Filterlab
04-02-2008, 21:24
Well, after being dazzled, amazed and kerbaffled by just how good Robson Acoustics' demo system was at the Northern '08 show, I decided to ditch my CD player in favour of a computer based audio source. The day after I attended the show I decided to 'test' the audio skills of my Mac. After deleting all my tracks from iTunes (which I'd compressed to 320Kbps to transfer to my iPod) I imported my favourite albums (well, 50 or so of them) in AIFF format to see how they'd sound through my system.
First physical thing I did was to take the audio from the standard analogue output (a standard 3.5mm stereo affair) and run it into my passive pre-amp to see how it sounded. Mmmm, poor. So next step was to avoid the pre-amp altogether as frankly there's more than enough volume control on a Mac. In fact using iTunes there is the main computer audio out volume control, then there is the iTunes master volume control and then there is a secondary pre-amp control control which resides by default at 0dB and then offers a stepless gain or cut by +/-12dB.
So hardly worth using the passive at all - in fact it simply got in the way. So, direct to the power amp from the Mac's standard output? Pretty impressive actually! In fact a darn sight better than a Musical Fidelity CD player and an Intact Audio Autoformer based passive. Now that surprised me in a way, especially given the reputation of both companies for turning out some good kit. What got me narked thought was the fact that a £1k CD player which can only play CDs and do nothing else and a good 500 notes worth of passive which can only reduce volume and do nothing else could be outclassed by an £850 computer (which frankly can do far far more, and play music and control volume as an aside) and some rubbish little 3.5mm to phonos lead from Maplin.
I was almost satisfied just to leave it there to be honest, until that was I started listening carefully (rather than just dancing around the lounge). The initial excitement of the new and sparkly sound wore off to reveal pretty well the same noise as the MF / passive combo albeit with less depth of soundstage. Now the DAC I had in mind was the one I'd heard at the show; the Benchmark DAC-1 USB. A mighty impressive piece of kit! However after doing some extensive research I discovered that a more superior DAC in the same mould was being bought by audiophiles based in the US, a DAC made by one of the most respected studio equipment companies in the world.
The Apogee Mini DAC.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/images/minidac_3qtr_sm.jpg
Now this DAC is basically a 24 bit studio mastering DAC that is musical as well as ruthlessly revealing. Inputs wise it has the normal variety; S/PDIF, Toslink, AES and an optional USB or Firewire. It automatically upsamples according to the input sample rate (from 44.1Khz or 88.2 Khz to 176.4Khz and 48Khz or 96Khz to 192Khz) and it has two separate clocks, one which corrects input jitter and then the second which reclocks once the data has passed from the input. I don't pretend to understand how it works, but it works - very well. It's a bit of an odd looker, certainly I've never owned any component with pink graphics on the (small) faceplate, but it looks quite cute and very busy despite being a relatively simple unit.
Anyway, I went up to London on Sunday with the intention of purchasing one of these DACs as long as I could find one. I'd read one review in particular written by a Dutch audiophile who'd spent hundreds of hours comparing the Apogee Mini DAC and the Benchmark DAC-1 side by side using all manners of hi-fi components and come to the conclusion that whilst both are revealing components, the Apogee was the more musical and consequently ideal for audiophiles. This had really given me the impetus to buy one. Now I don't usually buy from reviews, but this guy had spent so much time with these DACs and was so passionate that I'd have been foolish to ignore the review.
So, Sunday lunchtime and I'm wandering up Tottenham Court Road. As the Apogee is a studio item I went to all my regular haunts - the music shops, all full to the brim of awesome professional studio gear, most of it far too expensive for the likes of me (that and I'm not really interested in writing and recording music anymore) but nonetheless impressive. I chatted to me old mucker in Rose Morris and he said that the Apogee Mini DAC is in demand, order only and rare as rocking horse poo. Mmm, cheers dude! However, I decided to pop over to Turnkey and just ask. "Apogee Mini DAC?" I asked. Young befuddled looked at me through his wisened specs and uttered "Mmmm, order only - rare, awesome but rare. Ooh, hang on - we've got one in stock believe it or not!".
So, out came the rather uneventful looking white box. Studio gear tends to be in uneventful boxes. I asked him if it was the USB model, he didn't know but said he wasn't aware of a USB version (which there is). "This has got Firewire though" he said. Cool I thought, faster and more stable than USB. "Ring it up!" I said.
So after grabbing a few extra bits and bobs (XLR to RCA adaptors and a long Firewire cable) I jumped on the tube and headed home.
_______________________________________________
So, setting up? Well the guy in the shop failed to inform me that the drivers were only suitable for Tiger (OS X 10.4) and not Leopard (OS X 10.5). I wish he'd told me, it fecked my computer! I had to restart via the install disk and repair permissions to sort out the muddle. Only then did I read that the drivers are not yet available for Leopard.
However, not one to be beaten by the limitations of technology I look through my bag of wonderous cables and found a really nice Toslink cable!
Here it is in its temporary location, it will go in the rack once I have the necessary drivers, but at the mo the Toslink cable is not long enough to reach round the back of the system:
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogee3-4.jpg
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeefloor.jpg
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeerear.jpg
And of course, the music source :D :
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeesource.jpg
Yeah I know I look like a tart with my two screens, but if the truth be known I bought the second display when we started this site. Marco is such a slave driver that one screen couldn't keep up with the amount of design work he gave me to do! LOL :D
_______________________________________________
So how does it sound?
Well, superlatives at the ready and all of them good. Neutral, revealing, detailed, musical, smooth, (exceptionally) open, balanced and smile inducing.
I can't really describe anymore than that as it has no real character, it's just music with nothing extra. The background is eerily dark and black, there's no hint whatsoever that there's any kind of machine behind the sound which of course there isn't, there's no moving parts. The sound is crisp and clean but there's no harshness or brightness whatsoever, I'm hearing so much more detail as well, it seems nothing is masked whatsoever and what really went on the recording is what's coming through.
In essence this destroys any CD player I've heard in the past as it doesn't sound like a CD player, it's almost turntable-esque in a way, but not like a turntable. :confused:
I'm sure my final upgrade (the power amp) will reveal far more than I can currently hear, but it'll have to wait as I haven't got a spare £2k right at the mo. Still, this is the best I've ever heard my system and it's combined with the downright flexibility of a computer.
Move to lossless audio complete.
:)
First physical thing I did was to take the audio from the standard analogue output (a standard 3.5mm stereo affair) and run it into my passive pre-amp to see how it sounded. Mmmm, poor. So next step was to avoid the pre-amp altogether as frankly there's more than enough volume control on a Mac. In fact using iTunes there is the main computer audio out volume control, then there is the iTunes master volume control and then there is a secondary pre-amp control control which resides by default at 0dB and then offers a stepless gain or cut by +/-12dB.
So hardly worth using the passive at all - in fact it simply got in the way. So, direct to the power amp from the Mac's standard output? Pretty impressive actually! In fact a darn sight better than a Musical Fidelity CD player and an Intact Audio Autoformer based passive. Now that surprised me in a way, especially given the reputation of both companies for turning out some good kit. What got me narked thought was the fact that a £1k CD player which can only play CDs and do nothing else and a good 500 notes worth of passive which can only reduce volume and do nothing else could be outclassed by an £850 computer (which frankly can do far far more, and play music and control volume as an aside) and some rubbish little 3.5mm to phonos lead from Maplin.
I was almost satisfied just to leave it there to be honest, until that was I started listening carefully (rather than just dancing around the lounge). The initial excitement of the new and sparkly sound wore off to reveal pretty well the same noise as the MF / passive combo albeit with less depth of soundstage. Now the DAC I had in mind was the one I'd heard at the show; the Benchmark DAC-1 USB. A mighty impressive piece of kit! However after doing some extensive research I discovered that a more superior DAC in the same mould was being bought by audiophiles based in the US, a DAC made by one of the most respected studio equipment companies in the world.
The Apogee Mini DAC.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/images/minidac_3qtr_sm.jpg
Now this DAC is basically a 24 bit studio mastering DAC that is musical as well as ruthlessly revealing. Inputs wise it has the normal variety; S/PDIF, Toslink, AES and an optional USB or Firewire. It automatically upsamples according to the input sample rate (from 44.1Khz or 88.2 Khz to 176.4Khz and 48Khz or 96Khz to 192Khz) and it has two separate clocks, one which corrects input jitter and then the second which reclocks once the data has passed from the input. I don't pretend to understand how it works, but it works - very well. It's a bit of an odd looker, certainly I've never owned any component with pink graphics on the (small) faceplate, but it looks quite cute and very busy despite being a relatively simple unit.
Anyway, I went up to London on Sunday with the intention of purchasing one of these DACs as long as I could find one. I'd read one review in particular written by a Dutch audiophile who'd spent hundreds of hours comparing the Apogee Mini DAC and the Benchmark DAC-1 side by side using all manners of hi-fi components and come to the conclusion that whilst both are revealing components, the Apogee was the more musical and consequently ideal for audiophiles. This had really given me the impetus to buy one. Now I don't usually buy from reviews, but this guy had spent so much time with these DACs and was so passionate that I'd have been foolish to ignore the review.
So, Sunday lunchtime and I'm wandering up Tottenham Court Road. As the Apogee is a studio item I went to all my regular haunts - the music shops, all full to the brim of awesome professional studio gear, most of it far too expensive for the likes of me (that and I'm not really interested in writing and recording music anymore) but nonetheless impressive. I chatted to me old mucker in Rose Morris and he said that the Apogee Mini DAC is in demand, order only and rare as rocking horse poo. Mmm, cheers dude! However, I decided to pop over to Turnkey and just ask. "Apogee Mini DAC?" I asked. Young befuddled looked at me through his wisened specs and uttered "Mmmm, order only - rare, awesome but rare. Ooh, hang on - we've got one in stock believe it or not!".
So, out came the rather uneventful looking white box. Studio gear tends to be in uneventful boxes. I asked him if it was the USB model, he didn't know but said he wasn't aware of a USB version (which there is). "This has got Firewire though" he said. Cool I thought, faster and more stable than USB. "Ring it up!" I said.
So after grabbing a few extra bits and bobs (XLR to RCA adaptors and a long Firewire cable) I jumped on the tube and headed home.
_______________________________________________
So, setting up? Well the guy in the shop failed to inform me that the drivers were only suitable for Tiger (OS X 10.4) and not Leopard (OS X 10.5). I wish he'd told me, it fecked my computer! I had to restart via the install disk and repair permissions to sort out the muddle. Only then did I read that the drivers are not yet available for Leopard.
However, not one to be beaten by the limitations of technology I look through my bag of wonderous cables and found a really nice Toslink cable!
Here it is in its temporary location, it will go in the rack once I have the necessary drivers, but at the mo the Toslink cable is not long enough to reach round the back of the system:
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogee3-4.jpg
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeefloor.jpg
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeerear.jpg
And of course, the music source :D :
http://s560.photobucket.com/albums/ss49/aos_images/random_stuff/Apogeesource.jpg
Yeah I know I look like a tart with my two screens, but if the truth be known I bought the second display when we started this site. Marco is such a slave driver that one screen couldn't keep up with the amount of design work he gave me to do! LOL :D
_______________________________________________
So how does it sound?
Well, superlatives at the ready and all of them good. Neutral, revealing, detailed, musical, smooth, (exceptionally) open, balanced and smile inducing.
I can't really describe anymore than that as it has no real character, it's just music with nothing extra. The background is eerily dark and black, there's no hint whatsoever that there's any kind of machine behind the sound which of course there isn't, there's no moving parts. The sound is crisp and clean but there's no harshness or brightness whatsoever, I'm hearing so much more detail as well, it seems nothing is masked whatsoever and what really went on the recording is what's coming through.
In essence this destroys any CD player I've heard in the past as it doesn't sound like a CD player, it's almost turntable-esque in a way, but not like a turntable. :confused:
I'm sure my final upgrade (the power amp) will reveal far more than I can currently hear, but it'll have to wait as I haven't got a spare £2k right at the mo. Still, this is the best I've ever heard my system and it's combined with the downright flexibility of a computer.
Move to lossless audio complete.
:)