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Re: Listening to two DVD-Audios: Bach/St. Matthew Passion/Harnoncourt (Teldec) and Mozart/Figaro (Naxos)

Posted by Christine Tham (R) on October 6, 2005 at 14:53:15

In Reply to: Re: Listening to two DVD-Audios: Bach/St. Matthew Passion/Harnoncourt (Teldec) and Mozart/Figaro (Naxos) posted by Martin419 on October 6, 2005 at 06:14:29:

*** Well, in as much as practically all other DVD players out there have DVD-Video 'speaker distance settings'. ;-) ***

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. The manual states that the speaker distance settings apply to all listening modes (including DVD-Audio). Panasonic is one of the co-inventors of the DVD-Audio format, I think they would have the right R&D resources to get it "right".

They player even supports Dolby Pro Logic II, and can apply it to all stereo sources, *including* hi-rez DVD-Audio :-)

*** So audio-wise, my room is pretty non-reactive, and non-reflective ***

When I visited your room, I saw plenty of hard reflective surfaces, mainly your walls. Unless you've padded every square inch of wall, and your entire ceiling, you will get a lot of reflections.

Trust me, I have done some impulse measurements on my room. Even with a heavy curtain covering the entire back wall, thick rug etc. I still get plenty of reflections :-)

*** which are improved by having fully brick walls on all four sides ***

Uhmm, brick walls are the *worst" in terms of reflections. Modern construction materials are actually far better. And timber floor supports are also extremely boomy - a concrete slab is much better. In our case, our house is relatively new - it's a "mock Federation" design which means it looks like a 100 year old house but constructed using modern materials. I suspect the person who designed it was an audiophile - the main living room adheres to the "Golden Ratio" dimensions for a perfect listening room :-) I originally thought this was fortuitous, but looking at the design of the house i suspect it was intentional, as the extended length breaks the symmetry of a Federation design and would have cost extra.

*** Also, I wouldn’t want to add any processing stage between my player’s analog outs and the power-amp (everything in between is in the analog domain). ***

But time alignment and bass management are processing stages too - they just happen to be in the digital domain. All processing stages negatively impact the sound - it depends on the trade off you are willing to make - does the benefit outweigh the loss in quality? In my case, I believe the answer is NO for both, but may tip to YES for room correction.

In my case, I will be doing room correction in the digital domain too - that's the advantage of ripping DVD-Audios onto the hard disk.

My player supports HDMI 1.1 (allows full m-ch hi-rez digital out) so I can do room correction directly on disc playback in the future if i wanted to. But i'm not sure i want to go there just yet.

*** And if I understand your system right, that means you have eight independent channels at around 250W each? I’m envious! ***

Yes. The amps suck out so much power the lights dim when i switch each one of them individually on. At peak, they draw well over 3000W from the power supply!

Unfortunately, it's the minimum to be able to listen to music at an average levels of 78-85dB (Grammy surround music production recommendation for critical listening/monitoring) without clipping. Even then, there is a slight possibility of clipping at 85dB (but I never listen up there, so that's okay).

*** You did say that my [then prototype] DVDA11 sounded "better" then your Panny ***

You forgot, I've recently upgraded my player to the DVD-S97, so my comments pertain to that model.

I really like the S97 - as you know Panasonic players have always been the "king" in terms of video quality (so says the "Secrets" benchmark and also based on plenty of objective criteria). But audio on this player is fantastic as well - it uses the BB PCM1791 DACs, similar to the ones used in Denon players, but with an added advantage: Panasonic uses a stock standard design for the audio stage (straight off the Application Note) rather than the custom audio stage used by Denon. Modern DACS are very sensitive to the op amps used in the analog stage - unless you really know what you are doing it's better to stick to the textbook design. In the case of Denon, I'm not convinced their proprietary audio stage is an improvement - not to my ears anyway.

Also, the S97 the only player I know that explicitly handles 0dBFS+ levels - it allows the output to be attenuated by up to 6dB prior to the digital filter to allow for additional headroom to prevent clipping. None of the Denon players handle 0dBFS+ - they all clip.

Finally, I'm a purist and hate resampling (unless of course, additional processing such as room correction is done at the same time). The denon AL24+ algorithm can't be defeated. Panasonic has three different upsampling algorithms, but they can be switched off. Even better, if you are into resampling, the S97 will upsample into the digital output, so you can use an external DAC.

*** You mentioned my bass was more fullsome ***

That comment again is probably more relevant for my old system, rather than my new. Upgrading the amps have dramatically improved bass response (well, I was surprised - in hindsight it's obvious - a higher slew rate and dampling factor would dramatically tighten bass handling). depending on listening position, i'm now measuring bass response all the way down to 30 Hz on any of the main speakers (without even using a subwoofer). Even my subwoofer doesn't go much below 26 Hz so this means my subwoofer is completely redundant (unless there is a dedicated .1 track).

*** Denon really improved the BM functionality & flexibility on the -A11 compared with the -A1/-9000. For that reason alone I would not pick that older player, even though its DACs are very good. ***

I don't care about bass management, remember? so it's a moot point :-) I do care about absolute sound quality, and as I recall that player was gorgeous sounding.

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