Why is the sound quality of CD players better than other devices?

                     Why is the sound quality of CD players better than other devices?

First of all, to answer such a question, the sound quality of CD players is good or bad, and the sound quality of computers is good or bad. How to determine which of the two is better? Or how to judge whether the sound quality of the computer can be compared with the CD player?

It is actually very simple to judge whether the sound quality of a computer is comparable to that of a CD player.

Carry out an objective test, if all indicators are lower than the human hearing limit, then it can be considered that the sound quality of the computer is the same as that of the CD player.

Or conduct a blind listening test. If the ABX double-blind listening test does not produce a sufficient level of confidence in the results, it can be assumed that the computer and the CD player have the same sound quality.

With the current technology, it is not difficult to make a computer with sound quality comparable to that of a CD player. For example, Apple Computer, or the integrated sound card of some high-end motherboards or some independent sound cards. (Of course, PCs sometimes do have interference from other components such as graphics cards. Sometimes this is because the audio circuit shielding is not done well, and sometimes the interference is too strong)

For a long time, people believed that sound quality is a physical quantity related to frequency. This is in

deed the case under ideal conditions such as blind listening conditions, professional listening situations, and control variables.

However, in reality, objective tests such as frequency response curves are not the most important, and subjective attention is more important.

Compared with computers, CD players have an incomparable advantage, that is, they can only listen to songs.

Computers have too many functions. Many people are doing other things while listening to music on the computer. For example, I am typing while listening to music. When using a computer to listen to music, most of the time the attention is not on the music. When listening to music on a CD player (if you don’t play with your mobile phone), your attention will be highly focused on the music. So it is natural to think that the sound quality of CD players is better than that of computers. Or even if you don’t do anything, if the computer screen is turned on, sometimes the judgment of the sound will be diluted by the screen to a certain extent (movies or music videos are another matter). However, the inherent sound quality of the CD player and the computer itself is the same. The fact is that people subjectively pay different attention to the sound quality evaluation.

Once when I was catching a plane and left a shopping mall, I happened to pass by a certain brand of speaker store. Because I was in a hurry, I didn’t notice it, or I didn’t effectively extract the background sound of the ceiling speakers from the store. High-end speakers are sorted out. It wasn't until the second time I passed by that I realized that there was a high-end speaker shop there.

If there is a peerless beauty or handsome guy in front of you, will you still hear the voice that moves you to tears?

DTS Chief Scientist JJ once said that we cannot hear all of a sound at the same time. The more we pay attention, the more we hear.

This phenomenon also applies to portable HiFi players. Why do some people always think that the sound quality of HiFi players is better than iPhone? Although some people can't tell the difference through double-blind listening, but the non-blind listening means that the player is better than the mobile phone? Of course, there may be factors affected by marketing such as placebo effect, buyer's regret, and expectation bias, but it is also one of the important factors that may dilute the attention on sound quality evaluation when listening to music on a mobile phone at the same time.