audioengr
Responses from audioengr
| budget USB S/PDIF converter? "USB vs optical, it seems optical produces better results. as for a high end sound card, isn't that redundant (or rather pointless?)"Actually no. The jitter from a USB interface can be much lower than Toslink from the computer. The DAC will not re... | |
| budget USB S/PDIF converter? Davide256 - already being done. It's called Play To and available on Win8. There are several CE manufacturers that have in on their receivers, including Yamaha. These of course are not high-end implementations, so they will probably not beat a CD ... | |
| File format, software and settings? Timlub - have you tried JRiver with Jplay? How about XXhighend?Steve N.Empirical Audio | |
| File format, software and settings? Use dbpoweramp for PC or XLD for Mac:http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/(no advertising)Steve N.Empirical Audio | |
| budget USB S/PDIF converter? There is a PCI card with USB ports on it that evidently makes USB from a PC desktop more listenable. Have not heard it yet myself though..Steve N.Empirical Audio | |
| budget USB S/PDIF converter? Whatever you spent for the DAC, you should spend about the same or even more for the converter, otherwise you are not hearing what your DAC can do.Would you buy a $1K turntable and then put a $50 cartridge on it? I dont think so.Steve N.Empirical ... | |
| Best Server - Mac Mini or Laptop Or ? The Intel SSD will probably work fine.For external Drive, I recommend a RAID 1 preferably removable, connected by Firewire.Steve N.Empirical Audio | |
| Processor DACs Mat - if you are using a typical active preamp, then you will probably not hear much difference in ANY DACs. Replace this with a good transformer passive linestage and you will start to hear differences. Also, given that the jitter of the master c... | |
| Lossless Files Vs CD's Digitalaudio - the jitter of the clock in your "hardware .wav file player" is critical. If it uses a common crystal oscillator, it will not show you what this medium is capable of. The Master Clock is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in ANY digital audio ... | |
| Bricasti M1 - where is the music Antigrunge,The single-ended connections are not a problem for the transformer buffers and linestages. They have both RCA and XLR in and RCA and XLR out. This give the advantage that you can drive balanced from the DAC and then Single-ended from th... | |
| Bricasti M1 - where is the music Antigrunge - what kind of passive attenuator do you use with the Wavacs?I have found that transformer-based is the best. I have a pure silver cryo-treated Music First myself, but I'm developing a transformer buffer stage using the latest Finemet t... | |
| Lossless Files Vs CD's Almarg - there is really easy jitter test for CD transports. Just rewrite a commercial CD track with a CDROM drive from a .wav file on a computer. Use a good disk like Mitsui Audio Master.If you hear any difference between the commmercial disk and... | |
| Lossless Files Vs CD's Jwm - Amarra and PM use the CODECS that are the problem. They work with Apple Mac. You have to turn off itunes and use the playlist function to play FLAC in Amarra.I prefer a particular version of Amarra, not 2.4, over PM. I have compared it to PM... | |
| Lossless Files Vs CD's "It still seems to me that Bit-perfect ripping does provide the best case scenario for reliably getting the data off the optical disk as best as possible"You would be correct, however as stated before here, errors and error correction is not the t... | |
| Lossless Files Vs CD's Jwm - I download all kinds of FLAC files. Then I immediately convert them to .wav. Sounds a LOT better. If you dont hear any difference, its your preamp or your source has jitter too high to hear this. I routinely demonstrate this at RMAF and now ... |