Yet, when I do sit down to listen to a CD, I still want to hear it in the highest possible fidelity. The biggest impediment to enjoying CD playback fully is jitter -- digital timing errors that, to my ears, give digital the harshness that it has been plagued with since the very beginning. Today, a top-quality outboard DAC can be bought for relatively low cost (take my Parasound Zdac v.2 as an example), but listening to CDs taken from my player straight to the DAC still doesn’t quite cut it. The sound is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is still something there there that gets in the way of total enjoyment. I found a solution to this problem when I got a Genesis Digital Lens to place between my player/transport and DAC. Suddenly, CD playback achieved a whole new level of fidelity. What is it about the Genesis Digital Lens that causes this? What does it do to make CDs sound so much better? The Digital Lens was introduced in 1996, during the heyday of digital separates, and cost $1800. It differed from the way jitter reduction was handled until then. Most products reduced jitter by using PLLs (phase-locked loops) in tandem, in effect making the digital data jump through smaller and smaller hoops and straining out more jitter with each jump. With the Digital Lens, Genesis went in a completely different direction. Instead of dual PLLs, genesis put 500 kilobytes of RAM in the digital path to act as a buffer. What the Digital Lens does is store up to three seconds of data (depending on the speed error of your transport, which the Digital Lens measures and displays) in the buffer, strips the data completely of the digital subcode (track and timing information), and then sends the now completely jitter-free and clean musical data to the DAC. Instead just reducing jitter, the Genesis Digital Lens eliminates it. It can also increase digital word length to 18 or 20 bits, as well as add one of two levels of dither, which also improves sound. The Digital Lens has no pushbuttons or switches -- not even an on/off switch. Everything is controlled through its remote, which was either plastic or metal. There are five inputs and three outputs, including S/PDIF RCA, AES/EBU and ST optical. Now, before someone points this out, I will mention that sending this now jitter-free information down another cable to your DAC can introduce some jitter back into the datastream. However, the jitter added by doing this is infinitesimal compared to how much is stripped away by buffering the data. Thus, the Digital Lens should really be billed as a jitter eliminator as opposed to a jitter reducer. Just keep in mind that despite the multiple ways of inputting and outputting the data, and there are many, the Genesis Digital Lens is only able to process 16-bit/44.1kHz PCM. DSD and high-resolution PCM need not apply.
And once heard, it’s damned hard not to notice how much information is really on those little silver (or gold) discs -- information hidden by the jitter we’ve all taken for granted as simply part of Red Book digital. My jaw hit the floor the first time I took one of my review discs -- Andy McCloud’s Blues For Big Head [Mapleshade 07832] -- and played it though my system with the Lens in place. The opening cut, the title tune, starts off with McCloud calling out the beat to the band, and drummer Victor Jones answering and stomping his foot on the wooden riser on which his drum kit rests. Both are set well behind the group, and with the Digital Lens in the system, I could more easily hear that. I also heard a greater sense of space and air around each musician. I also discerned a much better sense of Jones's foot hitting the wooden platform when he starts dancing on the riser. When alto saxophonist Joe Ford enters, he is clearly right up front, and the tone of his alto is spot on, clear and breathy. And when vibe player Steve Nelson enters, he is positioned between Ford and McCloud and Jones, with the strikes of his mallets on the metal vibes being both clear and sharp, with decay that trailed off naturally. I’ve listened to this track with multiple iterations of my system, and I have never heard it so clearly rendered as I did once the Genesis Digital Lens was added. What I heard with the Andy McCloud disc are the same things I heard with every CD I played though the Digital Lens. There was just more information transmitted to the speakers -- and thus to my ears. So again, if you have a significant CD collection that you’re attached to and loath to sell off for pennies on the dollar, and you still want to attain the fullest enjoyment possible from it, find a Genesis Digital Lens to add to your system ($450 is the going rate for a used unit in good physical condition with remote). Yes, you’ll also need two digital cables to run from your transport to the Lens and then from the Lens to your DAC (the downstream cable is more important), but the difference is night-and-day obvious. To my ears, and those of others I trust, no one component
or tweak makes CDs come alive, become as listenable and as enjoyable, as the Genesis
Digital Lens. With the Genesis Digital Lens in my system, CDs became a musical medium to
be enjoyed, not simply tolerated. With the Digital Lens, I heard how much musical
information is on those "humble" CDs I’ve been holding on to. |
have a rather large collection
of CDs that I’ve accumulated over the years, and I continue to add to it. I have no
interest in disposing of it, even after downloading the discs to the hard drive of my
computer. I am a physical-media sort of guy, which is to say that I prefer to have
something tangible. I have no problem with playing music from a hard drive or server, but
I don’t trust that this hardware will still be working in twenty years (heck, I
don’t necessarily trust it to be working even one year down the road), whereas my CDs
certainly will be.
