Thiel Owners

2nd Note;

tomthiel - Can you talk about the Gear in John's system?

Happy Listening!

JA - John’s system is decidedly low-key, and interesting for that. He had sold his system before early retirement to Sandwich. His primary source is streamed music via Tidal, generally high resolution with MQA option. He has a turntable, but I haven’t seen him use it. No disc player at all. The server is (I’m blanking the brand) mid-priced, good performance. His previous server was PC NAS based which he had hot-rodded for verified bit-perfect delivery to the USB output. (John’s background includes MIT electrical engineering and computer science. He knows stuff. The new dedicated server outperforms his PC rig. Amplification is a Prima Luna integrated at about 35 watts, in which he has rolled tubes to firm up the bass, de-glare the mid-highs, etc. Speakers have included Thiel CS1.5, 1.6 and now 2.4s that he bought from audiojan (through this forum). Cables are Belden via BlueJeans, although we have run some of my experiments through his system. Presently we’re looking for a time to compare my StraightWire Rhapsody III ICs and Octave II SCs, as well as a borrowed pair of Iconoclast II speaker cables to his stock stuff. He has some sort of good AC filtration.

His room is well-enough proportioned, but has glass walls behind the speakers and the listeners. Ceiling is high enough, but reinforced with flat trusses. We have swept it and it’s pretty clean, but could definitely use more work. He is a very busy man, and we find time for audio fun less than once a month.

He was a founding operative of JazzBoston (which didn’t make it). He knows musical performance and production and has an amazing ear which I have come to trust more than my own. He is younger with hearing all the way up.

I would say John’s setup is good enough to show intrinsic behavior of whatever we’ve put in (such as Benchmark stack vs his PL). I know this MQA bit-truncation (or whatever we’ll call it) is real, but not yet analyzed enough to make much sense. What we both heard points to the kinds of misgivings I’ve been stirring around.

Tomthiel, 

I do 100% agree with you on MQA. 

I actually did audition by myself using Cary DMS700. I primarily use Roon to play streaming musics and Pachanko is my Computer Audio Transport.(CAT)

I tested it by add both Tidal and Qobuz in the Roon. Played same songs and listened for quite sometimes. Songs on Tidal were all MQA while listened to FLAC lossless on Qobuz. I can notice rightaway that the MQA songs from Tidal were lacking of details and Transient. 

One of Audiophile Groups in Thailand discussed about MQA and we think it's not 'Loseless' format. How can Folded MQA musics as good or better than Native Loseless FLAC/WAV? 

For MQA, we need both Software and Hardware to completely decode and render to get 24/192. Without MQA DAC, you can get only 1 step unfold which is not recommended by MQA. (Software in Roon or Tidal can do only 1 step unfold) 

That's why I'm really don't care about MQA DAC anymore. The MQA render process is to apply some 'Filter' to smoothen the songs. That gives the good and bad at the same time. If you notice. Good DACs in the market rarely have MQA Capability. (Mola Mola, DAVE, Naim....) 

With the Internet Speed today, we can listen to Full Loseless songs on Qobuz without any bandwidth issue. That's why I'm moving from Tidal to Qobuz. 

Jafant, Cary DMS700 is one of a good Streamer+MQA DAC in my opinion. Anyway, It can't compare to separated CAT + DAC. It's the good starting point for streamer but I recommended you to go Esoteric if you need CD Player + DAC. 

bas79

Thank You for the follow up. I do own a sweet Esoteric DV-50 player.

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

Thank You for the follow up. Good to read that you guys had a fun Audio outing.

Happy Listening!