Digital replay. Have I experienced an epiphany, or just a healthy dose of reality?

[Complin]

Wow what a great thread some of it way above my head.
remember a few years back having a debate with a famous record producer about computer audio, at the time he told me to sell my cd player as fast as i could. It took me a year to get the courage to try my computer through a decent DAC at the time I was expecting a hrash sound. I had a highly mod nu-vista and my laptop and dac were eaisly it equal perhaps even better. I quickly sold my Cd Player and got the DAC I still have all my old cds maybe at some point i sell them but no idea when.
I also have lived with the 80gb ipod and now use the sony mp3 player which although not as stylish outperforms the ipod in term of sound I listen through HD595 and this is a really good match.
I must admit when i see brand new cd players coming out I just wonder who is going to buy it when you can use your mac pc or laptop with really good results. It just makes little sense to me why CD players are still being sold and persume this will change very soon.

Yes I have had similar debates with myself about computer audio and CD but i decided to hedge my bets!!
I have a large collection of CD's so dont want to ditch these but wanted a CD transport and DAC that could hack it in the computer world without spending megabucks.

There are really three formats to choose from USB, i2s and firewire. USB is really limited regarding quality and transfer speed. Firewire tends to be on professional audio equipment such as DCS where you are spending £10,000 on a DAC!! So i opted for i2s which seems a good compromise in terms of quality and cost. There are now a growing list of DAC's out there that offer i2s as an interface
Perpetual Technologies P-3A
Northstar Design 192
Northstar Design Extremo
Empirical Audio Benchmark DAC-1 with I2S mod
Spoiler USB TubeDAC
Etc........

I opted for the North Star.

My basic problem with computer audio is the often poor quality, MP3 is dire, compressed and lifeless. Apple format is better but not much, so you really need to go for losless FLAC, WAV etc which are quite big files. However; all these formats, including red book CD, are not really up to the job as the sample rates are too low, particularly when compared with master tape or record.
You might like to read this interview with Tim de Paravicini: King of Tubes
in Stereophile that touches on the issues http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1107parav/

Perhaps the industry one day might grasp the nettle and give us a really great true hi-fidelity format that is capable of reproducing all that music can offer in terms of dynamics and timbre?

With the cheap computing power available now and availability or 32 bit DAC chips, what an opportunity they have!!

[Complin]

At home.




MP3! No way, files are AIFF (as per my explanation and signature) - completely lossless imported from a CD, no compression whatsoever. I'm very familiar with this format as it's the format I use when recording my own music. I also keep everything in this format when I master on to CD as well. I never ever download any music and I never use any lossy compression. Also I don't use USB to my DAC, I use TOSlink currently although when Apogee release the Leopard drivers I may give Firewire a whirl, but I've a sneaky suspicion that it won't be as good.

I know it sounds absurd that a £5k player (and a £4.4k player) should not sound as good, but this is a genuine result heard in my own system at my own home. My current source destroyed my MF combo which I had for a while and loved a lot, and not 'only just' either.



Mine isn't the Duet, it's the Mini-DAC. Unfortunately the exchange rates are not brilliant and the Mini-DAC retails at £1k (although I paid less for mine ), still a freakin' bargain though!

You have definitely hit the nail on the head Tim. RAM is always more stable than anything with moving parts (ok, the HD spins, but only to block dump data) and the DAC [u]IS[/us] the source rather than the transport. This is where I feel computers have the advantage over CD players. I'm not sure the audiophile community will make the switch too hastily though, CD players are a tried and tested hi-fi source and there are some very very good CD players on the market, and not all necessarily cost £4,000 and up.

Very useful Stereophile technical comparison of the main computer based formats really brings home the poor quality of some of the formats
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/

[Filterlab]

Excellent article, for those who don't wish to read the whole thing I'll paste the closing paragraphs here:

What does all this mean?
Basically, if you want true CD quality from the files on your iPod or music server, you must use WAV or AIF encoding or FLAC, ALC, or WMA Lossless. Both MP3 and AAC introduce fairly large changes in the measured spectra, even at the highest rate of 320kbps. There seems little point in spending large sums of money on superbly specified audio equipment if you are going to play sonically compromised, lossy-compressed music on it.

It is true that there are better-performing MP3 codecs than the basic Fraunhöfer—many audiophiles recommend the LAME encoder—but the AAC codec used by iTunes has better resolution than MP3 at the same bit rate (if a little noisier at the top of the audioband). If you want the maximum number of files on your iPod, therefore, you take less of a quality hit if you use AAC encoding than if you use MP3. But "CD quality"? Yeah, right!

[tfarney]

I think it is really dependent on the source material. Some of it shows the limitations of lossy files very clearly, some requires the isolation of passages and listening for specific problems to ID the lossy files at all. I'm not at all sure I can hear lossless vs. 320kbps in any source material, but as I've said before, I ripped everything to lossless anyway.

I have a few lossy files acquired through other channels though. With some of them I think I can hear it when I listen closely, but only one stands out on its own, Joni Mitchell's "Travelogue" with its big orchestration and my meager 128kbps file. It just sounds a bit mushy. Still big and powerful. Joni's genius isn't diminished. Quite listenable. But a bit mushy. One of these days I'll pick up the cd and I'm sure the difference will be clear, if you'll excuse the pun.

Tim