As some of you know I was re-united with my old Hi-Fi gear late last year, it had been left in an empty house on an island some years before, it comprised of a pair of Tannoy Cheviots, a Quad 33/405, Phillips CD101 and some other gear, the CD101 is either dead or in need of serious work.
In the years in between I had picked up a very cheap Pioneer VSX-323 receiver and some speakers but for source I had gotten into digital and was using an Xbox One, I then purchased an Xbox One X at Xmas. I also bought a Teac CDP 1250 CD player to use as a tester. I had been using Groove Music, but Microsoft in their wisdom stopped this service so I was back to using the CD's I brought down from the island, I made .FLAC copies of the CD's and put them on my phone, Surface Pro 4 and Xbox One X and was using VLC to play them.
So over the last few months apart from being busy in the garden of my new house, I have been thinking what way to go with my music and entertainment. I do know I don't want millions of wires all over the place. And I missed the convenience of the millions of songs available on Groove so I eventually signed up to Spotify. I bought a V-DAC (On here).
I do intend to replace the Pioneer with probably a Quad Vena when pennies are available, but sometimes I think it's possible to be very lucky, the VSX was a budget receiver, but in tests against the QUAD combo actually won out and I gave the QUAD's to my son in law.
So I still have the .FLAC files on the Xbox, but was using Spotify to play newer music, and had a feeling it wasn't as good as it should be. So time for an in house shoot out, so I hooked up the Teac to the Pioneer and compared CD to Spotify, it turns out that unlike on the PC or phone you can't set the streaming quality, so the CD sounded better, this got me worried about the Xbox One X as I didn't know this, so I set up my Surface Pro 4 into the V-DAC and then did some real testing.
CD using it's own DAC into the Pioneer, Xbox using optical into the V-DAC and SP4 using the USB input of the V-DAC I then played music, obviously CD's on the CD player and a mixture of Spotify, .FLAC files, MP3's and CD's on the Xbox One X and .FLAC and Spotify on the SP4.
Firstly I discovered the flaw in using Spotify on the Xbox One X, very low quality files compared to the highest setting on the PC.
I know the CD isn't top drawer but the Xbox One X won hands down on CD playback. The Xbox One X also won hands down using .FLAC V the CD player, the CD on the Xbox One X is pretty good.
So the last test was the Xbox One X V the SP4 playing the same .FLAC files and have to say although it was close the Xbox One X came out on top but by a close margin.
I then took the optical cable direct from the Xbox One X to the Pioneer so using it's built in DAC and left the SP4 using the V-DAC, and was surprised that the Pioneer just edged it with the additional benefit of cutting out more wires.
As said I still intend to replace the Pioneer but it is a surprisingly good bit of equipment that the reviewers almost discounted compared to it's big brothers.
This gave me the thought to set up my trusty old Aiwa amp and the Teac CD player, the V-DAC and the Surface going through a pair of Eltax floor standers. This set up surprised me, OK it's not up to the main set up, but not bad at all and would give some other more expensive set ups a run for their money and I will use this in my man cave when I get the money to build it with the ability to unplug the Surface and let it become my normal PC (As it is now) and a tablet for when I am working in London.
So the moral of this tale is make sure your source material is up to scratch, Spotify is OK for casual listening but make sure you can get the high res files when using for serious listening.
And as an addition I know I have praised the XBOX One X as a media player, but this really is a great entertainment system, I can play CD's DVD's, 4K HDR discs, along with watching TV (using a FreeSat box), Netflix and Amazon 4K HDR films, plus 4K games and it's all voice controlled, if I say "Xbox turn off" it turns my entire system off, or I can say "Xbox watch Netflix" and it launches and better still "Xbox volume down" and it controls my receiver.
EDIT: One thing to mention, the dynamic range of 4K discs and films is remarkable, I am not into multi channel so only stereo, but with the Cheviots you don't need a Sub-woofer, so after the testing yesterday I stuck on a disc, I set the volume to sensible voice listening and was blown away whenever anything got blown up. This is the same for games, the soundtracks are special to say the least but capable of upsetting the neighbours.