Your kidding!, they will not EVER make a $15,950.00 usb cable!, really!, I have a $15,950.00 balnced cable! very incredible sounding to say the least!, state of the art!, computer audio will never reach that point of world class systems, case closed!
Is computer audio a bust?
In recent months, I have had several audio acquaintances return to CDPs claiming improved SQ versus their highly optimized computer transports (SS drives, external power supplies, etc, etc).
I wanted to poll people on their experiences with computer "transports." What variables have had the most impact on sonics? If you bailed on computers, why?
I personally have always believed that the transport, whether its a plastic disc spinner or computer, is as or more important than the dac itself and thus considerable thought and energy is required.
I wanted to poll people on their experiences with computer "transports." What variables have had the most impact on sonics? If you bailed on computers, why?
I personally have always believed that the transport, whether its a plastic disc spinner or computer, is as or more important than the dac itself and thus considerable thought and energy is required.
411 responses Add your response
Andrew, the Lessloss streamer had a lot of promise when I heard the first prototype a few years ago or so at RMAF. I do think the DAC 2004 is one of the best I have heard and why I keep it around. I would love to leverage it somehow and the Lampizator or Sonore Rendu could be solutions for me to consider. As for the new streamer, given the proposed price it is unfortunately not something I would budget for. As you mentioned, it still remains to be seen what formats it will support as well. As for Ethernet cables a good source is Blue Jeans Cable. They verify the cables to be true CAT6 or 5 and they do not break the bank. Given the data is sent in packets and there is no clock to recover I would think if all else is designed properly jitter should not be an issue. With the Cantata I can play a song from a CD and stream the same song doing a fairly close A/B comparison. To me I do not hear an appreciable difference either way. So the convenience factor won out. |
I love my computer audio setup and would never consider returning to a CDP. My Mac Mini functions as a server, my iPad is the remote. I run my digital files through a Metrum Octave Mk II DAC. Audirvana takes care of oversampling and processing the music files. Everything runs with little effort -- I'm neither an obsessive nor a master of the computer -- and nary a glitch. I believe that computer audio has reached the point where the marriage of quality and convenience may be compelling even to the most fastidious audiophile. My analog setup still sounds better, but my digital system offers such quality that I listen to it with both great comfort and happy satisfaction. |
07-16-14: PkoegzWhat a GREAT attitude. Too bad you're in the SMALL minority. Can't believe people are complaining too many options. 07-15-14: BcgatorHate to break it to you, DACs are computers. It's not a general purpose computer like Mac, Windows ... but I guess you can classify as embedded system. You still need to load data in memory before it works so basically the discussion boils down to how. CD transport reading a CD in real time, computer from HDD, computer from USB Drive ... If you're tech/computer/software savvy, you would never choose off a CD in real time. |
Nice post by JC. I really think traditional audiophiles have more issues with computer audio than most in that it requires a fresh mindset and a lot of openness to try new things. True there are a lot of options, many incompatible with each other and that can be daunting. After all, all phonos, amps, speakers, even CD players all pretty much work the same way, though not all devices are equally "compatible" with each other still. GEtting things that are compatible with each other to work together well has always been what its about. THe thing is that standards for computer audio are not fully mature yet, so that does make the task somewhat more daunting perhaps, expecially for the less computer savvy. |
Foster_9 wrote "...many of the posts in this thread clearly demonstrate the convoluted nature of computer audio, the lack of consensus on best practices....". Is that to say consensus is the norm for playback of other audio media, like for instance, vinyl? Let me think... Direct drive, belt drive or rim drive? Moving coil (high or low output?), Moving magnet, Moving iron? Stylus configuration?...spherical, elliptical, Geiger, Stereohedron? etc. etc.. Tubed or SS phono-pre? Probably lots of other variables I'm leaving out. But I think the point is made. I'm really not trying to convince anyone to think otherwise about computer audio. Your opinion does not affect my enjoyment. But the "lack of consensus comment" did make me chuckle. |
far from it. i sold my multi-thousand $$$ CDP years ago. it depends on how you set things up, what computer you use, dac, protocol, cables, software to read and write the data, and other things. Don't go with Sonos, or apple tv's unless you want to listen to background music, which they would be fine. a few years back, before async usb, i wouldn't touch USB. but since most good dacs support this up to 24/384, this is 1 of the better options. if you use toslink, you are limited to 24/96. you also need to keep the bus clean from 1 device to another. all my hard disks are firewire and i use USB for my dac. don't put everything on USB. Cables matter, especially the USB cable. don't go cheap. also, with more dsd tracks available for purchase or ripping, make sure your dac will support the different versions of dsd. in a nutshell, i would go with a mac mini, xld or MAX to rip cd's, several firewire disks (1 or more for your songs, 1 or more to backup the other disks), the best usb cable you can afford, the best dac you can afford with async usb, 24/384 capabilities, integer mode, and dsd support, and your pick between amarra/pure music/audirvanna, there are others like jriver and i think bit perfect, but i've never used them. then use an iPad or iPhone to control everything from your listening chair. you will never go back! |
Joecasey - you did realize I was joking about computer audio, sex and marijuana all being obsolete in 5 years, right? :-) See my follow-up post and you'll see that I consider computer-based audio to not only have a future, but a great future - my setup is an example of how easy and enjoyable it can be. |
Building/having a computer audio set up is, the way I see it, no different then having a CDP (Digital source), Turntable (Analog rig), Reel to Reel set up, etc... I never considered it a replacement for the others I have, but; another option. The search to build a CA system with comparable SQ, just supported the hobby of chasing audio nirvana I have been sucked into. LOL. I have reached a point recently with minor upgrades where the SQ of my CA system is 99% as accurate as spinning cd's and records - in my system. That said, I enjoy listening to all equally. Still cannot deny the benefits a Computer Audio System brings: - Hanging out on the Terrace and being able to change music at will (60 ft. away) with an iPad.....without spilling my drink - Being able to hand an iPad to visitors too browse and choose what they prefer. - Having the convenience of viewing all of your music at a glance to enhance listening sessions encompassing various genre's, artists, etc. Happy Listening! |
Easy goal is to get similar or better sound through the same DAC and system with computer source versus CD/transport. Of course, if the CD players internal DAC is used, and there is no digital input, then it is not possible to get an apples and apples comparison. I've found this to always be the case when I use spdif connection for both. Can be coax or optical, any decent good quality cable will do. Not sure many if any CD players support USB, so apples and apples comparison there to computer USB is not easy to do. Assuming good quality source gear and wires are used, the DAC used will make most of the difference in teh sound going into the same system. I do wonder if anyone considering computer audio "a bust" have ever done such an apples and apples comparison into same DAC of course feeding the same system? That's a valid apples/apples test. Otherwise, it is not apples/apples and highly DAC dependent and all bets should be off. |
Your kidding!, they will not EVER make a $15,950.00 usb cable!, really!, I have a $15,950.00 balnced cable! very incredible sounding to say the least!, state of the art!, computer audio will never reach that point of world class systems, case closed!That is the best parody of an audiophile posting I've ever read. Outrageous hyperbolic nonsense with a hefty dose of sarcasm. The repeated use of exclamation points, priceless!!! |
I see many posts as to the ease of using computer audio. But nothing about how long it took to set up your music library and the cost and time involved. Anybody? Were you able to get that great sound you have right out of the gate, or did you have to keep changing things as the technology improved? Just curious...Cost of music ripped, time involved ripping, cost of the entire computer audio section? |
If one has a CD player and is satisfied listening to whole CDs, then probably no reason to change. Computer audio opens up entirely new listening scenarios though beyond listening to one CD at a time. I can queue music in my library up in any order I want and let it play on. OR I can quickly search and find what I want to hear without interruption. I find I have discovered a ton of new music I was not familiar with but learned to like this way compared to the old way of picking one CD or recording to listen to at a time. Very liberating and very conducive for exploring new music. Plus the album, track artist and related info is at your fingertips to explore further if desired. Then there is the variety of music available via internet radio and music streaming services, many with very good sound quality these days as well. These are features that add utility to the music listening experience for most. No need to change really unless one is interested in exploring the new possibilities with computer audio. Sound quality can be top notch either way with just a little care and attention. |
"I see many posts as to the ease of using computer audio. But nothing about how long it took to set up your music library and the cost and time involved. Anybody? Were you able to get that great sound you have right out of the gate, or did you have to keep changing things as the technology improved? Just curious." YEs, I got great sound right out of the gate several years ago using a Roku Squeezebox and DAC of choice. That continued as I moved to Squeezebox feeding same DAC and system, and now as well as I start to implement PLEX as an eventual Squeezebox replacement. Cost is minimal compared to a lot of "high end" audio, especially if you already have a computer. Creating and maintaining a library does involve some work to get tagging correct, but mostly for classical music. Setting up backups with software is not hard or costly. Seagate drives work great and come with backup software already installed for example. Data volumes for lossless music libraries can get large. My .wav library of about 2000 CDs comes in at just under 1Tb and the converted FLAC version about half that. |
As Mapman says, internet radio has very good sound quality, and I do listen to that on occasion. That's easy for me. I even pay a small monthly charge for better quality streaming. It also is a way to explore artists unknown. But as far as me getting into the full computer audio realm, I don't see that happening. I had a heck of a time just moving from Windows XP to this Windows 8.1, which I hate, btw. Creating a new library? I'm too old and really not that interested. Just getting lazy, I guess. Old fart... |
The original question was one of sound quality using a computer as a source vs a high-quality CD transport. I believe the answer to that question is "Yes, if the components are properly selected and configured, the computer source can sound as good as a CD transport". A lot of discussion has gone both ways in terms of computer audio being a "bust" vs the future. I think that this question is more easily answered. After all, the convenience of computer audio and its ability to expose you to music that is either not music you're familiar with (from streaming audio sources like Pandora) or music from your own collection that you haven't thought to play on a CD for a long time, is a major plus. But beyond that, where do we think that the true growth market in new music is going to be? If you're a young music group looking to get your work out there, the most cost-effective way of doing this is to have your work published electronically. It's going to be significantly more difficult to get with a record label that will stamp commercial discs. In addition, this allows them to also exceed the parameters of a redbook CD, and potentially get better audio quality. So from a practical perspective, if we limit ourselves to physical discs (either vinyl or CD's), then we're sharply restricting our access to music to play in the future. When seen from the perspective of computer audio being a large growth industry, then it will be almost certain that products will continue to evolve to support the quality demands of that small fraction of us called audiophiles that want good quality sound from computer audio. After all, we're the ones that divorced the transport and the DAC and frequently put them in two separate boxes, and we've been doing that for well over 2 decades (which is the majority of the duration that CD's have even been around). So it shouldn't take much to get a computer transport to be at least as good as a physical CD transport; indeed, I would argue that we are already there with many of our setups. Yes, accurate and consistent tags in computer sound files is important. But we're seeing more and more automated tagging systems that can take care of this. And we're seeing more ripping software comparing the results of each track rip with other people who have ripped those same CD's to assess for the probability of having achieved 100% accuracy in the rip. So I don't think that either of these two arguments as reasons why someone should shy away from computer audio to be valid now. Keep in mind that only in the past decade or so has storage space sufficient for an entire audio library in lossless formats been affordable. I remember when I was working as a software engineer that my company purchased a 64GB RAID array in 1997 for $20,000. It had over a dozen drives in it, and could hold maybe the equivalent of 200 or so CD's in FLAC format. Less than 20 years later a 2TB drive with 30+ times the storage space is available for under $100. The point here is that computer audio is still in its early years, and will continue to improve as time goes on. This is the future, and the industry will be putting its R&D money here rather than towards further enhancing redbook CD transports. Consequently, we will continue to see better and better performance as the industry matures. Just my 2 cents. Michael |
A clean Windows system running only jRiver is not very complex. Add virus protection and you're set. I'd recommend an i5 chip for overkill, enough memory to stage media there, and a $60 USB backup disk. Phenomenal laptops are far less than $1000, ($300 used) and the capability of a $50 media center software is mind-blowing. I have the Linn, the CD transport, and the Magnum Dynalab, but computer audio is the train leaving the station, and I'm on board with no regrets. |
An interesting thread. I didn't realize that there were a large number of people who had sampled C.A., found it wanting, and went back to CDPs. If one reads audiophile mags, particularly the British ones, you would never get that impression. I suspect that a lot of pressure has been placed on listeners by manufacturers that have invested in DACs and other computer based playback. They want to sell their new technologies and they greatly influence what the journalists write. Thus the word has gotten out that Physical Media will dissapear, that we all had better make the switch, etc. I've dabbled in C.A. and only recently become to think that it may become a more often used format for me. Unfortunately my MacAir that is my server died, and I have a trip to the "Genius Bar" later today. The first issue is sound quality. It should be at least as good as the CDs that I rip. USB has left me unsatisfied, and I've tried several ofthe work arounds. What did it for me is when I went to a firewire dac. I now believe the sound is at least as good, if not better, than the original. The second issue is tagging. I listen exclusively to Classical Music and as others have noted it's a problem. It would be a good retirement project, but I'm about 10 years away. The third issue is the computer itself. I hate being told that I need to download the latest version of itunes, that I haven't done a back up in the last 4 hours, or whatever. It detracts from the conveinence of the format. It can definitely be a space saver. I am very attached to my thousands of discs and lps but realize that when I am on a fixed income and possibly spending sometime as a snowbird that I will be in smaller living quarters. The idea of having my whole collection on a hard drive or two tha I can transport if I wish is very appealing. I am trying to digitalize now and just hang on to my few hundred SACDs and Blu Rays but my purchases of CDs are still exceeding the removal rate. The bottom line is that my collection has never sounded so good. Whether I'm playing CDs, SACDs, or C.A. via firewire, I feel very fortunate. Downloads are amazing as well but to many hassles for me. It really comes down to ease of use and what suits your lifestyle the best. |
@ onhwy61, Hi, I am sorry for my outburst of loosing my patience, however, I believe cables are a important componet in every given system to the point, my cables are the most exspensive part of my system, I have NO regrets, their is no hyperboil with believing that a usb cable will NEVER have the profound sound of a world class balanced interconnect like the Tara Labs Zero Gold with HFX ground station, as a matter of fact, Tara had to down size the interconnect at the terminations to get the interconnect to work with balanced terminations, now, that said, how in the world would they EVER fit a usb termination on this interconnect?, The interconnect's girth is bigger than most speaker cables out there, LOL! |
Slacker, Have you ever compared JRiver to MEdiaMonkey? I've used MM recently to convert my .wav files to flac for use with Logitech and PLEX. Also for auto and manual tagging of flac files, along with Picard. I have been able to get free MM to do things as it should, but am not thrilled with it overall. I've ripped a couple test disks to FLAC with it and find the tagging quirky and the rip quality somewhat of an unknown. MM requires a paid version for more assured accurate rips apparently, and not quite ready to go there based on experiences with MM to date. How is Jriver in these areas? Is it apples/apples to compare the two? |
Fidelizer opened my eyes with respect to computer audio. JRiver alone didn't do a whole lot for me in terms of sound quality. Running fidelizer made all the difference in the world and encouraged me to go down the computer audio rabbit hole. Now I'm running Audirvana on a mac mini while my cd player is literally sitting by its lonesome in the spare bedroom. Audirvana will soon have it's own file management and will no longer be tethered to itunes. Can't wait. |
Abuck, In my case I had hundreds of CDs before going to digital music server. A lot of those CDs stayed on the shelf and were seldom played in lieu of my more favorite ones. Exploring my CD music library extensively just did not happen nearly as much. Now, as a result of listening to tracks from CDs on my server served up to me randomly by my digital player like a jukebox, rather than me having to seek out and play some track I am not really all that familiar with to start, I would say I get more than 1000% more enjoyment out of my existing music collection, without having to add a thing or listen to other sources. That all happens much more as well as my musical tastes become more diverse. And it all sounds as good as or better than ever as well. All thanks to computer audio. Now I spend my time finding really useful new things that I might try or do with different devices, software, features etc. Much more productive than typical audiophile crap at this somewhat evolved point for me, like comparing sound with different fuses. I still do a lot of fine tuning of the gear I have, like moving speakers around and swapping into various rooms, to get the good sound results I always demand. |
"An interesting thread. I didn't realize that there were a large number of people who had sampled C.A., found it wanting, and went back to CDPs. If one reads audiophile mags, particularly the British ones, you would never get that impression. " I doubt there are a large # of people doing this frankly. The title of this thread kind of skews the debate in that direction I think. I suspect going around in general proposing that computer audio is a bust would be a losing proposition except with a) those already content with what they are doing so they have no need or 2) those who don't know what computer audio is and/or do not really care. |
Well my rig is: Esoteric UX-1 Yamamoto YDA-01 Leben CS-300 or First Watt F5 clone Zu Druid and Zu Method Instead of the Esoteric I placed a MacBook Pro + external USB PSU + VLink USB SPDIF converter, using Audirvana and Fab Pro Eq, the conclusion was that my setup sounded better with the Esoteric in place. End of the story: I quit Computer Audio. Daniel |
ANyone who has an Amazon Fire TV device already, or thinking of getting one, I am getting very good results from that running Plex ($5 app for Fire TV) to stream same .FLAC files as my current Squeezebox system that I have run happily for several years now. Amazon Fire TV ($99) is a fairly decent powered, Android computer specialized for streaming high res audio and video. It has toslink out that can run into most any DAC. PLEX connects to PLEX server you run on your computer file server. An added benefit of PLEX is that you can access your media (video, photos, music) from anywhere with an internet connection. I use an Ipod with good quality earbuds at the local pool for example and sound quality is top notch. Its all very good stuff. Not a bust by any stretch. |
Alex wrote: "Steve, but I thought you are using one of those third-party off-the-shelf modules in your current products too, thought with improved clocking and power supplies?" You would be mistaken. All of my interfaces are custom designed by me. I have modded many CD transports in past years. Some of these became references. None of them hold a candle to my computer audio interfaces. It helps to have 30 years of digital design experience in the computer industry. Steve N. Empirical Audio |
"Does having a asynchronous USB help with jitter and obviate the need for reclocking or SPDIF converters, as claimed here?" It does eliminate some sources of jitter, namely the computer clock, however jitter can still be introduced by common-mode noise and RFI. The master clock and the associated clocking circuitry in the interface is also critical to getting a good result. The design will determine whether Async USB interface is good or not. There are a lot of mediocre ones out there. Steve N. Empirical Audio |
Mapman, I haven't tried anything but JRiver, but I did a lot of research before choosing it. The $49 price is a pittance, but it funds a lot of good development and support, and, as a software person, I am impressed by the JRiver product. I had a few quirks ripping CD's with JRiver, such as a few albums listing tracks twice, and one CD spinning off a separate cover icon for each track. But nothing bad, and it could have been my refusal to read the instructions. I also chose FLAC because it was lossless, and I couldn't find any advantages of other formats. I don't believe wav offers anything over FLAC. Haven't tried DSD, yet. I decided to try CA when a CD transport started acting up, and it caught me by surprise when the system sound quality improved dramatically. There are some external variables--I'm using a very good Wireworld USB cable, and it may be that my DAC just does a better job on USB than coax. Cheers |
Lab, The error in your logic is that there is no sound made with the data transfer function of any computer system. Data is just moved from one place to another over a network connection. Algorithms implemented in teh computer software GUARANTEE that all data is wither moved accurately and completely or not at all. COmputers could not ever work otherwise. Turning computer data into sound is where traditional audiophile concerns come into play. WIth a network music streamer that process starts at the streamer and flows to the DAC. NEtwork connection to get the data to the streamer prior only matters to be fast enough to get the data there ahead of time before converted to sound. DElays in playing may occur when data is rebuffered in order to be ready for conversion, but sound quality will not suffer. That is how network streamers are designed to work. dDigital conenctions from computer to DAC are a totally different story. The computer and USB bus is now a key part of the real time music making process. Results may vary greatly depending on how well everything works together as a music making system. Computers are not generally designed to necessarily always preserve highest possible sound quality, so a lot of variability in results can occur with this kind of "architecture" for computer audio. Rule is to always use a device made to produce good quality sound as the feed to a DAC. Network music or even general hi res media streamers (Like PLEX) are designed for this. Most computers are not. Not to say a computer to dac connection cannot work well, but the devil is all in the very technical details. Network music/media streamers are designed for music/media and are always the safe bet to get the sound most audiophiles seek. MEdia streamers like PLEX support very fast streaming rates, beyond those typically used for any digital audio today alone, so these devices and the software itself is a good place to look for teh ability to do not just hi res audio but HD video streaming as well, which is a much bigger task. |
PLEX media server and player appliations is a very good place for anyone to start with that is looking for good sounding computer audio without a major investment in a lot of proprietary hardware, like SOnos, BlueSound, or Squeezebox in the past. Plus, PLEX is a high res MEDIA server, not just audio, so HD video, digital photography and hi res music streaming are all part of PLEX. If anyone is interested, I am open to emails on teh topic. I have just started with PLEX recently as an experiment to replace Squeezebox eventually and have had a lot of success to date I can share, plus I am very interested in what other audiophiles might be doing with PLEX or anything else out there similar. |
PLEX is really very simple, at least the basic server and GUI apps are. Its still evolving very actively though, so I expect even better things soon down the road. It can get a little tricky when you add in things like Casting, but that is a very nice capability once you get you arms around it. |
Still my digital transport is better - it is richer, more extended top to bottom, more refined and silky smooth. This is, to my ears, much closer to my reference vinyl setup that is amongst the best money can buy. Alex, this mirrors what my audio acquaintances (one of whom was using a top of the line Offramp) have discovered. What are the reasons for this? |
Am I missing something here? Can CDPs play DXD or DSD128? If not, then what is the discussion about? If I run natively recorded hirez/DSD thru the right CA gear, then CDPs cant touch that. For RBCD, we can have a debate, but CDPs are inherently too limited. A CDP Dac may also be compromised unless they run separate chipsets. |
For greater than CD resolution, computer audio may be the only viable ticket in town at this point with any stable future ahead of it. Personally, I have not gone there to-date in that I am happy with CD resolution in most cases and the benefits I foresee do not outweigh the overhead and cost involved, though Plex might help put me there sooner rather than later. It supports very high streaming rates for HD video. NOt exactly sure yet how much of that carries over into audio libraries, but when I stream audio at the higher bitrates available, some CD level or higher, it sounds VERY GOOD!!!! |
I was going to ignore the last post to me, I cannot bring myself to do it, saying there is an error in my logic was very incredibly wrong, so I will attemt to get you to understand again, I have a $25.00 RCA interconnect made by-for vincent audio that came with the digital player, Then I have and use a $15,950.00 retail balanced 1-meter interconnect, I gurantee you there is a HUGE difference in performance between the two cables on my digital player, I also have a $3,000.00 balanced interconect 1-meter, The most exspensive cable is a Tara labs Zero Gold with HFX grounding station, The next exspensive cable is a Tara labs The One cable, To my ears the zero cable makes the model called the One sound broken, now I got that out of the way, The most exspensive USB cables made are very inexspensive and the performance is about the same as the vincent RCA interconnect, there is some USB cables that are $300.00 under $1,000.00 period, ask your self why is that?, lets see here, USB is NOT for audio, it is for data, and the usb termination is way to small for a world class cable to be terminated with, Tara Labs sales a usb cable, it's not much money at all, so At the end of the day, It does not matter if you have a live band cabled to your system through a USB cable, this is not logic, It is a astonishing FACT, by useing the usb cable even with a live band, the out come is so inferrior because the cable cannot reproduce performance as close to the real thing as possible, I understand that some computer audio is better than my cd-player for a source, My fact here is that with the cables I have on my player versus comuter audio's best with a usb cable used for audio, there is absolutly no way possible for the sound out come to be better than what I have, if that were possible, the cable companys would go out of bussiness, that would be saying my cables are worthless, get a $25.00 usb cable, that works better, LOL!, I also understand computer audio can sound very good, and may give user perks such as a menu to walk around with, that's great, I get it, But as I said before, I am tring to get the best sound possible, to be in the realm of world class audio, I cannot achieve that with such inadequete very poor cables such as usb, if you cannot understand this, then I am lost for words and give up, best of luck to you. |
