Lou Dorren: A new CD-4 Demodulator!!! [ARCHIVE]

[maspadaro]

@ndiamone
Ok you got me, I had to read up on Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) it seems like an interesting idea definitely a good read but there would be a lot to set up and change (new TT/Cart/Stylus, even media). I was trying to avoid putting the consumer into a corner and spend money into a new media form, even though it’s really not new.
The idea that I forgot and you mention is bundling. The reason blu-ray survived was because it became part of a set up box with a list of other stuff like netflix/hulu so buying a blu-ray movie was and afterthought.

The idea I would promote would be everything for the 70'era that would be all types of quad in one box (QS,SQ,CD-4...). Since most people have a stereo (old/new) and a decent turntable, hopefully Quad capable, it would only be a box with the decoders in it and maybe a choice of a preamp as a plus (you don’t want to forget people that don’t have a preamp on their stereos). In this way you are giving the consumer a plus w/o having them buy new equipments beyond the decoder box. Going forward you can add more codes and strengthen the box and even add them w/in the stereos themselves. Its even a possibility that the right might be bought by a larger company that sees the opportunity to make money.

The issue is that this is old technology and people might not pick it up besides the nostalgic portion of it. The way in is by bringing something that would work with their existing set up and then grow it.

The new pressing would be wonderful and the longevity might be a plus. Just remember that this media is for people who sit to listen to music and not on the go. Who are they? Audiophile like us, but to make it happen you need to be able to go to a larger audience. Not the regular Joe down the corner, but maybe the Joe in suburbia.

Not telling you to think small, but money is an issue and therefore steps need to be taken to put these type of changes in the mind of the consumer little by little and add value to it little by little.

Something New
Something Old
Something Borrowed
Something Blue
Yes it's a marriage of technology
Ok I just spent my 2 cents. Hahahahahahaha

 

[ndiamone]

t seems like an interesting idea - definitely a good read but there would be a lot to set up and change (new TT/Cart/Stylus, even media).

In playback? I dunno if I agree with that. OK a lot of modern turntables in the Best Buy might not be able to pass CD-4 - but hey - we're talking about Bob in the Burbs not Downtown Joey Brown. No self respecting audiophile to whom these records would be marketed would be caught dead with a USB or other mass-produced turntable.

But I DO see an upsurge in Ortofons, Duals, Elacs and Thorens being snagged up off of eBay - especially ones like mine where the 33 speed is wore out from overuse but the 45 plays fine.

The idea I would promote would be everything for the 70'era that would be all types of quad in one box (QS,SQ,CD-4...).... In this way you are giving the consumer a plus w/o having them buy new equipment beyond the decoder box.

Like I said - just like on the backs of any matrix or discrete format of the 70's - the LP-45s would play as normal on a normal phonograph and then if and when a person got an all-in-one decoder/demodulator box then it would be better.

Of course to do that, we'd want real Peter Scheiber QS Variomatrix (which can also handle Regular Matrix) plus the Tate II SQ circuit if anybody's ever found out what's inside the chip and the real Ambisonics and the real Dynaco and the real Ben Bauer and Danny Gravareaux SQ with the built-in London Box and the real EV Stereo 4 and on and on and on - PLUS all the modern descendents thereof enjoyed by the modern world.

....a preamp in case people don't have one...

The best preamp made today is handcrafted by one of the close associates of Len Horowitz by the name of Oscar Martin. Like every other man in engineering, he's a big bear of a guy - always ready to lend a hand or idea to a young engineer or developer with a passion for music.

The new pressing would be wonderful and the longevity might be a plus. Just remember that this media is for....audiophiles like us.

But for the Bob in the Burbs to buy it - like anything else of its' kind - it has to be presented in the same kind of noncommercial/artsy fashion as anything else noncommercial that needs to be patronized to survive.

Sometimes patronized arts go mainstream like King Tut and everybody gets rich. But the rest of the time it just has a nice run and then goes out - or else it goes back to its noncommercial routes and flourishes there - like the broadcast carts they STILL USE on a daily basis in museums around the country for their dioramae and etc. You'd be surprised if you ask the engineers at these places, just how many museum exhibits still in operation today are nothing more than glorified Teddy-Rupskin-doll-type operations.

 

[maspadaro]

Well now that we have an Idea of the road to take.... how do we get the car and the keys?
LOL

 

[ndiamone]

Well now that we have an Idea of the road to take.... how do we get the car and the keys?LOL

Got the car and keys already -
all we need is people to pitch in for gas.

 

[FM_Quad]

So I've read the past few comments. (Hey we have to have something to keep this thread alive until the next time we hear from Lou.) Unfortunately, as an audio engineer who lived through the 70s and since, and a computer engineer, and the owner of a small business, I have to disagree. The state of technology is that in order for something to be commercially viable, it has to sell 100,000 to 1,000,000+ units. The market you are talking about isn't close to being that large. Part of the problem is that to be cost effective, a high level of integration is required, sometimes even a custom (ASIC) integrated circuit. The cost of creating such can run into missions of dollars.

True, there are people who will pay $15,000 for a TT. But probably not 1,000 in the whole world. So you try to find a point on the curve. Lower price = more buyers.

The other aspect of this is that it is based on a LOT of technical misinformation. It is well documented, for instance, that tubes do not have inherently better sound. In fact, a solid state device can be made to mimic a tube device to the point of being indistinguishable in a blind test. It could also be made to do so, but with less noise and lower distortion--i.e. better, but that would give it away in a blind test. It is true that certain forms of distortion that are inherent in vacuum tubes produce a pleasing sound. Solid state devices do not generally exhibit those types of distortion, but could be made to if someone wanted to--especially using digital techniques.

Likewise analog is not inherently higher quality than digital. The reall issue between analog and digital is economic. Consider the CD. It was designed with two channels, 16 bit resolution and 44.1 KHz sampling. Those decisions were driven by technological limitations of the time. While 44.1 KHz exceeds the Nyquist limit for 20 KHz which is the highest any human can hear, it doesn't do so by a large enough margin to allow clean filtering. Some would argue that we hear things higher than that--its pure BS. The only leg they have to stand on is what "damage" filtering does when it is too close to the frequency of interest. 16 bit audio allows almost 100 dB SNR, but, the digital artifacts are more noticable than analog noise, so that isn't really enough.

Today's technology can support better. 24 bit at 48 KHz would allow recording that could not be distinquised from the original in a blind test, and it is easily achievable today. But there are two problems. One is standards. No one wants to throw out the millions of CD players people own and it wouldn't be backward compatible. The second problem is money. Margins in consumer electronics are razor thin. Even the minor costs of what I just suggested would put a manufacturer at a competitive disadvantage. Literally 90% of the population would not spend the extra few dollars. The whole thing from equipment to pre-recorded media is mass market driven. Comanies can't make money from audiophiles. There are just too few of them.

Then there's MP3. It is lossy. By definition it cannot be made to accurately reproduce the original. Given what it actually does (which makes me cringe) it is amazing how good it can sound, but it will never be audiophile quality. Which, of course, gives digital a bad name. Yet it is the most common format for audio today!

So in a word, it isn't solid state or digital, either one, that are the issue. Both CAN be made to exceed vacuum tube analog. It isn't a technology issue. But they never will be made that way because our society is so gear to mass market that no company is ever going to make such a product, and if they did, no content provider will ever create media content to support it. They follow the money, and the volume isn't there. And if they didn't follow the money, the corporate stock holders would put them in jail for mis-management!

 

[bmoura]

To add to FM Quad's comments, there was a high end/audiophile product that came out a few years ago that is all solid state - and sounded very nice.
The manufacturer added a couple of orange lights inside the box, visible from the top vent so it looked like there were tubes inside!

When I asked about this, one of the company's execs admitted there were no tubes present in the product - it was done for design reasons.

Hmm.....

 

[FM_Quad]

Don't let that information get out to the public! The audiophiles who don't know the first thing about engineering would undoubtedly find the product's sound perfectly acceptable as long as they don't know it is solid state. If they discover that the orange glow is a light bulb they would instantly change their opinion and it would kill the product. The frustrating thing to the engineering community is that while these folk adamately swear they can clearly hear the difference, not one has ever been willing to participate in a blind study to prove it.

 

[quadsearcher]

My opinions on tubes: They are necessary for certain electric guitar tones. Emulation comes close enough to be fine, but it can't react to the player in just the same way.
50 watts of tube amp is a lot louder than 50 watts solid-state. Partly because standards were adhered to back then, partly because of the famous "even order distortion sounds better than odd" effect.
To semi amateur amp builders, tube circuits are a bit easier to grasp, lower parts count, and they are more forgiving to abuse. Transistors need a lot of support circuitry to keep them happy.

But yes, the tube worship is often misplaced. I'm waiting for when someone builds a Windows 7 machine on 100 acres of land with a billion tubes to get that "warm bit" sound!

 

[FM_Quad]

No question about the "tube" sound for guitar amps. That is probably one of the most widely, and most valid issues raised. I have actually (as a sound engineer) mic'd a tube guitar amplifier with an EV 635 because the guitarist wanted that sound, and felt the limitations of picking it up via the speaker with a cheap dynamic mic was a better solution than patching it directly into the console electronically (even if it was the output of the tube amp). This phenomenon has been well analyzed and discussed. Part of it is due to the even order harmonics as you mention. Part of it is due to the lower damping factor that tube amplifiers place on the speakers, which allows the cone to do things it couldn't otherwise do. Some of it is even due to magnetic properties of the output transformer and the droop of the unregulated power supply.

What a lot of people don't understand though is that all of those things can be done using solid state devices. FETs have transfer characteristics similar to tubes. They can be designed into push-pull circuits with transformer coupled outputs and higher output impedances that result in less damping. None of this is considered good engineering practice by most designers at present, so it isn't being done. It was about the only possible way to do it with tubes, and the designers tend to figure they have more options to do it a "better" way now.

Also those with digital phobia don't realize that with ample sample rates and bits, the signal could be adequately digitized and the exact transfer function of a tube amplifier applied to it. What came out of a solid state amplifier would be indistinguishable from the tube amplifier, as long as the amp wasn't driven into distortion (as the odd order harmonics from a distorted ss amplifier have no comparison in the tube world). But nobody is doing it? Why? Probably because the small number of people that want it are digital and solid state phobic to the point that they wouldn't buy it anyway, so there's now market. Maybe if they get to a point where they can't get tubes, they might consider it.

 

[maspadaro]

I agree with all the opinion presented but dont forget one thing, the actual source and the ability of the amp/receiver to emulate the source sound, not to mention that most new amp/receivers have a menu list longer than a phone directory.

The reason why I went old school wasn’t because my Pioneer 7.1 receiver couldn’t handle it. It was because having different sources would have made it almost impossible to fine tune it with the menu set up. An example of this is the volume control. Most people like the wheel instead of buttons (WHY?). It might be a psychological issue, but it still a human issue.

Digital is the best way to go, no doubt about that, but the transfers of old media (LP/R2R) to new (wav/lossless/mp3) is sometimes flawed or the person doing it and will not have the ear or understanding of how a song should have sounded. Most of the artists are now old or gone. So we flock to the old apparatus to get the sound we remember. Can the new amps match or better them .... OF COURSE, personally they would blow them away (on paper but not in our minds). People don’t want the source to be so true that flaws would show (part of the issue with digitizing music). They want the warmth and the blurriness. I know I will get lots of laughs here, but that is humanity. Do you really want to look at your grandparents pictures when they were young/old in HD. You would see every wrinkle they had and imperfection. Granted I still love my family but I think you get the picture.
Music is a personal preference and the most tech advance system would not pull an old timer from his 78’s. I am young and I love all sources LP/cassette/wav/lossless. Obviously each captures a sound of the decade they were at.
So if I want to capture the sound of 70’s 80’s we would use the old components. Would I run Wave/lossless on these old components.. only if they were very good old components. And let’s face it, new components were meant to be hidden (black) old ones were to be shown like a piece of art, especially if you present the components in a nice way. Again the human portion of this debate.
Regards,

 

[dlaloum]

A forlorn call from the antipodes..... Any word from Lou?

Yours hopefully

David

 

[maspadaro]

He hasn’t logged in since December of last year I believe, so I assume it’s on permanent hold. I am not holding my breath, time moves forward and other things become more important. This is a nice threat/forum and it would be cool keeping it going. Good discussions in it but the idea that this might happen is not in the horizon.
Hopefully someon proves me wrong.. LOL
Regards,
maspadaro

 

[JonUrban]

Unfortunately, I have not heard from Lou since before Christmas last year. I hope he is OK. His well being is more important that the demodulator. Time will tell if he calls me again.

Remember, he calls me, I do not call him.

 

[bmoura]

Unfortunately, I have not heard from Lou since before Christmas last year. I hope he is OK. His well being is more important that the demodulator. Time will tell if he calls me again.

Remember, he calls me, I do not call him.

Totally agree. Health comes first.

 

[maspadaro]

Unfortunately, I have not heard from Lou since before Christmas last year. I hope he is OK. His well being is more important that the demodulator. Time will tell if he calls me again.

Remember, he calls me, I do not call him.

No doubt about it, health and family. And I hope he is enjoying both.
Maspadaro

 

[surroundophile]

Well, I got my Involve SQ yesterday with the money I set aside for this CD-4 unit which, sadly, is obviously dead in the water.

 

[Aging quadie]

Five years is a long time to follow a carrot dangling from a stick. Manufacturing involves taking the schematics (and ideally a working prototype) to second-party electronics contractors or fabricators, asking for bids and lead times on set quantities, then setting a retail price and taking orders based on the successful bid. Existing cartridge manufacturers already have the technology to surpass the now-40-year-old nude shibata specs.

Hey, it's not like Lou will hand solder each circuit board, switch and connection on every pre-ordered unit.

Unless there's a potential licensing hang-up with JVC, I don't understand why this wasn't done years ago.

 

[Disclord]

I traded my Technics Demodulator for a prototype LaserDisc player that Dolby and Pioneer contracted MSB to build and design an AC-3 output. Only 3 players were made based on the Panasonic LX-900 which is also the same player MSB modded for Runco's THX certified LJR-II Super LaserDisc Player.luckily I got one of those from the engineer who designed it and also its predecessor, the LJR-I.

BTW, there couldn't be licensing issues with JVC as the CD-4 patents have all expired.

 

[Quadro-Action]

Because also I have now waited fruitless nealy 6 year of the often announced new demodulator, I have bought now the new QS/SQ Decoder from Australia. Thisitemm is now on the way to me.

By thinking again about the missing new Demodulator I have had the idea: Why not a development for such a CD-4 demodultor also with digital-technic? So I have asked now Chucky with PM, if there could be a possibility for building such a modern CD-4 demodulator.


Independent from the result I think, one of the fans in the USA, who is living in the area of San Francisco, should go self to Lou and see, which circumstances are around Lou Dorren. I have some time ago announced Lou such visite from me by him , when it was easier to do from Germany. Actual the situation is for me and most other fans here in my area some impossible.

Dietrich

 

[Disclord]

If CD-4 was done totally digitally, couldn't spectral replication processes be usd to extend the 15kHz cut off to 20kHz on both the basebannd and discrete matrix carriers? And in addition to the digital ANRS noise reduction on the carriers, a single ended digital NR could be used on the baseband signal along with impulse/tick/pop removal. The signals could be delayd for 20 ms or so to do all the work needed to reduce the noise, etc...and it could have a mode for 96kHz undecoded digital recordings of CD-4 discs.