File-Based Audio Done Right at John's
Yesterday I had a mini session round at John's to hear some more of what he has achieved with digital streaming, some of which I had had a taste of when he brought his gear round to mine (a memorable eye opening). John's system is very different in components from mine, and yet quite close in its acoustic presentation. My system is very traditional media (records and silver discs), John's is virtually all file-based.
John will be able to give chapter and verse on his kit, suffice to say that it's quite a simple setup: a twin laptop approach, running JPlay, feeding his USB DAC (I forget the name), into a Behringer DSP amp which splits the mid/treble off to a T-Amp and performs room correction and bass duties into the bass drivers of his speakers. The speakers are dual 15" driver open baffle Hawthornes.
The dual laptop thing needs explaining: one laptop runs JPlay in hibernate mode, receives the stream via ethernet and outputs it to USB. No file access as such so a very cleanly timed system which I think is the secret to superb replay. The second laptop also runs JPlay and accesses the file library, allows selection and then streams it to the first laptop.
So how does it all sound? Very immediate with incredible attack - those good characteristics of horn speakers without the cuppy colourations. Smooth and liquid with not a hint of harshness, quite an achievement in view of its strong dynamics. The flow of rhythms is to the fore and they do a very good job with female vocals (I brought along my favourite female test tracks on a USB stick). Hi-res tracks are played with no change in the presentation save for finer detail. A converse way of putting it is that standard 16/44 CD rips sound very good indeed, losing nothing at all compared with playing them in a CD spinner. Bass in John's small room is tight and controlled and very punchy. It's hard to think that a T-Amp is putting out all that mid power; remarkable!
We switched to classical and the sense of scale was still there. They played Vivaldi with gusto and confirmed to me that this is a great system irrespective of musical style. Of course, John's system is focussed on his preference for strong guitar-based music, we all to a greater or less degree direct our component selection in the direction of our musical tastes, but I didn't hear one track played badly during this session.
I had brought round some files that I had ripped from CD and then upsampled to 24/96 with noise shaped dither using the SOX utility. Comparing the 16/44 originals with the 24/96 upsamples was fascinating and we both agreed that the upsampled files had the edge in instrumental definition and lack of harshness in presentation. Fascinating!
We discussed air and space and agreed that perhaps the next step for John might be to add supertweeters to his speakers, just to lift the mid/treble transparency up even further.
We did compare the sound with just the one laptop running JPlay, and it took a small but notable hit in sound quality, so John has done well to develop the twin PC approach. I wonder whether a small fanless ITX PC build with enough SSD just to boot Windows 8 and JPlay, for streaming duties, might replace his hibernating laptop and could be placed right next to the DAC with a short USB cable? Food for thought.
Mentioning food, we took a break at the local Mexican, which gave us a chance to talk music bollocks for an entertaining interlude. An overall very enjoyable visit, and I can say with absolute certainty that this is the best file-based system I've ever heard. Thanks, John.
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