techmoan

Retro HiFi: The DBX Disc

Added 2016-06-05 13:19:15 +0000 UTC

One thing that often comes as a surprise to anyone getting into vinyl for the first time is surface noise. As soon as the stylus touches down on a spinning disc there’s a noticeable background rumble. You could spend thousands in trying to eradicate this, but turn the volume up and you’ll discover that whenever one object scrapes along another, surface noise is inevitable.

The absence of any background noise was one of the things I noticed when I listened to a CD for the first time in 1982. The complete lack of vinyl rumble, or tape hiss between tracks was something that was impossible to miss. A father of a friend who sold BAE aircraft around the world brought a Sony CDP-101 player back from a business trip to Japan. I remember turning the volume way up in order to hear what wasn’t there, just as much as what was.

In addition to no surface noise the new CDs had no static cracks and pops, and classical music recordings benefitted from the expanded dynamic range offered by the new format. Other attractions were of course the smaller size, longer playing time, easy track access, and a resilience to dust.

It turns out that many of the ‘new’ features available on CDs were already possible with Vinyl, it’s just that most people weren’t aware. Track access, random play and each side play were all possible with the right turntable. Lesser known is the fact that zero disc noise, CD levels of dynamic range and reduced pops and crackles from dust were all features available on the obscure DBX disc format since the early 1970s.

In this video I look at (and listen to) DBX discs for the first time.

(Text Copied from Techmoan.com Blog Entry)