The DVD burners on my computers don't have antiskip as it's unneeded but they all DO have a rather sizable RAM buffer to prevent under-runs when burning disc's. No compresso, no problemo.
@Speed-Daemon-123 replies to @joelcarson4602: Yes, reality is quite mundane when compared to the paranoid fantasies of crackpots. Buffers exist everywhere, and make things better, not worse. Of course your DVD burner works asynchronously, meaning that it's not locked to an analog video signal while recording. Therefore it can record data many times faster than live video. The similarity between that sort of buffering and a CD player is that there's no orchestra inside a CD that needs to play at a certain cadence; the player can read into the buffer as fast as it can, just as a data DVD can read or write much faster than video playback requires. The difference is that a recording can't be interrupted and then restarted. Back when home computers had but one CPU and one PCI bus, this was important because if the computer's multitasking OS decided to read off the HDD, the burner had better have saved up a lot of data because it was going to wait!
@Teluric2: If the losy signal cant be detected by the ear whats the problem?
@Lenny-kt2th: I used to have one of those portable CD-players from Sony, a Discman. For fun I put an oscilloscope on the output and played a CD containing several sinewaves. I remember clearly that the waves looked fine when played with the skip protection off but heavily distorted with the skip protection on. It didn't affect the sound of music (no pun intended) noticeably, but it surely showed on the scope. I never knew why, until now.
@duprie37: I remember the CD player in my mate's car in 1994 was so bad it was almost a joke, every 10 seconds it would pause/skip, everytime we hit a bump. But we ignored it bc it was just so damn cool having a car CD player. Two years later I got a portable CD player for Xmas, I remember it had 2 anti-skip modes, one of them provided an incredible 40 second buffer. The cost? Lossy compression of the audio. It was 1996 and I didn't really understand what that was. It sounded fine to me though.
@052RC: Aren't you a recording engineer? You deal with this type of thing every day. The process is sometimes referred to as bit stripping. Any time you adjust volume levels and gain (trim) levels while the signal is digital, you loose resolution. For example, if you are working in 16/44, or standard CD quality, the only way you actually end up with true 16/44 is if all of your digital volumes are at max settings and 0 gain. As you lower either one, its not 16/44 anymore. The lower you go, the more resolution you loose. The reason for this when you adjust gain and volume in the analog domain, signal strength is altered. Volume is passive, and can only be lowered, and gain is active and can go either way. When digital, signal strength can't be altered because you're dealing with a bunch of 1's and 0's. Instead, levels are changed by altering bit rate.
If you are working in digital, there are a couple of things you can do to mitigate the effects of bits tripping. The main thing is to work in higher resolutions. For example, if you work in 24/96 instead of 16/44, you have more resolution to loose. So if your goal is 16/44, you shouldn't have any problems keeping the recording at that, or higher. Up sampling also helps. A lot of people don't care for up sampling because you can't get more than what you started with, there's no benefit. That's mostly true. All transcoding to a higher quality bit rate does is add non musical information to the file in order to "trick" your playback device into thinking its playing a compatible format. However, when working in digital, a benefit from up sampling is it makes the level adjustments finer, so the higher it is, the less you loose from bit stripping.
Proper gain staging also helps. If you have ever read anything on gain staging, they tell you do set your analog gain controls first, then make small adjustment using trim. Trim = digital gain.
To be clear, a lot of people that read this post will get the idea that I'm saying you should be recording in analog. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just talking about this issue because its relevant to the discussion. If you are aware of bit stripping and make an effort to keep it at a minimum, it should be inaudible.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @052RC: Thank you for your comment. It’s on a completely different topic to my video but thank you anyway.
@anonamouse5917: This is a bit surprizing. I would have assumed that extra RAM would have been cheaper than a much faster CPU to run the complex compression algorithm.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @anonamouse5917: Tricky to know for sure, but I remember in the late 80s paying £1600 for a sampler with two seconds of mono 12-bit memory.
@vaughanwarburton9623: I remember in the early 2000s my sony discman that was connected to my van radio via a adapter cassette 😂 had anti skip ,when switched in sounded like the Dolby setting on a cassette player that had not been recorded with Dolby,!,,muffled
@socialite1283: Um... Red Book Audio does not use any form of data compression.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @socialite1283: Um... I don't think you've watched the video.
@socialite1283 replies to @socialite1283: @@AudioMasterclass My CD Player does not use any form of data compression. There is no choice of buffering duration.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @socialite1283: As far as I know this only applies to portables and maybe car players. Even so, not all players have this function.
@Speed-Daemon-123 replies to @socialite1283: Quite right, but ESP has little to nothing to do with Red Book. Consider that in the Red Book, the time base for reconstructing the original sampling rate (ie. 1/f) is encoded onto the linear track on the disc. In other words, the most important clock signal you can imagine is made by a lightweight bit of plastic that's never spinning at the same RPM twice! One need not be a rocket scientist to understand that it's a particularly brittle electro-mechanical system to use in the digital age, or that adding a buffer means that the data stream must then be re-clocked.
Shouldn't such "golden-eared" people easily be able to sense the aberration of the Red Book clock signal long before a skip ever develops? If they were telling the truth, that is. But they're not. This is all a hoax, and we know it's a hoax because their stock in trade is rumors and innuendo, rather than ever a cogent explanation of...anything. It's painfully obvious that this guy hasn't the first clue how a CD player works.
Just ask for evidence. "Show me the evidence that Sony employs ATRAC compression on CD playback." Don't hold your breath while waiting for that evidence. No, stories and rationalizations are not the same as evidence.
@socialite1283 replies to @socialite1283: @@Speed-Daemon-123 Playback isn't the same as reading the data off the disc. There is an element of error correction when reading the data off the disc, and if the player fails to read the data then it skips. That's just a fact of reading a poor disc.
@ac81017: In 1994 i got my first portable Sony D-235 Discman when i was 18 years old, cost £250 from the Sony center along with a pair of £75 Sony MDR-V5 or 7 headphones. 1996 i moved over to Minidisc which was great for mixing and saved carrying a 10 pack of cd's with me on the go. I also remeber the Discman having a rechargeable battery pack and built in charger which saved alot of money on batteries.
@dlarge6502: Yes, as I figured out by reading online and by actually listening to certain disks that tripped it up, Sony (and many other) portable players use a small amount of RAM with audio compression to read ahead and avoid skipping.
Most players allowed you to switch that off entirely (not car head units, only portable ones) as the anti skip used more battery power. But, my later model Sony player has an antiskip that is ALWAYS ON. It lets you select from two levels, but never switching it fully off.
How did I find out that?
I played a Ralph Vaughan Williams CD, an 80's pressing, on a Sony portable I had just picked up from a charity shop. I never use skip protection, I don't run or jump with my portables lol. I just use them to listen on the bed. My first portable from my childhood has a worn motor bearing so I was interested in another and I found the Sony.
Anyway, on this PARTICULAR disc, I heard a very familiar odd noise. During the silence at the beginning, and some silence during the music, I heard what sounded like birds chirping in mud!
I was like, "OMG, what's wrong with this 80's disc?". I was getting a little excited that I had finally found an example of the mythical disc rot! 😂
It was just THAT disc, no other discs had a problem. Even other RVW discs from the same collection were fine, just this one. During my tests I put the disc into my main bedroom player, a JVC mini system I had since I was a kid. No birds...
Then my main player in the living room, a Sony CD recorder I got from a charity shop. Again, no birds.
All my dvd players and Blu-ray players (Sony models), no birds. My Technics and Marantz players with the Philips swing arm pickup... No muddy birds.
My original portable from the 90's? A goodmans. Birds! But only when I have the shock protection on, which since having it as a kid I NEVER needed so always switched off. It took a while to test on that Goodmans as the worn motor bearing adds a lot of vibration that prevents the anti shock protection from working, I have to hold the player in a particular position and hold very very still to give it a chance.
My other, slightly ill (needs recapping) Panasonic portable from the 90's with a multi bit DAC and NO shock protection? No birds.
But that Sony portable had, on that particular disc, really noticeable chirping birds sinking into a mud puddle no matter what setting the G protection switch is set to!
I found very little online suggesting this was happening. I'll probably upload a recording on my evidence. Every other disc I have, spoken word discs with loads of silence etc, has no issues. Only the chance encounter with this RVW disc, which must have an odd noise floor that trips up the compressor shows this.
Most people think that Songs G Protection can be switched off, but that's only on older models. My later model, along with the Sports Walkman models, have it on ALL the time.
It doesn't matter to me, it's a portable and I rarely need to use those. In my car, I don't care, it seems obvious now that it uses shock protection, but that RVW disc is going to suffer more than chirping birds while driving. I have a CD player in the car and never will not, if I can help it, but that's only on the odd times I use it. I don't generally use the player in the car as they have a habit of cooking the discs! They get incredibly hot and I don't want my original discs getting that too often, so I copy to CD-RW if I need to.
Edit: I'll upload and link to a video showing the disc I have tripping up the compressor on my Sony portable.
@johnrus7661: Lived through late 90's and 2000's as a kid and I do remember the issues with skip and what a big deal it was.
@Solitaire001: I thought that Electronic Skip Protection (ESP) involved copying the entire song into a buffer memory and playing the music from that. When the song ends it copies the next song in the buffer memory. I've got a Philips Portable CD Player (EXP2550) that has 200 seconds of ESP, but when you turn off ESP it will read music directly from the CD.
@rabit818: Compression is like nihilism and existentialism rolled into one.
@fredashay: Yes, I know that.
That's unfortunate, but CDs were invented back when data storage was limited and expensive 😞
At least, we now have lossless formats like FLAC and WAV, though you need to go out of your way to get music in these formats.
@voltare2amstereo: I DIY'd a CD player one day in a car. using a PC CD Rom with play next buttons on the front, using a self made 12v/5v linear supply (Vregs) 4 pin out straight to the line in on the head unit.
Pretty sure most ESP played off the buffer while in use and just tried to keep the buffer full
@owlnswan4016: The earliest car CD players from the factory were offered in 1986 for the 1987 model year Lincoln Town Car. Sony made the disc players for Ford (though did not denote Sony on the faceplate). They supplemented the AM/FM stereo cassette player head units and had excellent transports which had great isolation and did not skip, and they eventually got offered in other vehicles. I had a '91 Mark VII with a different unit - an AM/FM stereo head unit with CD player (first introduced in 1989 for the 1990 model year) where the disc player was also built by Sony, and it never jumped. It was complimented by the fabulous sounding Ford/JBL Audio System...those early Ford/JBL systems were great. Of course, these cars riding so well didn't hurt in keeping the CD player from jumping.
The 6 disc changer in the 2002 Jaguar XK8 convertible I had with the Alpine system was prone to jumping like a grasshopper. The system was pretty nice sounding, and could play to a healthy volume with the car being a convertible, but the disc changer was problematic, even after it was replaced once. The point is...they were able to isolate a CD player in a car very early on without electronic skip technology, but for whatever reason went the other way.
@jasonschubert6828: Funny, I have recently been using a Panasonic portable CD player through a Pioneer blueline system to listen to some of my older CDs like it was the 80s! It definitely sounds different with the "anti-shock" turned on, which sounds better might be subjective, especially on a more than 30yo system running a graphic equalizer! I ended up leaving it off in the hope of saving some battery life! 😆
@DarrellS54: Question: does it really matter? Is the audio that noticeable unless one has dog hearing?
@EmperorKamikaze replies to @DarrellS54: Absolutely. Cheap cd players in fact sound cheap and skip more compared to some better ones. Better headphones or hifi system will reveal differences
@johnmiller0000: Even the "lossless" data may not be bit-for-bit identical to the original. 25% of the data on a CD is for error-correction. For simple errors, the original data can be recovered, but sometimes it cannot and replacement data has to be substituted. Usually, you'd never know.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @johnmiller0000: I’ve heard this as an explanation for why CD players sound different. Some may have better error concealment than others.
@MrSlipstreem: I have firsthand experience that my ears are becoming more lossy with age. Happy new year!
@MacShintersbane: Sony were probably playing on the G-Force meme. Was the Casio G-Shock out by then?
Certainly by the early 2000s the Kenwood head unit I had never skipped at any time - that I was aware of, so the buffer worked.
@DeathInTheSnow: I mean, most people listen to lossy music these days anyway because Spotify and YouTube (but not YouTube music...) are the most popular ways to listen to music, and it's all heavily compressed. Same with DAB, which is a shame, because radio is still a brilliant medium for music and talk shows. So CDs are in a bit of an odd place right now, being the most accessible physical medium.
It's funny - when everybody still had iPods (or equivalent), people would take great care to get their music in the best possible quality they could for the device's capacity. Music players aren't gone, but the mass market seems interested in buying them. If you ask most people, they will say they're happy with a streaming service (they daren't put music on their phones as they don't have the storage any more, and certainly not expandable storage!). So we're in this strange situation where we still have CDs, but no recommendable brands that make players, and we still have digital audio players (DAPs), but no reputable sites that offers music for download. There's a strange... gap in the market. Maybe somebody like FiiO or Sony should make a huge fuss about music players again? Get people back on the bandwagon.
@debranchelowtone replies to @DeathInTheSnow: Radios actually transmits lossy compressed digital audio to satellite, and satellite back to local transmitters. Then it is converted to analog and broadcasted in FM. Since almost 40 years already. FM is not pure analog, unless you are certain that the studio is connected to the transmitter. If it has satellite in the way, it has lossy in the way aswell.
@fred-youtube replies to @DeathInTheSnow: Lossless streaming exists and lossy streaming is usually at least 256kbps and with a modern codec like AAC.
@paulstubbs7678: I had two portable CD players that also played mp3's, I didn't jog, but used them on the train to work. They had anti-skip but it was a joke as it was so easy to upset them. The build quality was awful, they only lasted a little over a year before they died. One was branded Teac so I expected quality, unfortunately I think Teac had fallen on hard times with the brand name being sold to any junk maker who wanted it.
@teashea1: Interesting video..... but you lose a lot of credibility with those pathetic NS10's sitting there.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @teashea1: My copy of Debretts Book of Etiquette advises never to criticise a man’s choice of wife, nor his speakers.
@garycooper8732: Yes 1986 and my first in car CD was a Panasonic head unit with separate amp, and yes it skipped when driving over a marshmallow. However it went back to the audio dealer twice , and after the 2nd time came back perfect. I'll never know what they did but it worked as it never missed a beat until I sold the car 14 years later!
@nabman_: Not a digital experience, but when I was a little boy I remember we had a vinyl player in the car under the dash console. It played 45 singles. Interestingly, I don't remember it skipping or jumping. I remember it felt wobbly inside when hit with the knee (probably a very compliant suspension, and must have tracked at 10 grams or so). Funny this episode reminded me of it.
@bmflanman replies to @nabman_: I remember the under dash vinyl players too, my dads boss had a 1966 Thunderbird convertible with a carphone in it, in 1966, yeah it was big.
@DaPhunkPhenomena replies to @nabman_: For the record (pun intended), the 7" used in the US for Chrysler cars were a special format made by CBS , running at 16 and 2/3 RPM and containing as much as an LP - but the catalog was poor and, of course, it was highly subject to skips on low budget cars.
But in England Philips used "true" 7" for their vinyl record car player named Mignon with a slot in the front, which was produced until 1970....
@nabman_ replies to @nabman_: @DaPhunkPhenomena The car was a Pontiac. Can't say if the player was factory-installed or aftermarket. It had a slot and 'sucked' in the record like a drawer-less CD player does.
@billmilosz: TRUE audiophiles listen to VINYL whilst jogging.
@stevengagnon4777 replies to @billmilosz: @@billmilosz oh .... the AT Sound Burger 🍔. I did wrench many bicycles with vinyl playing. Ninehundred watts powering a nice wall of sound. The bicycle shop rocked after closing.
@MangoPango1973 replies to @billmilosz: True Audiophiles are jogging behind a semi trailer with an orchestra on a stage on it.
True sports runners never listen to anything other than the sound of their breath, heart and blood.
@alexjenner1108 replies to @billmilosz: with class-A valve amplifiers
@Zimmy_1981 replies to @billmilosz: Or records😂
@billmilosz replies to @billmilosz: @@stevengagnon4777 So... you had a record player on your bike? ????
@ricktotty2283: I will give you an example. A few years ago I bought a remastered copy of Electric light Orchestra, blue skies. It sounds terrible. Bad recording? Bad CD copy? I’m not sure. All I know is it so bad I can’t listen to it. I also have newer copies of Rick Wakeman early works. Journey to the center of the earth. The six wives of Henry the eighth. And King Arthur and the Knights of the round table. They all sound awful. I have been to see Rick Wakeman live, so I know it’s not the production. One of the best sounding concerts I ever heard. I know a lot of these used to be produced for radio. This was mostly for in vehicle consumption. They did this because the car stereo systems of the time were unable to play all the dynamics. Early Led Zeppelin music was also bad. Who told all these people that these albums sounded good in the first place. It’s a shame.
@connorduke4619: Excellent... these audiiophile horror stories!
@pauledwards2817: Yes you are right a problem of the past but I had a Sony portable cd player with I think ESP2 as they described it. Fortunately you could turn it off! Two skip correction settings both clearly audible and not just when thrown about, permanent added noise and cut off treble. Far worse than atrac and all the more obvious with the typical no bass earbuds supplied.
@MartinE63: An examination of the standards would quickly reveal the data on the CD is no more compressed / lossy or whatever you call it that it ever was.
5:19 of pointless ‘content’
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MartinE63: Give us all the link to the standards then, unless you too are pointless.
@Speed-Daemon-123 replies to @MartinE63: @@AudioMasterclass actually you made the claim, so you have the burden of proof here. The very fact that you're playing the "prove me wrong bro" game rather than showing your proof is ample evidence that you're lying.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MartinE63: Oh dear, you're accusing me of lying. You'll have to identify exactly what lies I told in my video. Start with the worst, then the next worst couple of whoppers. This should be fun.
@Speed-Daemon-123 replies to @MartinE63: @@AudioMasterclass no, you're accusing yourself by playing the game that I identified. You still have the burden of proof for your claims. You're just like Trump, playing a bigshot, but unable to fit in the shoes...
@AudioMasterclass replies to @MartinE63: Nope. You're just a troublemaker having a go at me for kicks. You are in no way justifying your accusations. So comment away as much as you like. I'm done with you.
@ThePittsburghToddy: I used to have a Jeep in late 80s/early 90s. My stereo would be stolen at least once every two months or so. Sometimes they would nick the speakers as well. It got to the point where I would buy the cheapest thing available and suffer the terrible sound quality.
@mark902: I bought a Sony discman at a thrift years ago. It was a later model with 45 seconds of skip protection. I wish I knew the model, but it was probably only a bit more than a centimeter thick, requiring two gumstick batteries.
Anyway, even with the g-protection set to minimum I found it sounded terrible. It made pressed CDs sound like files I'd downloaded on Napster. So it went in a box and is there to this day.
@Mrsteve4761: You may have laughed at the Porsche's sound system, but at the same time they were laughing at your four cylinder. 😆Enjoyed the video. I'd say the compression in portables wasn't a practical issue, as the headphones used while jogging were sub-par to begin with.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Mrsteve4761: I got the last parking space as well. Hahahaha.
@Mrsteve4761 replies to @Mrsteve4761: @AudioMasterclass Sometimes timing is everything. Lady luck was on your side that day. There's always tomorrow though!
@simonbeasley989: My first car cost me £200 in the late nineties. There was a basic Philips analogue and manual radio and I wasn't going to to spend money on replacing it. So I took it apart and fitted a 3.5mm socket to plug the portable CD player in, tapping into the circuit at the volume control. No anti skip but actually placed on the mat on the passenger side floor it worked absolutely fine.
@1697djh: You could argue that 44Khz 16bit is a lossy format, today we have 24 bit audio at 192Khz, I guess anything below that is lossy?
@AudioMasterclass replies to @1697djh: My own masters are 44.1 kHz, 16-bit. Anything else is lossy to me.
@owlnswan4016 replies to @1697djh: No...in the sense that it's not deliberately lossy.
@1697djh replies to @1697djh: @@owlnswan4016 that is exactly what the CD is!
@owlnswan4016 replies to @1697djh: @@1697djh Yes, a proper red book standard CD or the CD layer of a hybrid SACD/CD...not a non-standard CD with lossy data on it.
@s_r_v: Can you do some stuff on surround sound, DTS and the like... I've got a bluray player which I use as a cd transport and use the dac in my av receiver... but its so much easier to just stream a flac... anyhow... some recently remixed albums have been released with a 5.1 surround bluray in DTS the sound is amazing esp. as the album has been specifically mixed for surround, so very niche I guess, be interested in your thoughts and techy explanations
@Zimmy_1981 replies to @s_r_v: Why not run flacs from HD drive?
@innovationsinm: I had one of those portable cd players that and the 3.5mm headphone to cassette adapter to use inside my car. It was a Panasonic unit with a 3 second anti skip buffer and a proprietary rechargeable battery (that was effectively two AA cel rechargeable batteries in series wrapped in plastic. It worked pretty good and don’t seem to remember any difference between having the anti ski on or off with play time
@richh650: Interesting CD Buffer info that everyone once wanted....
@JohnAudioTech: I have an old Sony player and a CD with various test tones. You can clearly hear the degradation in the sound of some of the tones with the skip protection enabled. It is not so apparent with music though.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @JohnAudioTech: Interesting.
@ropeburn6684: Nice AI picture of a "CD" with visible grooves like vinyl. 😂
@AudioMasterclass replies to @ropeburn6684: It was played a couple of times in a dodgy Xbox.
@cdl0: I am glad I didn't skip this video. 🙂 It would have been a loss.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @cdl0: Haha
@ScottGrammer: Audio tech with 47 years experience here. I was trained on CD repair in the late 1980's at Sony's tech school in Atlanta. So let's start with a regular (not anti-skip) CD player.
All CD players read data from the disk, decode it into normal digital audio (which it is NOT as recorded on the disc), and then store it in a small RAM buffer. The spindle motor which turns the disc must only maintain enough speed to keep the RAM from becoming empty (called "buffer underrun,") and not go so fast as to overfill the buffer (called "buffer overrun.") The spindle motor does not have to maintain perfect speed control like a turntable motor, because the speed of playback is determined by the quartz crystal clock that controls the rate at which data is read out of the RAM buffer and into the DAC. So all CD players have a RAM buffer.
The first anti-skip tech was simply an expansion of the RAM buffer into a size such that it would hold about three seconds of audio (about half a megabyte). With that much RAM, if the optical block lost focus or tracking, it could take a second or two to find itself again without the RAM suffering an underrun. This does not involve lossy compression (or any compression at all) and does not affect sound quality. The later "long" anti-skip systems did in fact use compression, although whether it was ATRACS I do not know.
In the early 2000's, CD/MP3 combo players had several megabytes of RAM, and could load an entire MP3 song into RAM, and then play it back with the disc transport completely stopped. When playing a regular CD, they would use that RAM for anti-skip, with no compression.
@Kalvinjj replies to @ScottGrammer: There was also my 2nd cheap portable CD player (that also could read MP3 CDs) that had a very long anti-skip protection, and would always sound considerably worse with that enabled (which it did by default...). Gotta test it tho to see if it had other modes of anti-skip that would just load the lossless audio instead, but I wouldn't count much on that cheap player having that option (albeit that RAM was in fact BIG for it's task, in the maximum, lossy skip protection, it could hold like a minute or so).
@jasonschubert6828 replies to @ScottGrammer: My later (portable) mini-disc players certainly spun up the drive for a short time only once every 30 to 40 seconds or so.
@dlarge6502 replies to @ScottGrammer: Sony's G-protection on some of their later portables can't be switched off and indeed uses compression to squeeze the data into the buffer.
I know this as I have a particular CD that has something odd with it's noise floor and that specific CD trips up the compressor making very familiar compression artifacting, like listening to a 64kbs joint stereo MP3. ONLY that player does that. ONLY that disc in THAT player does that.
This proved two things to me. As rumoured online, G-protection from Sony ended up using compression at some point, and later models (as with the sports models) had no way to actually turn it off.
If it wasn't for a chance encounter with that specific 80's Ralph Vaughan Williams disc, I'd never have known as all other discs seem totally fine in it. I'll have to upload a demo video showing these "chirping birds in mud" as I call them.
@dlarge6502 replies to @ScottGrammer: @@jasonschubert6828 well they use compressed audio anyway, they don't read much data off disc so can spin it down thus can last hundreds of hours on one AA battery.
@artysanmobile replies to @ScottGrammer: @@ScottGrammer Hitting eject, yanking the disc off the tray and continuing to listen to the rest of the song had to be a top level party trick.
@AmazonasBiotop: Better than listening 100% of the time on lossy music as when you are listening on LPs!😂
@AudioMasterclass replies to @AmazonasBiotop: Haha
@davidberndt6275: Thats why we go running. Skipping would look just plain silly
@cdl0 replies to @davidberndt6275: Silly? Girls love skipping! 🙂
@memcdm: Both my Cambridge and MARANTZ CD player skip! Curiously, the same CDs that skip consistently on the CD players DO NOT SKIP on my 4k Blu-ray player and Mt very cheap older model Blu-ray players! Some of the skipping disks have what appear to be very minor flaws! ?? I think the difference is the buffer tech used. ???
@memcdm replies to @memcdm: NOTE: My CD players are not portable models. ... and not the cheapest either. 😅
@stevengagnon4777: Gave up using music while bicycling forty years ago....i found that even with open back headphones I was too disconnected from the sometimes dangerous environment i was in. It was that sometimes part that prompted me to skip it entirely. Never got passed using the portable cassette devices. Many times it seems that pedestrians on multiuse paths would come to the same conclusion. Have a wonderful new year all !
@AudioMasterclass replies to @stevengagnon4777: Your wisdom is excellent. I used to cycle on cycle paths with my headphones but I think I’d be too cautious to do even that now.
@Hamachingo replies to @stevengagnon4777: I like cycling with one wireless earbud in the right ear. With right hand traffic, there’s nothing to my right that needs my ear. But I still hear all the traffic, I can tell what size of car it is by the tire noise. I only put the second bud in when I need hearing protection, like hammer drilling, vacuuming, big power tools in general.
@dlarge6502 replies to @stevengagnon4777: When cycling or driving I listen to talk radio, not music. Or spoken word stuff.
@thexfile.: You should look for 'AAD' CDs when possible.
@Hitsujiomeguruboken: Happy new year, David! You and the Scientific Audiophile - simply the best HiFi Channels!
@peterlundskow4061: I have a JVC XL-PV350 portable CD player made around 1990. It still works great! I have not used it for running in years, Still use it from time to time sitting on the couch listening to the tons of CDs I still own. It has a 45 scond buffer in it but, not sure if it is lossless or not. Incidentally, my first CD player was a top loading one that was Sears branded, I believe it was made by Phillips? I also remember the first CD I bought which was ABC's 'Lexicon of Love', 1982, still have the CD but not the player.
@Retro480i: Your green screen is dialed in to perfection. You could probably to a video on that alone.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Retro480i: I’m just lucky. Wisdom says I should light the screen separately but I don’t seem to need to. Did you notice that the image on the monitor ‘behind’ me is green screened in too?
@Retro480i replies to @Retro480i: @@AudioMasterclass Ha! I was looking at that monitor a lot during first viewing, but notice it was comped in. Your lighting setup is at least in the right direction, lending to the convincing illusion. Happy New Year!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @Retro480i: And to you. I could wish for better green screening but the actual point is so I don’t have to clean and tidy. It’s a photo of my room in the background - you’d thank me if you saw the everyday reality.
@Retro480i replies to @Retro480i: @@AudioMasterclass your green screen is on point. Perfecto. I suspected the plate was your studio after a nice tidying up.
@EdwinDekker71: Remember those first recordable CDs? Basically we had to leave the studio while it was writing....the slightest bump would cause it to fail and ruin a quite costly writable disk.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @EdwinDekker71: I remember discs costing £10 GBP each. Expensive coasters when the recording goes wrong.
@SubTroppo replies to @EdwinDekker71: Among my past duties was the re-formatting and mastering infrequent software* releases for a major telecoms equipment supplier. This was in the late 1990's and CD burning was always fraught! The division's only physical products were the software masters I produced, and the company's IT support contract covered everything APART FROM the CD-R burner and burning process! I now regard this situation as a classic example of corporate behavior, and every time I see or hear the word "outsourcing" I .... *The original supplier of the hardware and software was not capable of supplying software on CD and more than ten floppy discs were required for their Unix version!
@memcdm replies to @EdwinDekker71: Interesting. Only had a problem with a CD recorder recording live program (worship services). Replaced the unit and had no more problems.
@mikeg2491 replies to @EdwinDekker71: I remember begging my dad for a Mitsubishi 2x cd burner, it felt like I had gone 10 years into the future when I got it. My biggest regret is I lost or threw out my trapper keeper full of burned stuff as a kid.
@chrisbartram3034 replies to @EdwinDekker71: Also having to use SCSI for CD writers as IDE wasn't fast enough at the time.
@maxbg: In anti skip mode, the reading of data is 2x the normal rate or more. Is there a need to compress the data?
@ijabbott63 replies to @maxbg: @maxbg It depends how much time you want to buffer. Uncompressed CD audio would require 176400 bytes per second, so 2 mebibytes would be good for 11.8 seconds of uncompressed anti-skip.
@jeremymorrison3494: I remember the days of skipping
@michal7x7: Wouldn't you listen to degraded quality all the time? The player has to read some data in advance, then start playing from the buffer while reading new data to the buffer. That's assuming the drive can't simultaneously read from two data streams at once. Interesting topic BTW.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @michal7x7: You raise a point that’s interesting and scary at the same time.
@SteveWille replies to @michal7x7: I, too, was surprised by David’s suggestion that the buffered data was only used during skips… seems too complicated to have implemented that way.
@AudioMasterclass replies to @michal7x7: This was the impression I got from the information I could find. However using the buffer full time seems an easier implementation, if rather less than audiophile. If and when documentation turns up I may make a follow-up video.
@SteveWille replies to @michal7x7: @@AudioMasterclass Yes… the “Electronic skip protection” Wikipedia page needs work and some citations. Let’s get on that!
@AudioMasterclass replies to @michal7x7: Lads! Get to work!
@Truthinshredding1: A couple of questions. Was there a longevity and or quality difference between CD's and CDR?
Plus why are manufacturering prices of CD's so high wveb though they have been around since the mid eightie?
From my own personal experience, the death of the CD these days, apart from manufacturing, is actualli g the post of postal distribution and taxation as we go into post globalisation.
Happy walking.
@anahatamelodeon replies to @Truthinshredding1: CDRs definitely don't last as long as pressed CDs.
Sound quality is the same until a CDR starts losing data (which they do faster that pressed CDs); then they may start skipping.
Not sure about the other questions....
@memcdm replies to @Truthinshredding1: Never had a problem with any CD-R that I burned skipping unless I damaged them. Some are quite old now.
@Truthinshredding1 replies to @Truthinshredding1: @@memcdm apart from surface scratch, ever had a problem with a CD?
@memcdm replies to @Truthinshredding1: @@Truthinshredding1 "never"
@memcdm replies to @Truthinshredding1: @Truthinshredding1 Never. I've burned several hundred thru the years and never had one skip. Scratched? Yes. Dirty? YES....until cleaned and then no skipping. Some i still have are quite old.
@enricoself2256: Portable CD players of that era had typically two settings for anti-skip, short and long protection. Short means uncompressed, long means using lossy encoding (and yes, Sony used its own ATRAC encoder which worked pretty well in battery powered devices). But it was highlighted in the manuals, at least the ones i got, that long protection would cause a degrade in sound quality.
@dlarge6502 replies to @enricoself2256: On my later model Sony the anti skip uses compression all the time. I have a particular 80's classical disc that has odd effects on the compression algorithm resulting in very noticeable artifacts during silence. I'm going to upload a video.
@pauldron1254: Not what I expected
@AudioMasterclass replies to @pauldron1254: Which raises the question what else is out there that we don’t expect?