MacBook used in a Digital system

[Yomanze]

Like I said its how the information is handled before it gets to the DAC. Not sure any CD player has the ability to stop noise getting into the system, that is why FBA has been adopted by most digital audiophiles using steamers rather than noisy CD players.

Adaptive USB never sounded quite as good as asynchronous, and many USB front ends are EMI transmitters or receivers. Look inside the Berkeley Alpha USB insides for an interesting take on controlling this. As an early adopter of the technology with a trusty HagUSB, things have moved on.

We now have lower jitter and clock drift than the best CD transports available from asynchronous USB front ends, which is where the audible differences lie. The data bit is easy, you could use salty string!

[Macca]

I won't say to makes no difference whether you are using a hard drive or an optical drive to store the file but I think it unlikely that it would make a significant difference. if you consider that the signal is a varying voltage how well the power supply differentiates between voltage steps is what will be critical. That function is entirely independent of what form of data storage is being used.

A CD player is just storage - reader - DAC the same as any digital set up. However despite reading extensively on the subject I've not seen any research that looks at whether a hard drive to DAC over optical drive to DAC is inherently superior or not. Neither have I heard that subjectively demonstrated (which would not be straightforward as there are a lot of variables). So I'm not committing on that either way. If someone reading this knows of such research please post a link.

[Macca]

Adaptive USB never sounded quite as good as asynchronous, and many USB front ends are EMI transmitters or receivers. Look inside the Berkeley Alpha USB insides for an interesting take on controlling this. As an early adopter of the technology with a trusty HagUSB, things have moved on.

We now have lower jitter and clock drift than the best CD transports available from asynchronous USB front ends, which is where the audible differences lie. The data bit is easy, you could use salty string!

I'm pretty sceptical as to the audible effects of jitter, even in poor implementations the distortion is way below the noise floor. Timing errors with vinyl LP playback are orders of magnitude worse and no-one complains about that.

There is actually a documented experiment where they progressively increased jitter distortion to see at what level people actually started to hear it. It was way higher than the worst commercial implementations exhibited. But very early on jitter was jumped on by the non-technical reviewers as being 'The Reason' why their cd players did not sound as good as their record players, marketing departments picked up on that and we've been stuck with the bullshit about it ever since.

The simple fact is that unless you know what you are about, a transport/server - DAC combo will have higher level of jitter than an integrated CD player, although neither will have audible levels of jitter.

And before anyone writes in to say ' I had a fancy clock put in my cd player and it sounded much better', consider that there are other factors that might affect the presentation when making significant changes to the circuitry, and consider that a change in how it sounds does not necessarily equate with improved sound quality, even if you prefer the new presentation to the old.

Get whoever put your new clock in to show you their before and after jitter measurements. At best the jitter will have been reduced from non-audible levels to even lower none audible levels. It's another red herring.

[Jimbo]

I'm pretty sceptical as to the audible effects of jitter, even in poor implementations the distortion is way below the noise floor. Timing errors with vinyl LP playback are orders of magnitude worse and no-one complains about that.

There is actually a documented experiment where they progressively increased jitter distortion to see at what level people actually started to hear it. It was way higher than the worst commercial implementations exhibited. But very early on jitter was jumped on by the non-technical reviewers as being 'The Reason' why their cd players did not sound as good as their record players, marketing departments picked up on that and we've been stuck with the bullshit about it ever since.

The simple fact is that unless you know what you are about, a transport/server - DAC combo will have higher level of jitter than an integrated CD player, although neither will have audible levels of jitter.

And before anyone writes in to say ' I had a fancy clock put in my cd player and it sounded much better', consider that there are other factors that might affect the presentation when making significant changes to the circuitry, and consider that a change in how it sounds does not necessarily equate with improved sound quality, even if you prefer the new presentation to the old.

Get whoever put your new clock in to show you their before and after jitter measurements. At best the jitter will have been reduced from non-audible levels to even lower none audible levels. It's another red herring.

It's not just jitter that is a problem but noise you can't hear that corrupts the sound quality which only aware of when you remove it from the audio chain. You can hypothesis and speculate all you want with theoretical aspects of digital audio but when you actually hear what digital audio can sound like once it has been sorted and delivered to your DAC noise free you then begin to understand.

If you read my digital audio experiences at the weekend you may have seen I proved to myself what constitutes as important in digital audio playback in order to get a great sound. I did not mention but I also tried a CD player in the system aswell. All I can say from a listening experience was that the CD was tragic, Laptop with bit perfect rips to audirvana was ok and the optimised Innuos server was stunning. It was so far ahead of everything else I heard it was untrue!

[Macca]

It's not just jitter that is a problem but noise you can't hear that corrupts the sound quality which only aware of when you remove it from the audio chain. You can hypothesis and speculate all you want with theoretical aspects of digital audio but when you actually hear what digital audio can sound like once it has been sorted and delivered to your DAC noise free you then begin to understand.

If you read my digital audio experiences at the weekend you may have seen I proved to myself what constitutes as important in digital audio playback in order to get a great sound. I did not mention but I also tried a CD player in the system aswell. All I can say from a listening experience was that the CD was tragic, Laptop with bit perfect rips to audirvana was ok and the optimised Innuos server was stunning. It was so far ahead of everything else I heard it was untrue!

We completely agree about the bit in bold, that is exactly what I am saying.

Where I suspect we disagree is on the reason for that. But I'm unclear as to what reason you are ascribing to this? You have not said on this thread or on the other one.

Regards the cd player you can't compare just one cd player to a file system and pronounce file as superior to CD. You could if all CD players had equal levels of sound quality but they don't so I think you are jumping to a conclusion there. (It might be the correct conclusion, I don't know, but your one comparison isn't proof of that).

[Jimbo]

We completely agree about the bit in bold, that is exactly what I am saying.

Where I suspect we disagree is on the reason for that. But I'm unclear as to what reason you are ascribing to this? You have not said on this thread or on the other one.

Regards the cd player you can't compare just one cd player to a file system and pronounce file as superior to CD. You could if all CD players had equal levels of sound quality but they don't so I think you are jumping to a conclusion there. (It might be the correct conclusion, I don't know, but your one comparison isn't proof of that).

I have heard other CDP in similar systems but at a much higher price point and they were also trounced by FBA, you should try a comparison yourself Martin and you will hear the difference. Unfortunately I dont think any CDP on the planet can compete with a good FBA set up, they are just too noisy.

[Macca]

I have heard other CDP in similar systems but at a much higher price point and they were also trounced by FBA, you should try a comparison yourself Martin and you will hear the difference. Unfortunately I dont think any CDP on the planet can compete with a good FBA set up, they are just too noisy.

I have done more than one comparison and I've not heard any significant differences (except for one that used the free Spotify service and that was quite obviously poorer than the cd player). But there are just too many variables here to jump to the conclusion that FBA is automatically superior to all cd players by its very nature. Certainly some FBA implementations are not much cop as you found out when using the MacBook. And we agree that there are plenty of cd players that are not much cop.

I would certainly take a cd player with good power supply regulation over a poorly implemented FBA system any day. However if we were comparing best possible cases - best possible cd player vs best possible FBA set up - I'm willing to accept that the FBA could have the edge; although my bet would be that they would be indistinguishable. (Assuming they were both using the same DAC of course).

[Jimbo]

I have done more than one comparison and I've not heard any significant differences (except for one that used the free Spotify service and that was quite obviously poorer than the cd player). But there are just too many variables here to jump to the conclusion that FBA is automatically superior to all cd players by its very nature. Certainly some FBA implementations are not much cop as you found out when using the MacBook. And we agree that there are plenty of cd players that are not much cop.

I would certainly take a cd player with good power supply regulation over a poorly implemented FBA system any day. However if we were comparing best possible cases - best possible cd player vs best possible FBA set up - I'm willing to accept that the FBA could have the edge; although my bet would be that they would be indistinguishable. (Assuming they were both using the same DAC of course).

Yes I agree Martin FBA is not automatically better than a CDP if you simply run it off a Computer unless you go to great lengths to optimise it. What I should have said was FBA is better than CDP via the server route and separate DAC. I have heard many combinations of this route with different servers and DACs etc and they have all surpased CDP sound quality. The computer route is simply fraught with too many problems associated with noise and poor routing of the audio signal.
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[Macca]

Would be interesting to do a comparison, my high-end cd players vs your sorted streaming set up. I take it you can copy cds to the streamer so that we would be using the same mastering?

The DAC won't be the same of course but that shouldn't really affect sound quality.

If the streamer kicks the cd players arses I will be happy to say so. And buy one.

[Jimbo]

Would be interesting to do a comparison, my high-end cd players vs your sorted streaming set up. I take it you can copy cds to the streamer so that we would be using the same mastering?

The DAC won't be the same of course but that shouldn't really affect sound quality.

If the streamer kicks the cd players arses I will be happy to say so. And buy one.

Haha, we should sort it Martin. Yes I can rip CD to the streamer. Do you have a digital out on the CDP then we could use same DAC?