Matt, As much as I admire the thoroughness and exquisiteness of your analysis, I can't help but be astonished that so many dealers have acquiesced in loaning so much high caliber equipment with so little prospect of a return. From a retailer's perspective this is pud-pulling on a grand scale. I hope at least that when the dust finally settles you pay full retail.
Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD
Hi All.
Putting together a reference level system.
My Source is predominantly standard 16/44 played from a MacMini using iTunes and Amarra. Some of my music is purchased from iTunes and the rest is ripped from standard CD's.
For my tastes in music, my high def catalogues are still limited; so Redbook 16/44 will be my primary source for quite some time.
I'm not spending DCS or MSB money. But $15-20k retail is not out of the question.
Upsampling vs non-upsampling?
USB input vs SPDIF?
All opinions welcome.
And I know I need to hear them, but getting these ultra $$$ DAC's into your house for an audition ain't easy.
Looking for musical, emotional, engaging, accurate , with great dimension. Not looking for analytical and sterile.
Putting together a reference level system.
My Source is predominantly standard 16/44 played from a MacMini using iTunes and Amarra. Some of my music is purchased from iTunes and the rest is ripped from standard CD's.
For my tastes in music, my high def catalogues are still limited; so Redbook 16/44 will be my primary source for quite some time.
I'm not spending DCS or MSB money. But $15-20k retail is not out of the question.
Upsampling vs non-upsampling?
USB input vs SPDIF?
All opinions welcome.
And I know I need to hear them, but getting these ultra $$$ DAC's into your house for an audition ain't easy.
Looking for musical, emotional, engaging, accurate , with great dimension. Not looking for analytical and sterile.
Showing 13 responses by dgarretson
Matt, No insult intended. You asked for all opinions and you got one more, admittedly contrarian. Thanks for the background on your considerable effort and expense in the search. However, none of this expense accrues toward dealer satisfaction. I wouldn't underestimate the expense of the individual and collective efforts of the dealers. There is hidden cost in carrying inventory, wear and tear during shipping and set-up and tear-down, and the time value of money while the equipment is away. You are obviously a fickle purchaser-- so what else is new in high end audio? My criticism is directed more toward the supply-side: the generally desperate and sorry state of retail salesmanship involved in fronting so much equipment into a home setting in a brute force gamble. Some of this may owe to the retailer failing to properly qualify the sale and the LF room issues-- which appear to render a full-range solution problematic. As brick and mortar retailing declines in scale and in breadth of product lines and inventory, the regional audio shows have emerged as the best opportunities to clarify and focus purchasing decisions. That's not to say that there is no place for home demos, but at an extreme this begins to read more like match.com serial dating. Infinite choice invites infinite regression. |
Audiolabyrinth, that streamer is almost here, but may require some DIY: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/twisted-pear/250583-building-open-embedded-audio-applicance-112.html |
Matt, I have a similar sized room and have been generally nagged with LF room effects. I can appreciate your interest in finding a statement full-range speaker that takes advantage of your monoblock power. However, in view of room constraints it may make more sense to concede to mains with restricted LF in order to gain the flexibility of separately positioned dual subs. Maybe Zu Submission-- considering its relatively small footprint. On a different path, maybe an omni like MBL or HHR Exotic could turn the room constraints to advantage. The Walsh-derived HHR TLS-1 was my personal favorite at Axpona and has moved me to a complete rethink of speakers. (Query Doug Schroeder at Dagogo). It may have slightly restricted dynamics relative to the others(less of an issue in a smaller room), but its refined natural timbre and spatial presentation within limited room space is extraordinary. IMO Kaiser is a very strong contender among small-footprint speakers. I've never heard the excessive brightness of which you speak. What do you think of the Scaena Manhattan? That one is also on my short list. It has great resolving power and a dynamic and exciting "big" sound, though is certainly best suited to a room with ample distance to the listening position. Not sure if you could manage that along an 18' room dimension. |
Has anyone heard or owned a recent Music Vault server or compared one to Aurender or Antipodes? I’ve only heard the Music Vault at shows, but they have always sounded good. I would tend to lean toward Neal, as he was an early entrant in the market space, has evolved the product, and continues to sell direct at reasonable prices and to directly support customers. His most recent top model appears to have all SSD music storage and an external clock link. The latter feature would presumably work well in concert with the rubidium clock that synchronizes my K-01X CDP. |
JWM, thanks for your download on CES 2016. After reading Valin's sycophantic praise for the Martin Logan Neolith as best in show I feared for my sanity. I have heard the Neolith sound uniformly mediocre at Axpona and RMAF in rooms of varying size and with very high end electronics. Something is rotten in Denmark at the Absolute Sound. |
I haven’t tried MinimServer, but have been using Roon on a QNAP NAS with a i5 motherboard and 16GB RAM. It sounds great and is fast enough to run Roon’s DSP engine that outputs DSD128. Together with a Sonore microRendu Ethernet-to-USB streamer at the DAC and a Windows tablet for control, this is a simple, relatively inexpensive, high-performance solution that scales easily to mass storage. Setting it up requires just rudimentary IT skills. The high performance and relatively modest price makes me wonder if days are numbered for purpose-built audiophile servers. |
Matt, I think you over-estimate the depth of the DIY "rabbit-hole." In the past year, the approach of using a single-software package like Roon on top of an i5 or i7 NAS, together with a EN renderer, has become almost plug & play with performance escalating toward SOTA. Add an fast Ethernet hub, and the total number of devices for this solution in the signal path is just three. The Linux utilities on the headless NAS, controlled by a remote Windows or iOS tablet, are as user-friendly as the Windows or iOS desktop. At set-up Roon’s software download auto-discovers all Roon-ready devices(including QNAP and Synology NAS) and transparently drops its client/server components into the NAS core, remote control tablet, and a Roon-ready EN renderer like Sonore microRendu. Cleverly, the Rendu includes a hard USB-to-USB adaptor that plugs Rendu directly into your USB DAC, with no USB cable or other intermediate device required or appropriate. Yes, for optimal performance, Rendu needs a high-quality external DC linear power supply(Hynes in my case.) I haven’t yet tried enhanced power to the NAS or to the Ethernet hub, but I suspect that for the purposes of Ethernet transport, the improvement of doing so would be minimal relative to clean DC to the EN/USB renderer. One of the more intriguing recent developments is Roon’s addition of a DSP engine in core software. Its capability and performance appear similar to HQ player software, but without the DIY geekiness of adding an additional software package on a second high-performance PC. Roon’s DSP engine does PCM and DSD upsampling in software to DSD512 and includes an expanding number of digital filter options. The latest release is just a few days old now and does sound improved relative to the prior version. These evolving features are good enough that I disable all filtering and upsampling capabilities in the firmware of my Esoteric K-01X DAC, and just let Roon convert all source files from 16/44.1 to DSD64 to the maximum multiple of DSD that the DAC supports-- DSD128 in a K-01X. Given the increasing number of DACs that are coming to market with support for DSD512 sources, I suspect that an integrated software architecture like Roon will obsolete much of what a SOTA RBCD DAC currently does in firmware. I’m particularly interested in what you think of the T&A DAC at DSD512, as in the interest of keeping down costs, that unit reportedly puts its emphasis on the DSD512 capability. If you ever get to evaluating a microRendu, just be sure that you use it with the best linear power supply available.
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Matt, Curious what rack or platform, footers, and PCs you are using when comparing DACs. Are you holding those variables constant, or tweaking to find the best result for each application? I have found that for some components these tweaks can make very meaningful differences, and at your high level of performance could possibly erase some of the minor distinctions between DACs. |
Matt, Stillpoints are great and tactically flexible in a variety of settings. I use Ultra 5s as turntable and speaker footers and Ultra SSs under several components lodged in a custom steel rack. But if you ever get around to a strategic rethink of the Adona rack, also consider the Starsound Rhythm racks and platforms. Starsound racks and platforms made a major difference with my Esoteric digital front end and Pass monoblocks. You'd have to pry them loose from my dead hands. |
Curious if Matt or anyone out there has tried or intends to compare any of these high-end servers to the "lightweight" alternative of an SOtM SMS-200 Ultra and tX-USBultra and NAS. So far I've had good luck with the NAS/microRendu approach, powered by a Paul Hynes SR7. I may compare this to the SOtM combo, powered by SR7 and synchronized to a SRS Perfection 10 rubidium master clock(also powered by SR7) that clocks my Esoteric K-01X. That synchronizes all critical components to a single master clock with PPB precision. |