Reference Recordings Hrx Discs

[purite audio]

Right I have ordered some 'Reference recordings' HRx discs ,http://www.referencerecordings.com/HRx1.asp
After long and thoughtful deliberation, ( not by me ) two solutions have been proposed for their playback, and the playback of ripped cd's.
A, Buy an E-Mu 1616m card and dock and just plug it into my laptop, seems simple enough, I think you download some ASIO drivers that come with the product , £250 and thats it.
it has been suggested that a purpose built pc dedicated solely to audio replay might yield better results, probably using a lynx 16aes soundcard, cost with Lynx £1300 anyone any thoughts, the Lynx is mean't to produce an extremely low jitter signal, you thoughts would be most welcome,Keith.

[Filterlab]

Interesting things these HRx recordings. I've been doing some brief digging on the net to try and find out the best OS and application to play them on, not much about but I did Google this thread on Computer Audiophile forum (which is in our Links Box):

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/474

Chris (the founder) seems to prefer OS X and the optical port is allegedly 24/192 output compatible, although there seems to be some mystery on how to output such high sample rates. A 24/176 signal is all that's required for an HRx output so not quite so demanding, but still demanding enough. For MS users, XP is the one to go with as Vista is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned by MS.

I'm going to look a bit further into this, maybe grab an HRx recording and see what I can do.

[purite audio]

Rob Hi, I really would be interested to hear your thoughts, I really hope that the 'reference recordings' might really offer a significant improvement , opinions just seem to be so divided whether music streamed from a PC can rival CD , I had a brief chat with Chris Bryant this morning, he thought that power supplies were paramount importance especially in a PC.

[Filterlab]

Oddly I never even considered a computer's power supply, although to produce a stable digital signal can't be too demanding. Saying that I guess it depends on how demanding the computer is during its normal tasks and a good assumption to make would be that processor intensive applications require more power than a simple one. Having said that it almost stands to reason that ANY electrical item is going to benefit from a clean, spike free and stable power supply regardless of its apparent demands. Mmm, audiophile computer power supply; Russ Andrews, I hope you're listening.

Personally I believe that a properly set up computer should comfortably rival a CD player especially given the lack of moving parts. Like any hi-fi component though a computer needs to be set up with the same considerations; isolation, power, connection types, settings etc etc, also possibly running no other applications whilst listening to music.

I really want to discover as much as I can about computer audiophilia, it's such a deep subject with so much potential that it can't be ignored. Will it ever replace vinyl? Don't be daft! Will it sit happily alongside tried and tested formats? Yep, once a consistently high performing set-up has been achieved.

[lurcher]

although to produce a stable digital signal can't be too demanding.

Hmm, I think thats a bit like saying all a turntable needs to do is go round and round, as ever the devil is in the detail. Though in "theory" reclocking and buffering in the DAC sould avoid any computer created problem.

[Filterlab]

Well that's the whole hi-fi thing, the detail.

By the way, I love your inverted commas around the word 'theory', that word has a lot to answer for in practice.