Therefore, major record companies do not bother to make high quality recordings, whether for distribution on record, cassette or CD. Making a good recording requires a superb hall with natural ambience, carefully placed microphones, high-quality electronics and the good taste to refrain from using signal processing equipment to compensate for hall or microphone deficiencies. Most bad records are ruined in the production of the master tape so that even a perfect distribution medium would not guarantee the listener a good product. Companies that made bad recordings continue to do so and the CD is just a lower-noise distribution medium for those bad recordings."


Other specialists continue this train of inquiry. "In these days of 'high tech' living, you would think that there would be a better way of storing musical information than in a record groove. But according to audiophile purists, even the new-fangled compact disc players cannot match the lucidity, transparency and naturalism of a good LP system. They even argue that those who complain about the 'noises' of such a system would probably reject a '63 Lafite Rothchild because of the sediment." [Kostas Metaxas, "Vive la Vie", Australia.]


"You're gonna have to explain to me why, if it's so perfect, the CD doesn't sound better than the LP?" [Sheffield Lab president Doug Sax, "HiFi News & Record Review", October 1984.] "The best of the new CD players reveal felicities on the best digital recordings that indeed justify the potential and promise of the new medium. But, as the designers of the units freely acknowledge, analogue is still the preferred medium for high-resolution sound. Determining which of the flaws we are about to identify are indigenous to contemporary low-bit, low-sampling rate technology and which are problems with the recording process, the discs themselves or the playback technology, cannot yet be done with true precision." [Harry Pearson, "The Absolute Sound", November/December 1986.]
"Those who believe in digital are deaf, and those who believe in analogue are crazy" [unknown]. One could cite a hundred such quotes. You will surely have noted that these specific ones are rather old. That was deliberate. It shows that despite the passage of time, certain things have remained the same. Audiophiles still prefer vinyl though as a format, it has lost the war. Digital recordings and hardware have improved and we're pleased when our better CD players and transports are being favorably compared to superior analog front ends. Still, the big movers and shakers in the industry decide our fate and build our future world as they always do.


To delve into the chapter of the technical process of CDMs would take a whole book so I will concentrate on one feature which is rarely ever commented upon.


Let's talk about the unnatural behavior of the CD process per se. When an analog signal is converted to digital, this isn't a little change but a huge shift from one world into another. And that conversion happens twice: A-to-D and D-to-A. For instance, in the analogue world (human ears, microphones, speakers), laws of Physics dictate that distortion increases with rising levels. The more powerful the sound, the higher the distortion. The smaller the signal, the lower the distortion (until we reach the noise floor of any given component wherein the tiniest of signals get buried). Digital works exactly the opposite. From a philosophical perspective, this is a grave and nearly insurmountable error. Realism, transparency, ambience, air etc. all are a function of very delicate low-level data. Poorly recovered micro details always induce a synthetic, unnatural and painful element to music playback. Voila: The typical criticisms of digital sound.


After that, there's no need to mention poor tracking, imperfect pressings, erratic servos or jitter. There simply is no margin for error left. The big mistake has already been made. Once we consider how a disc is manufactured, engraved and encoded, we must marvel about this absolutely clever, amazing and elegant feat of engineering. One could argue why so much intelligent R&D was applied when we already had a high-quality medium of high potential? We didn't need digital. The big industrial concerns did. Reflecting on the size of the engraved data, the laser beam and the mechanical challenges involved, one technical reviewer once exhorted "How it can work is beyond me but it does!" Technically speaking, the CD indeed is miraculous. The secret lies in its ability to self-correct. The mathematical data is cut, interlaced and engraved at various disc locations and recalculated when not extracted properly.


To quote Rene Boonen, "everything that moves makes noise - it vibrates". This is compounded by stiffening ribs on platters and clamps which create considerable wind noise and thus higher vibrations. Now add the fact that CDMs have to use linear speed regardless of the laser position, spinning at 500rpm at the center and 200rpm at the edge. This means that the resonant behavior of the motor and platter assembly isn't limited to one frequency but spans quite a band. Now realize that the commonly used DC motors are designed for speeds of 2500 - 2800rpm. Using them at such slow speeds prevents optimal functioning, clearly suggesting that the CD standard was not written by a mechanical engineer.


The motors commonly used to spin CDs are cheap and poorly made. Their magnetic circuits are fabricated from rubber magnets and give irregular results with high vibrations. We have a test disc of Haydn Quartets which suffers eccentricity of 1mm plus 1mm of concave curvature. Can you envision how these offsets from centeredness and flat impact the servo when you account for the size of the raw data embedded on such a disc? If you have a top-loading player, experiment with initialization times. Load the same CD again and again, lift the clamp/puck, turn the disc before hitting start, rotate the clamp a little next time you do it. Also experiment with older scratched discs. You'll notice that the initialization times will always change a little You might even trigger a "no disc" display error once in a while.
We're not talking about quick initialization times per se (different from transport to transport) but the discrepancies of a given player and given disc that is loaded repeatedly. If you're thinking that a superior CDM should shrink this window of variability, you'd be right. If you're thinking that there is an ideal position of loading a disc, you'd be right, too.


After 10 years of performing CD tracking studies and designing a handful of mechanisms, the need to design a better laser assembly presented itself. Like the motors and control chips, these optical devices in general are poorly designed and executed, using a suspended lens with improperly balanced coil assemblies and diode receptors so out of alignment that it can be visible to the naked eye at times. By comparison, any serious phono cartridge is a jewel of precision engineering and far better mechanical accuracy.


I remember visiting the Philips factory in Hasslet/Belgium once (since relocated to Asia). Three engineers were discussing how they could omit three little rubber bumpers where the disc made contact with the drawer. While cheap little parts by themselves, economics of scale dictated that shaving off a penny here and there would translate into significant savings overall. This is not to needlessly condemn or harangue the mass-market vendors. They're doing their job perfectly well. It's simply not possible to design for mechanical excellence in the markets they serve. I'm making a basic statement about the difference in mentality that separates affordable products from uncompromised ultra-performance ones. A better CDM mandates a larger budget, longer R&D times to reduce vibrations and enhance mass to damp those vibrations. There is an ideal balance of action/reaction effects between the operative mass of laser head, platter, support and surrounding chassis.

A superior CDM requires a larger platter for improved stability of the moving assembly. While the diameter of 30mm remains an unchanged RedBook spec, it can easily reach up to 44mm without practical problems outside of cost. A superior CDM must eliminate the gaps of the gear teeth of the moving parts. Teeth knock against each other, generate resonances, misalign the laser head position and confuse the servo tracker. A superior CDM requires more operational accuracy, hence tighter mechanical tolerances with provisions for adjustments and dynamic balancing. I would post a reward for anyone capable and willing to divulge information about the servo chips. Outside of basic specs and connection data, they remain mysterious operators which we can't improve upon until we can test them. Alas, they remain "black holes".

Between the servo and the DAC stage, insert JITTER in capital letters. Moving on to the DAC, we at Audiomeca use a DSP/DAC module from Anagram who we believe have created a breakthrough product far ahead of their global competitors while reaching the practical limits of what's possible with this technology. While it is vital to design in a way that respects Physics, the best results always rely on artful applications.


No serious designer, reviewer or general listener believes that better measurements automatically equate to better music playback. But it also true that a superior CDM will have measurably lower vibrations, a less busy servo, more linear results with reduced variables and a cleaner HF retrieval.


In the end, it comes down to whether you want a plastic toy as above or a serious piece of precision machining. In these days of abject fascination with electronic circuits, faster speeds and sacrificial parts that simply wear out and get replaced, the mechanical sciences are becoming a forgotten art. Mechanics and Physics are replaced by fashionable electronics with inherent mechanical weaknesses that require massive corrective protocols. People indeed hope to eliminate all moving parts of CD playback altogether. The old paradigm of "everything is mechanical" has being replaced with "everything is electronic". This causes bizarre consequences. Looking at nature, we realize that mechanical laws are senior to electronic effects. A TV, a cathode ray gun, a computer, an amplifier - they all are mechanical constructs. Electronic circuits can connect and activate mechanical function but electricity by itself is meaningless if it isn't conducted and put to work in machines of certain dimensions, weights, materials and assemblies.
Eliminating moving parts from music playback does not eliminate mechanics. You still need a box to house it in, connectors, command modules, membranes to excite the air and turn electrical signal into physical motion. To attempt to eliminate mechanical aspects is an error. It's a reaction to mechanics as a dying art, in an industry that is obsessed with high profits and cheap labor. Philosophically speaking, this is a very contrarious way to go about things. In essence, it says: "Don't worry about making mistakes - we can easily correct them later." You wouldn't be wrong to say that the error correction mechanism of CD playback is far more sophisticated and advanced than the mechanical assembly of the physical CDMs that grace most commercial players.
Mephisto II X


In the end, everything about digital transports makes a difference: The platter; the laser assembly; the servo; the dynamic balance of mass, inertia and damping; the drive control chips; the puck; the lid; the suspension of the transport from the supporting environment - everything is subject to potential improvements. The problem is that most transports are sold and implemented as turnkey solutions. One has to buy transport mechanisms which include the servo
and control chips. All one can do is experiment with power supplies, mechanical damping and case work. But one can never attack the inherent problems at the source - by reengineering the mechanical properties and control circuits. That's why Audiomeca invested the necessary time, energy and funds to design and fabricate its own transport range to gain control over every single parameter we've decided to tackle.
Audiomeca website