Bottom Fishing for CD players

I am returning to this topic as I want to make it clear to myself, and I also want to make a half-decent video of my 1991 CD player. I haven't fully understood yet how multi-bit delta-sigma DAC works, but at least I realized that there were at least three distinct stages in consumer-grade digital audio:

* traditional multi-bit, that is, 14 or 16 bit values, each value passed as a whole during one sampling cycle;
* 1-bit delta-sigma, although as your paper clipping clarifies, it may not be exactly 1-bit as it is (was) advertised, but in fact multiple bits, which makes it better and allows it to avoid the inherent non-linearity criticism; the authors directly say about MASH: "MASH-type multi-stage converters, using say 5-bit quantization at the first-stage, are not subject to the same criticism as the single-stage, 1-bit DSD". The article is more about hi-res audio, hence 5-bits, the clipping you show is 3.5-bits for 16-bit CD audio, so I guess it is still free from this criticism.
* multi-bit delta-sigma, usually 5 or 6 bits, usually for hi-res like DSD.

If I correctly understand the authors of the linked article, they say that delta-sigma is good (yay), but single-stage 1-bit is bad (multi-stage 1-bit is good), and either of these is better than the old-school pre-1990s multi-bit. BTW, in other materials I found that delta ADC/DAC and then delta-sigma ADC/DAC where invented as long ago as in 1940s and 1950s, but some features were not possible until ICs were invented.

@Longman, thanks again for the magazine clipping, I VERY much appreciate it.

 

Since this thread started with anti-skip technology, I thought I would ask a question in that direction. Sony's second generation anti-skip technology is called ESP2 and they claim it uses DSP and nto buffered memory to do anti-skip protection.

My googling is failing me in finding any technical information on ESP2. Does anyone know how it worked and how it affected sound quality.