I thought I would give a manuf perspective on this, since I have about 30 years experience and have been exhibiting at CES and RMAF for about 13 years. I am an engineer and designer, in addition to running a business.
The things that I have noticed with my own system over time and other customer, reviewer and show systems:
1 invariably, the system uses an active preamp, which tends to homogenize the sound and mask the detail and imaging. This is due to compression, harmonic distortion and noise added by the active pre.
2 If the system is digital, the jitter from the master clock, either in the CD player or computer interface, is too high and adds significant noise. Sometimes this noise is like an echo, so the listener can be fooled into thinking that this is a bigg soundstage, when it is not.
3 if the system is digital, the DAC invariably uses digital filtering, the so called "brick-wall". This does the most damage to the sound. This is
why NOS DACs are so popular.
listeners With the above symptoms often still feel that their system is extremely resolving, when in fact it is not, compared to systems that address the above issues properly.
How to address the above issues?
1 eliminate the preamp, by using the best volume control technology available in the DAC or use a transformer based linestage, such as the Music First
2 Use the computer interface or the CD Transport with the very lowest jitter clock technology.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
The things that I have noticed with my own system over time and other customer, reviewer and show systems:
1 invariably, the system uses an active preamp, which tends to homogenize the sound and mask the detail and imaging. This is due to compression, harmonic distortion and noise added by the active pre.
2 If the system is digital, the jitter from the master clock, either in the CD player or computer interface, is too high and adds significant noise. Sometimes this noise is like an echo, so the listener can be fooled into thinking that this is a bigg soundstage, when it is not.
3 if the system is digital, the DAC invariably uses digital filtering, the so called "brick-wall". This does the most damage to the sound. This is
why NOS DACs are so popular.
listeners With the above symptoms often still feel that their system is extremely resolving, when in fact it is not, compared to systems that address the above issues properly.
How to address the above issues?
1 eliminate the preamp, by using the best volume control technology available in the DAC or use a transformer based linestage, such as the Music First
2 Use the computer interface or the CD Transport with the very lowest jitter clock technology.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio