Digital Drive: Pinging Jerome Lang... I Verified Your Findings on "Track Selection" by Todd Krieger

I tried your CD "track test" with the digital rigs in both systems, and the results were similar- Playing the track after playing the beginning of the previous track for about 15 seconds and then sequencing to the next track yielded an improvement in microdynamics for that track, relative to jumping to it directly. A better sense of attack and decay of instruments, better following of background instruments, and better vocal intelligibility. (The difference I would associate with bit-truncation.)

But here are some interesting (strange) quirks, consistent between the two digital rigs-

When jumping to the previous track and playing it for only ten seconds, the next track sounds like jumping directly to it (bad).

When jumping to the track and playing it for 15 seconds, and hitting the "previous track" button on the remote, playing it the second time sounds as if I played the previous track for 15 seconds (good- the improvement is apparent- will be a revelation for the first track of CDs or for playing entire albums).

When jumping to the previous track and playing it for 10 seconds, sequencing back to the previous track and playing it for five seconds, the track sounds as if I jumped directly to the track (bad).

When jumping to the track two previous and playing it for 15 seconds, and then sequencing twice to the track (playing the previous track for a fraction of a second), the track sounds like I played the one-previous track for 15 seconds (good).

When playing the first track of a CD for 15 seconds (just hitting "play" on the rig), and sequencing back to it, the sound *does* improve in the same manner.

When jumping to the previous track and playing it in its entirety, the track sounds as if I jumped to it (bad).

When jumping to the previous track, playing it for 15 seconds, then playing the previous track in its entirety, the track sounds as if I played the played the previous track for 15 seconds (good- this means it will affect how one perceives the *entire* album).

This basically means the if you play part of a track for at least 15 seconds, and "sequence" (not "jump") to a track (forward or backward), and then play a series of tracks (or the entire album) continuously, it will sound better than jumping to the first track of that series (or just hitting "play" for the entire album).

More to come... This is in my opinion a profound revelation.