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Steely Dan - Alive In America - CD
Subtitle: Mothers, tell your children to take their niacin, and to keep their audio gear and connections clean5/15/21In the previous revision of this review, I claimed that this CD has inverted audio polarity, but I was wrong because my system wasn't working nearly up to its potential. When the weather warmed up (note the date), I used canned air to blow the dust out of my receiver, and I cycled all internal and external connections, including all breakers between the system and the power line. (It had been two years since I did this previously, although I previously neglected the breakers, and they did seem to make a difference this time, because I did everything else, then listened for a few days, and then did the breakers, and noticed an increase in high-end energy.) On top of that, I started taking niacin, which supposedly improves high-end hearing and has other less-important benefits such as preventing cancer (see Niacin: The Untold Story). The improvement in sound quality due to the cleaning, the warm-up, and the niacin was so huge that it was as if I had gone out and spent thousands on a killer all-analog system. I had NO IDEA how good it, or CDs, could sound. Now I know that I don't need LPs or high-res digital - just more CDs.As a result, I realized that this CD is far better than I previously thought (and I already thought it was excellent), and that it has the right polarity. (Actually, it now appears that CDs in general sound amazing and have the right polarity, although there might be a rare exception, which would explain why CD/lossless players in general don't have polarity controls and why CD-reviews usually don't mention sound quality.) So, I'm sorry if I upset or irritated anyone with my erroneous claims about audio polarity, but someone who goes by Audio George claims that a much larger percentage of CDs has the wrong polarity. Perhaps they did at one time, but not in my experience, and I began buying CDs in earnest in 2018, when I realized that the main problem with CDs since late 1985 (when Apogee's aftermarket input filters for 1st-gen digital decks were introduced) had been the DAC-chips, that their problems had been fixed in the 2005-2010 time-frame, and that you don't have to spend much these days to get a killer CD/lossless player. But I had no idea how good they actually do sound.My system consists of a $100 2017 Nobsound Bluetooth 4.2 Lossless Player, which has Sabre 9018 DACs, TI-5532 op-amps for the output stage, and an internal power transformer with a separate output winding for each power supply (digital and +/- 15 analog), an 18-year-old Denon 50 WPC receiver, a pair of cheap Audioquest speaker cables, and an 18-year-old pair of Wharfedale Diamond 8 bookshelf speakers. It might seem cringe-worthy, but it's incredible when it's working right. So, the lesson is to feed your ears and maintain your gear - it makes a huge difference.