Korean Job Discussion Forums

[talltony4]

Hi,
I got really sick of listening to music through laptop speakers so I bought my Tivoli Radio One back from NZ. Now I plug the ipod and computer through that, and it sounds great.

I have started buying CDs again too. I hate having to boot my computer up just to listen to music, so I need a CD player.

I have heard that portable CD players don't sound very good because of the compression built into the anti skip software. Is that true? Will I notice the difference?

I am going off 128k MP3s for the same reason, but am I being too purist? The Radio One is nothing too special, but it has a nice, balanced sound, and it doesn't take up too much space.

Does anyone have a portable CD player that allows the anti-skip to be switched off? Or a cheap hi fi CD player?

Any other ideas?

Thanks

[eamo]

Well, one idea would be to not turn off your computer unless you're going out. Modern computers are designed to run for long periods of time. They actually don't like to be switched on and off a lot.


If you really want a hi-fi CD player then there's a whole floor of hi-fi stuff in the Gwangwang building in Yongsan.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/Eamonn/Yongsanmap.jpg Those guys there don't get many customers now that everybody uses MP3 players and computers for music. Give them a decent offer on a nice CD player and they'll probably go for it.

But then you'll need a good amp and decent speakers to justify the good CD player........

[bassexpander]

Bah... don't worry about it. Just buy anything. Unless you have a set-up nice enough to notice the difference, it's not worth spending more... especially at just 128!!!

[Hindsight]

You are buying CDs? In Korea?

I have nothing against buying music, but CDs are an inherently limited format, as can be seen by listening to DVDs through a good stereo.

MP3s, of course, are an even more limited format. If you compare a CD to an MP3 through a good stereo you can hear a big difference, especially at 128kb.

Flacs are uncompressed, and can actually sound quite good. WMAs at the same bit rate sound better than MP3s. Unless a recording is very old, I always go with at least 192kb WMAs, or 256kb or VBR.

To answer your question, all the portable CD players with ESP skip protection I have owned have had a switch to turn it off. It uses less juice without the ESP. On many players the ESP uses a crude digital compression that does tend to ruin the sound on CDs, but not playing MP3s or WMAs.

So your first idea of buying a portable CD player is not a bad one. If you can bring your own headphones and a CD and try it out, you can get an idea of the sound quality. Some sound quite good, at least the last time I bought one years ago.

If you want to feed your MP3s into your radio, hear is a good, cheap solution, the Sansa M240:

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=168862018

Portable MP3 players vary in their sound quality, and this is a very good one, despite the price. If you run some 256kb WMAs through it into your radio, I think you will get good sound.

You used to have to spend hundreds of dollars to get a true hifi stand alone CD player. Now most receivers have digital inputs, so you just feed the CD or DVD player into your receiver with a spidif fiber optic cable. You can also get a digital output from your laptop with an external sound card.

If you can get a DVD player that you can play CDs on without hooking up a TV, just from the panel display, then that would probably be as good as a cheap CD player. Cheap DVD players can be had for 50,000 won or so.

Frankly, if I were setting up a cheap sound system here, I would buy a set of amplified speakers. Desktop stereos and boomboxes are ludicrously expensive here, but amplified speakers are cheap. Some are atrocious, but some have very nice sound for 50k or less. Just add a DVD player or MP3 player (or laptop or CD player) and you have some nice sound.

Beyond that, for a true hifi you need to buy a name brand receiver and speakers, add a source, such as a DVD player via spidif, and you can have real nice sound. But such equipment is not available at your local Best Buy/EMart etc. in Korea. The chains only sell junk.

I think you want something simple and reasonably priced. Perhaps your best bet is to bring a CD to a store, put it in a DVD player and see if you can change tracks, pause, fast forward, etc. with the remote and the panel display. Also look to see if there is a headphone jack and volume control through the DVD output. And note that some expensive Korean DVD-VHS players by brands like Samsung only have monophonic outputs.

You might, of course, also want a region free player. You could determine that by bringing a foreign DVD disk.

Some DVD players will play MP3s, WMAs and even Flacs. Navigating tracks without a TV hooked up may be impossible, but you could try it.

If you can get all that in a DVD player for a reasonable price, that may be your best solution. If you then hook it up to a TV, you could listen to your movies through your radio.

However, when it comes to buying CDs in Korea, I question your judgment. I bought some classical music CDs here of a major orchestra and conductor, recordings I was familiar with, with the same goal: to get better sound than a WMA. It turned out the recordings had been remastered to add heavy echo chamber effects, like in one of those karaoke bars. They sound far worse than an MP3 at 128kb. I also listened to some popular music CDs a friend bought and the performances were pure hokum. Selection of CDs seems very limited here, unless you like ABBA, and good CDs are overpriced. But maybe you have a better source.

[talltony4]

Thanks for the replies.

Eamo, using the computer is out. It just is. I stare at one all day at work, so I hate having to even touch one after 5pm. And the other thing I hate is the noise that the optical drive makes as it spins up. When I am listening to music at low volume it gets really intrusive.

Bass', you are probably right. But one thing I have learned about hi-fi, it is as much about perception as it is about reality! Using good gear just makes me feel better about the music I am hearing.

Hindsight, thanks a lot. That is a really useful post. You are obviously a hi-fi afficionado, what sort of stuff do you have at home?

I used to have a reasonable set up, yamaha cd player and amp, and paradigm speakers, all bought with my student loan when I was young and dumb (arrrrggggghh). Now I live in an apartment, so loud music is out. To me that means a decent hi-fi is a waste, although I seem to remember some systems designed for small rooms/low volume (Naim?)

The DVD player idea had occurred to me too. Since they are so cheap, it seems like a great solution, and I wouldn't need to use my computer for DVDs then, either. But I wonder if they would be easy to connect to my radio, which needs a 3.5mm stereo jack.

Actually, I guess that issue means a portable CD player is ideal, just turn the ESP off. I will see if I can find one somewhere.

I'm not sure I understand your criticism of CDs. Do you mean their storage space is limited, so the quality is too? Can you buy music on DVD now?

For me, buying a hard copy is a lot preferable to buying an electronic file. I like to hold the CD, look at it, read the notes and, as I said before, avoid computers outside of work hours.

I understand that the quality of the recording is heavily dependent on what happens in the studio, but I am buying western pop/rock off major labels, so I assume it is the same product you can buy anywhere. And the price isn't too bad these days, although the selection is pretty dire, like you say.

For me, the 16,000 won price of a CD compares well to the time I would spend finding, buying, downloading, and mucking about with itunes or similar. Not to mention that an iPod seems like a fearsomely finicky piece of kit when you use it on more than one computer. My wife's one has crashed many times.

Wow, I never thought I would turn into such a technophobe, but I have. Actually, I would much prefer to spin vinyl, but the entry fee to that game is a little high in my current circumstances!

rock on

-Talltony

[pkang0202]

CD's are adequate for that you want to do.

Once you get into the $1000 on up Hi-Fi equipment then you should switch to FLAC, DVD Audio, or some other format that has higher quality music.

Once you go down the path of Hi-Fi, forever will it dominate your destiny. You will probably start getting components. Then you will slowly upgrade things. New speakers here. New amp. New equalizer. New crossover. New receiver. New player. Etc....

You'll get hooked.

[Hindsight]

CDs are limited by their 16 bit 44k per second format. This requires considerable processing to get it back to a smooth analog wave form. You also do not get data beyond 20 hertz. A good DVD movie sound track will sound much more realistic than a CD because it has more bits and a higher sampling rate.

I have a handheld Zoom digital recorder, and you can easily hear the limitation of 16 bit 44k sampling, comparing reality to the recording.

Hooking up a DVD player to your radio would be easy. You just need a cord with two male RCA jacks for the line out of the DVD player and one male stereo mini jack for the radio input. These are very common, and you probably will be able to find one at HomePlus or even a 1000 won store. They typically come with a set of amplified speakers, too.

If you get a portable CD player you probably will want an AC adapter. Some CD players will come with one.

These days you do not need to spend $1,000 on a hifi, if you know what your are doing. I prefer Marantz and Mission speakers. Great sound and great value.

But for those readers who are in Korea for a limited time and want some decent sound for the time being, a set of amplified speakers is the way to go. Some of them seem to use excess production of hifi speaker drivers. And some of them are junk. I prefer wood cabinets because they are far more neutral than plastic. And I suggest avoiding so-called "subwoofers."

Here are two very good options for amplified speakers:

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=156635919

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=172560947

The Ashtons can produce a lot of sound, if they have a strong enough input.

Combine them with a good portable MP3 player or DVD player, or your laptop, and you will have very nice sound.

I love classical music, so I enjoy a good hifi. But sound quality has come very far, even in the last 10 years. So now you can get sound for cheap that you would have been willing to pay big bucks for in the past.

As to upgrades, there is one limiting factor in a simple system of laptop and amplified speakers: the computer's sound card. Some newer laptops have very good sound, but others could be better. And I've noticed the Samsung computers in schools here have lousy sound cards that don't put out enough volume to drive amplified speakers fully.

You may be able to improve your sound with a cheap external usb sound card, such as this:

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=165039124

I use one to produce an optical digital signal from my laptop to my receiver's digital input, and it works great. I've also used it in school to get better, louder sound from the desktop computers. There are some even cheaper usb sound cards, but I have not tried them. If you combine this Abko/Absolute external sound card, a laptop and the Ashton speakers, you will get amazingly good sound with plenty of bass and treble for the size, and lots of volume.

Actually, if you wanted to get the best sound from a laptop, a set of speakers that tap into the usb port would, theoretically, be better. These would have the sound card built into the speakers, which could be very nice. The question is whether the speakers themselves are good. Perhaps someone out there has a set they could recommend.

[bassexpander]

[Hindsight]

I have the Zoom H2, and am referring to WAV recordings. The MP3s are obviously going to be limited, but I think the Zoom does a great job with them. But even in WAV, which is not compressed, you can hear the limitations in digital reproduction of high frequency transients. That's why you really need more than 20k hertz, to get the high frequency wave forms right that you can hear.

Bassexpander, do you think you can get realistic sound, comparable to analog recording, using 16 bit 44k sampling on a computer?

Digital is great and cheap, but limited. I once owned a Nakamichi portable CD recorder and the sound was mind boggling. Very realistic. It's hard to convey to a non-audiophile, but it had flesh and blood.

That's what I look for in hifi, not the boom and sizzle from big, bright speakers that some newbies seem to fall for, but sound that you feel you can reach out and touch. For that you need a hifi, of course.

[talltony4]

wow, those powered speakers are cheap! Maybe I shouldn't have bothered bringing my radio over

Still good to listen to TBS eFM in the morning though.

pkang, are you saying that it is possible to buy prerecorded music on DVD audio. or as a FLAC file? Surely the selection is very limited? I haven't heard of average albums being released on those formats.

This is interesting. I thought that CD/vinyl was still the be-all and end-all, because the Super CD/DVD audio format had been abandoned. Am I way behind the times?!

[eamo]

[bassexpander]

[Beeyee]

Ah a good old hifi thread.

I've been considering getting back into the game recently. Like many, I had a very nice system back home. NAD CD player, Arcam amp, Wharfedale floorstanding speakers.

I'm having the amp shipped over but need to buy some speakers. What I am really interested in is an audiophile quality sound card for my computer. Do they still exist? I had a pretty nice M-Audio one a few years back with twin RCA outputs. Something like that would be great.

Any suggestions?

[JungMin]

[Beeyee]