THX Caught With Pants Down Over Lexicon Blu-ray Player

SchlimpyChicken writes "Lexicon and THX apparently attempted to pull a fast one on the consumer electronics industry, but got caught this week when a couple websites exposed the fact that the high-end electronics company put a nearly-unmodified $500 Oppo Blu-ray player into a new Lexicon chassis and was selling it for $3500. AV Rant broke the story first on its home theater podcast with some pics of the two players' internals. Audioholics.com then posted a full suite of pics and tested the players with an Audio Precision analyzer. Both showed identical analogue audio performance and both failed a couple of basic THX specifications. Audioholics also posted commentary from THX on the matter and noted that both companies appear to be in a mad scramble to hide the fact that the player was ever deemed THX certified."

Comments

Audio/Videophiles Beware

[Entropy98]

Expensive isn't always better. Ever heard of Denon's $500 ‘Audiophile’ Ethernet Cable

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethernet signals travel at a very large fraction of the speed of light. Light travels around 11 inches in a nanosecond. So you're claiming picosecond intolerances in your clock signals.

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[marcansoft]

You're confusing jitter with clock skew. Clock skew means nothing as long as the input signal is still within the setup/hold times of the receiver. It either works or doesn't. This isn't to say that you don't need good matching, just that better matching will not improve quality.

Jitter is different. Jitter is uneven clocking. On the other hand, jitter is almost nonexistent on separate clock/data connections because any delays in the clock are consistent.

Jitter does matter in things like S/PDIF that combine clock and data, because then the data will affect the distortion on the clock and it will be jittery when recovered. This is what all the talk about jitter is: S/PDIF (and similar) clock recovery. Don't mix it up with other issues and other interfaces.

S/PDIF does have improved quality if the signal is less distorted, because it improves jitter. This problem can be completely eliminated by using a buffer before the DAC, or at least a PLL to clean up the clock (it only affects DACs that clock straight off of the recovered S/PDIF clock). Other interfaces (I2S) with separate clock and data do not have this problem because any distortion on the clock is consistent cycle to cycle.

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[Alioth]

Really? The clock is *that* intolerant on a 3 and a bit Mbps signal that a couple of mm is going to really make a difference?

Sorry - but a normal ethernet cable will be more than adequate. You're wasting your money if you spent $500 on the Denon cable - you've been had. Ensuring the PCB traces are exactly the same length isn't good engineering for this particular task, it's simply wasting your time. I simply do not believe the clock tolerance is measured in picoseconds.

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[ultranova]

What idiot would design a digital transmission protocol without built-in error correction?

The kind that wants to sell $500 cables to be used with it?

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[hufman]

I don't think this has to do with the length of time that a wireless signal takes to be transmitted. I think it's affected by the length of time that the music from the rest of band takes to travel through the air.

Re:Audio/Videophiles Beware

[AmiMoJo]

So what you are saying is that two guys spent large amounts of money on hifi gear and now both of you can hear a difference between digital cables which all the science and testing says are the same?

Psychology is always a problem with this sort of thing. Unless you can show that you can tell the difference in double blind tests then I'm afraid you won't be able to convince me. Every time people have done double blind tests the results have shown that they can't tell the difference between cheap digital cables and expensive ones, probably because there isn't any.

Credibility.

[headkase]

Years to build, seconds to destroy. So, who comes out on top over THX now?

Haha, and some people ridicule me....

[Tanuki64]

...because I always buy cheapest. Mostly people who deem themselves audiophile and cannot understand that I am not. For me a cheap player was always enough. Now I also have the satisfaction that I am not cheated. At least I get what I pay for. :-)

No it works fine with normal Cat-5

[Sycraft-fu]

They say as much in the manual of Denon gear that has the port on it. You have to realize they used stick Denon Link on most of their stuff. They do it much less now that HDMI works well. The original purpose of it was to get a digital multi-channel uncompressed audio signal off DVD-A and SACD. Prior to HDMI, there wasn't an interconnect that did that so they rolled their own. Now it isn't so useful so they've pulled it off most of their gear.

At any rate, I don't think they were seriously expecting people who bought $1,000 receivers to get a $500 cable. As I said, the manual doesn't say you need to. What I think it was is audiophiles whining. They do sell some pretty expensive stuff, like a $7,500 processor/preamp. Some people who buy that probalby sniveled at the though of having to use an ordinary ethernet cable for their precious data. Denon then decided that if these people wished to waste money, they'd be happy to stick a vaccuum in their pocket and suck it out.

I don't believe it uses I2S, as they specifically talk about jitter immunity, and even if so it wouldn't matter. The data from any of the digital inputs doesn't go to a DAC, it goes to a SHARC processor (or sometimes more than one) where it is manipulated according to the setup of the receiver. From there it goes to the DAC. So it is going to get re-clocked anyhow.

Re:No shock

[Sycraft-fu]

I've never understood why you'd want to buy a "high end" Blu-ray player anyhow. Reason is I can see only two setups:

1) You own a low end TV and receiver, or maybe no receiver at all. You've got no digital inputs. Thus your Blu-ray player's DACs have to handle the conversion. However, their quality matters little. Why? Well you've got a low end setup. You clearly are not concerned with quality. As such a cheap player will do fine. Improvements to its DACs and supporting analogue circuitry won't be noticeable to you.

2) You own a high end TV/receiver and care a great deal about quality. In the case you hook the Blu-ray player up using HDMI. Reason is HDMI gives you the best signal. However in this case, the player isn't doing anything other than nabbing the data and passing it along. The analogue conversion happens in other units. So again, the quality isn't important. Your receiver's high quality DACs will handle the audio, the Blu-ray player will just send them data.

I just can't see the case where you'd need good analogue outputs for Blu-ray.

I can see potentially buying something like the Oppo player, if it had a good warranty and build quality. Makes sense to maybe pay more to have your gear last, but I can't see paying more for one just because it supposedly had better circuitry. Even if it does, you aren't going to make use of it. You'd be a fool to buy a high end HDTV and then not use the digital input, as the TV processes everything digitally internally.

Re:No shock

[Shawn Parr]

This overlooks one group of people who actually exist in large numbers but are often overlooked:

3. You have a nice HDTV and HDMI digital for that. But you also have a very nice audio system, but one that you put together before the HDMI specification was well established and thus it does not have HDMI. But your Receiver/PrePro/Amplifiers are very good, and you don't want to just replace them just to get ones with HDMI built in. But luckily they can take 5.1 or 7.1 analog inputs from a player with good quality outputs.

This is exactly why I like the Oppo BluRay player. At the time for a minimal cost increase over other BR players I was able to use both a digital connection to my TV, and use the latest audio upgrades on BR along with my older, but very good, audio system. That being said I would never pay the $2000 plus for the 'high end' BR players. The Oppo is excellent, and I don't even have the special edition model with upgraded audio components. I'm sure it's fabulous, but the regular one I have is really really good.

Why replace perfectly good equipment just to get a new connector, when you can still use it and get great performance out of it? I occasionally get the itch to replace those components, but when I research new ones I just don't see enough upgrade for what it would cost to justify it at this point.