CD mats — exactly how are they supposed to work???

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I look at it this way:

CD audio is digital, 1s and 0s, buffered with checksums, if each 16-bit string does come through it has the full designed CD fidelity with the only possible error being half of the least-significant digit (the maximum resolution by design (1/128,00 of 90dB)). You can’t make the audio any better, and if a 16-bit string can’t be resolved it tries again, if it can’t be resolved in the time allotted you get a skip (very audible). Not a reduction in fidelity or quality, a skip.

So since there are only two possibilities at the digital & read level; perfect reproduction or skip, there is nothing that your $17 can do here other than cause additional spool-up/down time and mass than the CD deck is designed for, but probably won’t hurt it.

So if you want to spend it, further fund a cottage industry that preys on people who don’t understand audio, go for it, you’re only spending the price of a tarbucks frothy latte beverage and you’ll gain a coaster that will be an interesting story in the future. Or like many people, the expectation-bias will cause you to hear the impossible result and you’ll forever use your new drink coaster on your CDs, maybe even buy a second one so that your DVDs will magically become 16K or 32K video, as long as you’re enjoying the ride and funding the industry that manufactures fancy drink coasters it’s all okay.

Mine are made from several species of wood (technically a carbon-based fiber) and protect my tabletops very well.
 
If anyone has actually tried the item please tell us your experiences.

It seems to be a popular past time these days, find a fringe item of fairly harmless hifi tweakery then the pinata session starts with most knocking it despite never having tried it, pandering to popularist ignorant consensus.
The same way old people were labelled witches and burnt. It's only hifi in a hifi enthusiasts forum of all places, people use microwaves everyday without a clue how they work yet we never see the same blunt dismissals of them.
 
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John3655 said:
But interpolation, oh never mind I'll live in your universe.
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You are correct, interpolation can occur at a low level to create odd-parity if one does not exist for a data string, but it will only be able to correct if there is a readable word before and after the corrupted word to use for interpolation (otherwise it would be extrapolation). Interpolation will not give you degraded audio quality in general, if enough words are corrupted it will blank or skip.

If, and I’m repeating here, it claims to help read a damaged disc (which is the point to interpolation) and something can be shown before/after on this, it would make sense but the idea behind the checksum, odd-parity, interpolation, oversampling, is to ensure that good data makes it to the D/A converter with 16-bit accuracy if there is corrupted data, not to add/change anything on a good disc in a properly-functioning CD reader.
 
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John3655 said:
If anyone has actually tried the item please tell us your experiences.

It seems to be a popular past time these days, find a fringe item of fairly harmless hifi tweakery then the pinata session starts with most knocking it despite never having tried it, pandering to popularist ignorant consensus.
The same way witches were burnt. It's only hifi in a hifi enthusiasts forum of all places, people use microwaves everyday without a clue how they work yet we never see the same blunt dismissals of them.
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And yet, we have a long list of said fringe items that have survived testing and examination.

Oh wait, no we don't. In fact, I can't think of any. (Serious note: There must be at least one though. It's just no longer fringe?)

The issue is, as always, claims that aren't verifiable, effects that are unmeasurable, or purport to violate laws of physics.
 
Playing physical discs seems to me to be rather old fashioned. We have the ability to rip the disc to a wav or flac file and simply play that. I would think that a computer drive reading the bits would not be affected in any way by disc stability problems. Playback of that data from a computer hard drive likewise would be problem free.

I have a large CD collection and a number of spinners but for the most part simply play the ripped files. These type tweaks were common in the early days. I have a couple of discs with the adhesive stabilising ring attached. I can't say if they do anything or not but I suspect not. As I recall they were free samples at one time. If I had noticed a difference I would have surely done my whole collection with them. Don't get me started on the benefits of the green marker pen!

The point that I'm trying to make is that whether these tweeks do anything or not is moot if you simply rip your disc's.
 
Funny that you bring up ripping discs. I have many of mine ripped lossless-flac, many not, and I realized that my server is the only optical drive I have, … just ordered a new external (USB) drive yesterday so that I can rip discs and view old photo archives. Optical storage just isn’t “a thing” in the 21st Century.

A good quality optical r-rw drive is now around $40 or less.
 
SaturationPt said:
Similar to how much “high definition” and other USB and digital cables “improve” the sound, LOL
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Ya, it's crazy. I recently bought a transport and DAC. Then I had to look into how I was going to connect them. Coaxial, optical, USB. The price ranges between each of the three cables was huge. I decided to go with optical, but I wasn't going to spend $200 on a Toslink cable. $20 got the job done and the cable was even cloth covered. :thumbsup:
 
John3655 said:
If anyone has actually tried the item please tell us your experiences.

It seems to be a popular past time these days, find a fringe item of fairly harmless hifi tweakery then the pinata session starts with most knocking it despite never having tried it, pandering to popularist ignorant consensus.
The same way old people were labelled witches and burnt. It's only hifi in a hifi enthusiasts forum of all places, people use microwaves everyday without a clue how they work yet we never see the same blunt dismissals of them.
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True, but it's not that difficult to smell the pure BS products without trying them. Magic crystals laying on your interconnects and speaker wires, CD mats, etc. Heck, many people can't tell the difference between a lossless digital music format and MP3's in a blind A/B test.
 
swechsler said:
It wasn't too long ago that you could get a 6' optical cable for $1, shipped, from eBay. Thin plastic, no outer sheath, but of course it worked perfectly.
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Oh, I could have gone cheaper. I didn't need anything longer than 3', but just wanted something that hopefully is a little better made. Meaning the ends arent going to fall off, etc. I saw some for under $7.
 
SaturationPt said:
Funny that you bring up ripping discs. I have many of mine ripped lossless-flac, many not, and I realized that my server is the only optical drive I have, … just ordered a new external (USB) drive yesterday so that I can rip discs and view old photo archives. Optical storage just isn’t “a thing” in the 21st Century.

A good quality optical r-rw drive is now around $40 or less.
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I have a R-RW drive in my tower gaming rig, two old CDP's connected to secondary systems, and a new disc drive in my main system. I still prefer physical media myself. My son likes vinyl records and tapes, but rarely uses his CD player in his car, and refuses a CDP for his home system every time I offer him one. He uses music files mostly and streams. He does have a USB CD R-RW he will use with his lappy for burning discs when needed for work since he's the IT guy for a county school district. Otherwise I dought he would own one at all.
I stream mostly now in my truck and Jeep from my smart phone. If Im off roading in my Jeep I use a thumb drive full of music. Bouncing around isn't good for CD's and cell service can be non existent out in the middle of nowhere.
 
John3655 said:
...fairly harmless hifi tweakery...
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People are asked to cough up their hard earned money - what's harmless about that?! Of course, when somebody doesn't hear a difference, the mat is either not yet burnt-in and/or one's system (regardless of cost) lacks resolution.

This isn't the "Cutting edge" forum to leave extraordinary claims unchallenged.

This is what Marigo Audio Lab has to say, among others, about the Virtuoso CD mat: "The most important sonic improvement, to this designer, is the substantially lowered noise floor which continuously reveals an abundance of nuances within the music."

Is noise impossible to measure? What about timing?
 
borchee said:
People are asked to cough up their hard earned money - what's harmless about that?! Of course, when somebody doesn't hear a difference, the mat is either not yet burnt-in and/or one's system (regardless of cost) lacks resolution.

This isn't the "Cutting edge" forum to leave extraordinary claims unchallenged.

This is what Marigo Audio Lab has to say, among others, about the Virtuoso CD mat: "The most important sonic improvement, to this designer, is the substantially lowered noise floor which continuously reveals an abundance of nuances within the music."

Is noise impossible to measure? What about timing?
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The noise floor of CD is already away below our threshold of hearing.
 
borchee said:
People are asked to cough up their hard earned money - what's harmless about that?! Of course, when somebody doesn't hear a difference, the mat is either not yet burnt-in and/or one's system (regardless of cost) lacks resolution.

This isn't the "Cutting edge" forum to leave extraordinary claims unchallenged.

This is what Marigo Audio Lab has to say, among others, about the Virtuoso CD mat: "The most important sonic improvement, to this designer, is the substantially lowered noise floor which continuously reveals an abundance of nuances within the music."

Is noise impossible to measure? What about timing?
Click to expand...

I hear what you are saying but at some point "let the buyer beware" has to come into play. They can make all the claims they want but they'll never get any of my money.
And this isn't just an audio industry issue, look at all the crazy dietary supplements out there.
 
Pretty easy to tell if a digital interconnect isn’t working properly, … no sound!

The "noise floor" of a CD is all zeros, which is zero volts from the D/A converter, which amplified a zillion times (multiplying by zero) is still zero. If the recording has no sound, the CD has all zeros, it will be dead quiet, period. This claim alone takes the credibility of Marigo Audio Lab to the same point: Zero.

FWIW, there are different goals and studios, but the most widely accepted ambient noise level in a recording studio is ~25dBA.

Unless the recording is all digital (no microphones used) and all of the (several) A/D-D/A conversions, mastering system etc. are the theoretical perfect, you will always hear noise when any recorded music starts to play if your system is sensitive and your environment very quiet.

This is of course a recording studio's ambient or "noise floor, not a home's.

An average home where there is outside noise including rain, wind, traffic, etc. and in the home including anything happening at the time plus any water running, HVAC running, refrigerator, laundry, ... much louder than the 25dBA recording studio goal.

Even if you live in a recording studio or anechoic room, you still will be breathing, your heart beating, moving in your chair, stuff you hear at night when you lay still at night, ... certainly you have no tinnitus or other hearing challenges.

The CD medium was designed with 90dBA of dynamic range from absolute quiet to the loudest passage, and I guarantee no recording starts at zero. Good luck with that quieter "noise floor" claimed for the CD mat.

I won't argue any more whether different speaker cables' effect is "different" because of HF artifacts they add, or truly improved electrical characteristics, people can spend their money how they want and as long as they enjoy the result it is money well spent. If someone wants to spend money on a CD mat or a carbon-fiber wall-outlet cover, and enjoys doing so, I'm happy for that person. The only thing that bothers me is the deception of the sellers, call it what it is and stop creating nonsense reviews and using obscure scientific explanations that have nothing to do with actual audio, ... be honest and say this is a really cool looking mat you can brag about having and put your drinks on when you're not playing CDs.
 
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Well, maybe Marigo or some Chinese manufacturer, whom I will bet supplies the high-falutin’ Marigo mats can come up with a carbon fiber magic thingamajig that can make my XM radio in my SUV more “revealing” (Another audiophile must-use term along with “analytical” and “synergy.”)

Yes, I am interested that the factory Bose stereo be able to “punch above it’s [sic.] weight.”

Just last night, I’m driving and Saxon’s “Princess Of The Night” comes on.

It was barely recognizable as the same tune I know from my vinyl and CD. Just a cluttered compressed mess.

So surely there is some kind of carbon fiber something that will correct this.
 
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