Can Mac/PC compete with High End CDT??


Dear All,

I want to believe (do you?) that the Mac or PC approach can work, at least be good enough. Being that my prime source is analog digital music is secondary but at the same time compulsory for recent and actual recordings.

Reading reviews and opinions floating around online I was curious to hear for myself in a high end system, a sort of A/B singular test was needed; away from commercial pressures and inexperienced ears.

Full of great expectation I head to a fellow audiophile's den, both of us motivated to get to the bottom of this question ourselves.

So we got ourselves organized and ended up with a promising menu: Esoteric P0, Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter, Mac with Amara/iTunes then Kondo Dac with the Esoteric P0 and then Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter using fire wire interface from Mac/Amara/itunes via the Kondo DAC.

All the “virtual music” was obviously uncompressed format.

Preamp Absolare, amp New Audio Frontiers Ref 845 and Acapella Triolon Excalibur and some very good cables.

Being used to the sound of Kondo electronics and Goto horns that furnish my listening room, fed by micro seiki SX8000, CEC TL0x Cd transport at 1st I must say that I was disappointed with the sound that the P0 was delivering via the Weiss Dac.

I will not be long-winded here: this was not good. The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one-dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The resolution of the electronics and speakers told the cruel truth in this 70m² dedicated listening room. No fine-tuning I have ever encountered could solve this even with the widest stretch of imagination.

So the Mac/Amara/iTunes? Okay no gain no pain! Here it was no pain all gain, I mean, it sounded the same including the flaws but with the added advantage of mac based music selection as opposed to cd loading. This seemed promising, made me jump to the conclusion that the culprit was the Weiss DAC, not the fire wire interface.

So in goes the Kondo DAC driven by the P0, okay! I will lack vocabulary here it is truly amazing. My host and I within the 1st seconds looked at each other, not even in the listening seats, we agreed with each other without saying a word! Then we let the CDs play on, simple as that!

We kind of played around here knowing deep down that the next step was the “juge de paix” (for those who don’t master French that is “peace judgment”).

So we wired the Weiss Firewire/spdif interface to the Kondo Dac using the Mac/Almara/iTunes.

As it stands I had spoken to Daniel Weiss (owner/designer of Weiss Audio) a few days before and he explained to me that CD transport and Mac/PC was fundamentally the same thing; delivering 0 and 1 and the interface was just passing those 0s and 1s to the DAC.

So? I may have to repeat myself here : The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The Kondo DAC was telling us all about the sources. I walk way from this with knowing that Mac/PC is not ready to replace a CD transport in high end system dedicated to experiencing music and all the emotional treasures that it has in store for us to enjoy.

So what does this mean? I think that in certain preamp/amp speaker combinations the hard disk be it mac or PC may work and certain reviewers will confirm this. However, if that system resolution comes to change, that its goes up the ladder, then the flaws in this approach will become apparent.

It would be advisable to ascertain your future with music and the associated audio equipment before marching towards the immaterial virtual music world.

Well a good friend of mine who hides in the shadows of the Bavarian landscape warned that no hard disk system could compete with the better CD transports, he is perfectly correct!

Tim
soundlistening
wow, I have a mac book pro and was contemplating moving forward but got caught up in all the forum discussions and quite frankly got a little frustrated. Probably due to my lack of computer knowledge. Im caught between upgrading my systems source (CD, Pre) or the new weiss dac. Used tubed AR equipment and the Weiss are in the same monitory ballpark. You keep writing and ill keep reading. Still on the fence here. The convenience of a computer music server is not my objective, the best sound is. great forum you guys....
computeraudiophile DOT com is the place to go for lots of this discussion. The whole process is extremely frustrating for sure. I think convenience is where it's at with computer audio, not necessarily to get the best sound. I think the sound is a wash now, with better DACs and server options, which makes it worth doing for the convenience of having all your music loaded in one place in high res files. I have set up a squeezebox upstairs in my 2 ch system and one downstairs on my HT system and run a coax digital cable right into the DAC in each system (into my Pio pre/pro downstairs and my Bel Canto DAC3 up. Plus you get streaming internet radio from all over the world, very awesome. My wife loves getting her hometown Philly stations in Texas which makes me a happy guy because she indulges my hobby.....
a few month ago, one of the review in TAS tested the benchmark dac with different transport and yet they sound quite different.( the unit is supposely immune to jitter).
there was a big discussion on why. i am not a computer person, but it seems there are still issues that hasn't been fully resolve yet. i am sitting on the fence about ripping my 1000+ cds in server
"one of the review in TAS tested the benchmark dac with different transport and yet they sound quite different.( the unit is supposely immune to jitter)."

Haven't read that but my guess if true is that different transports perhaps had different approaches to error correction that might impact sound. Optical drives are inherently error prone. Disk storage and networks are less so. I doubt you would hear any difference with different computer based music servers serving up files to a network player. You might when different computers interface directly to the same DAC in that different software, interfaces and other factors might come into play. You might hear a subtle difference between say a Roku Soundbridge and Squeezebox interfaced similarly to the same DAC, but I would question whetehr the difference here would be of any real significance.
"I doubt you would hear any difference with different computer based music servers serving up files to a network player"

Very well said, Mapman!