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Audiophile's primary argument against CDs

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar
Along with a few others, I had a long talk with a guy who says he won't ever use CDs again. It was a great conversation, but as his arguments about CDs being bad were disproven over and over, he realized his position was illogical, but none of us were trying to convince him to change his attitude, we were just trying to understand his viewpoint. Then, in a final act of desperation he came up with a completely solid reason for not using CDs.

The players can sometimes make audible physical noise while playing, such as the whirring sound of the disc, the gears turning when moving the laser assembly, and other such mechanical sounds.

None of us could prove that point false, we weren't near a player to run an experiment to see how loud it was and even if we did have one player, that doesn't prove other players were just as loud or quiet. However, I listen to CDs as my primary serious listening source and have done for decades. While I admit I've heard mechanical sounds from them, during music playback I cannot recall ever hearing any such sounds. So, I asked what players he's experienced such annoying sounds from during playback and he listed a few - all were relatively esoteric brands like Cambridge Audio, Bryston, and Meridian.... but that shocked me.

If my $150 mass market Sony Bluray player is effectively silent in my room where it sits on a shelf a mere 4 feet behind my head, how the hell can a company like Meridian sell a CD player which makes too much mechanical noise for a listener to handle.

So, I wanted to ask you guys, does your disc player make any noise you can hear during playback? Have you owned a player that was too loud?
 
I mean, sure, this guy can do whatever he wants. I am glad he found a way to enjoy music, but the conversation started because he wanted to complain about all the work he has to put into maintaining and operating his music library/player (he has one of those all in one HDD + Player devices). I mentioned my preference to continue to play regular CDs and a few others agreed with me, but this guy went on a rant. First he argued that players have more errors, which hasn't been true for years (unless the discs is truly screwed up) since players now buffer many seconds of data in order to get the reading off the disc perfect. He argued there was too much jitter when reading, which the previous counter argument refutes. He argued there was too much "grunge and spurious noise" when reading a disc, which we all took issue with, and so on.

So, this morning I played a few CDs, even some wide dynamic range music where there are long passages at low levels mixed with passages of moderate and high passages, and I never once could tell the player was operating. However, if I put my head right next to the player I could slightly hear the whirring of the disc as it was spinning. If the AC was blowing I could only hear it if my ear was nearly touching the door area of the player.
 
I know some older JVC models had a fairly distinctive whine when the laser head jumped tracks but I found JVC CD players more prone to skipping than most other brands so I avoid that brand if I do buy a CD player.
 
@Flint you make a good point about the furnace/AC.

My first thought was if he could hear the player over the ambient noises then that man is very lucky to have a dead silent room, or unlucky...
 
@Flint you make a good point about the furnace/AC.

My first thought was if he could hear the player over the ambient noises then that man is very lucky to have a dead silent room, or unlucky...

Well.... to that point, his HDD based Library/Player has a cooling fan, so...

There's that.
 
The only real noise I remember hearing from a CD player was when I used a 5 disc carousel changer- those could clunk a little as it picked up or dropped a disc.
 
I have a 5 disc player that makes noise when changing disks. I can hear it from my seated position with no music. That's it.
 
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