The usual question

[4est]

John:

 

I am sorry if it seemed as if I was looking for a fight, I was just leading towards the suggestion that I think you may have given up too soon, and waiting may be fruitless. To each his own...

[sjoc2000]

It really is the golden age of the DAC right now. There's not a week without yet another company coming out with a new exciting product. And they are coming from all directions, traditional hifi brands, new digital audio startups like Resonessence or Mytek that came from the professional audio or digital design...

 

Bingo and great advice. You are only get so much out of a $100 Dac. Now, I'm a bit partial to the Dacit, see review here;

 

Computer Audiophile - Peachtree Audio DAC•iT Review (AKA DACiT)

 

There are many great recommendations on different dacs here from $300-10,000. You have the other parts of your system already in place, and look fine. If you do your homework and try one with good usb implementation then you won't need a converter.

 

The trick is a little homework and then trials. Don't have to buy one, just do a trial to see if you have found what your looking for, and if not send it back...

 

Jim

[HIFI]

Hi Cubist,

 

 

 

My first suggestion is to spend time and energy before considering spending money.

 

For example, before assuming the system is bass deficient, let's ascertain that your speakers and listening position are not situated in such a fashion that you are listening from a null (a point in the room where there might be a dip in the bass).

 

For more information see this, which I hope is of help (or at least provides some food for thought).

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

Barry, and others here on CA, has saved me money/time by looking closer at what I have and how it is playing in the room. I can say Barry's suggestion is one I would put at the top of my list.

[John R Leddy]

John:

 

I am sorry if it seemed as if I was looking for a fight, I was just leading towards the suggestion that I think you may have given up too soon, and waiting may be fruitless. To each his own...

 

No problem Forrest. I tried my good lady's laptop with an outboard DAC into my stereo. Besides simply not liking the look of a laptop near my system, I considered the combined cost of a new laptop and DAC, while certainly offering more maneuverability when upgrading, to be too close to the cost of an integrated network player, which to be honest I just prefer the look of.

 

You would have laughed at my hypocrisy, as in "do what I say not what I do," as I considered which player to buy. Fortunately reason prevailed, the plastic returned to my wallet, and a budget device was purchased. I'm not waiting for DSD. Quite the contrary. I've been ripping my CDs to FLAC for about 10 years now; a year after FLAC became available whenever that is.

 

I've bought a new Cambridge Audio Stream Magic 6 which costs £700 here in the UK, which will just have to do for now. I'm really after a T+A E-Series Music Player Balanced which is £2,900 RRP, but that purchase would both clear my current hi-fi money stash and leave an outstanding balance on my credit card. Read, end of sex life!

 

I'm currently putting money away for another amp, with the proviso if I see a pair of second-hand Hyperion HPS-938s, I'll just blow the money on those. I'm glad now I resisted the temptation to spend £1,400 on a Cyrus streamer, but it was a close run thing at the time!

 

I bought my first CD player in 1985. They were all integrated at the time. Then later the trend was to have and outboard DAC with either an integrated player or transport. I've used a couple of different Audio Alchemy Digital Decoding Engines with whichever integrated CD player I happened to own at the time. After blowing a small fortune on an Audiolab 8000CDM and 8000DAC, the trend then reversed back to integrated players again.

 

Of course, reversing trends didn't effect my enjoyment or the sound quality of the kit I owned, but now that I'm a cynical old bastard I can't help wanting to stick with an integrated solution. Just me being me! You've reminded me I replaced my Linn Ikemi with a Unidisk 2.1 especially for SACD replay. I own one SACD disc, so there's a laugh for you. That said, what a player! Better than any record deck I ever owned, but that's another story.

 

All the best,

 

John.

[Musicophile]

It does seem to be a moving target, but at some point if you want good sound you kind of have to jump in. In some ways I'm glad I didn't drop a load of dough on the new QB-9 back then, but at the same time, I know I've not been enjoying the sound I might have over the last three years, and it's not like I'm going to get those opportunities back.

 

Thanks for your insights.

 

Keep us posted on what you end up buying. The good news is, the average sound quality of even entry level DACs these days is pretty amazing by any absolute standard, so in the end the chances are very high you'll very much enjoy it.

 

And I fully agree with Barry et al. above that there are many tweaks to a system that don't cost money.

[mayhem13]

Hi Cubist,

 

 

 

My first suggestion is to spend time and energy before considering spending money.

 

For example, before assuming the system is bass deficient, let's ascertain that your speakers and listening position are not situated in such a fashion that you are listening from a null (a point in the room where there might be a dip in the bass).

 

For more information see this, which I hope is of help (or at least provides some food for thought).

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

Don't worry Barry, the laws of physics still exist, so a 6.5" woofer with 3mm xmax isn't going to be prodigious in the LF department unless in a closet.

[Cubist]

Hi Cubist,

 

 

 

My first suggestion is to spend time and energy before considering spending money.

 

For example, before assuming the system is bass deficient, let's ascertain that your speakers and listening position are not situated in such a fashion that you are listening from a null (a point in the room where there might be a dip in the bass).

 

For more information see this, which I hope is of help (or at least provides some food for thought).

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

Thanks Barry - lot of good stuff there. This weekend I moved my audio downstairs to an altogether more suitible location. In general I've decided to decouple the audiophile function from the audio wallpaper function. The latter will be a Sonos fed by ALAC.

[Cubist]

Keep us posted on what you end up buying. The good news is, the average sound quality of even entry level DACs these days is pretty amazing by any absolute standard, so in the end the chances are very high you'll very much enjoy it.

 

And I fully agree with Barry et al. above that there are many tweaks to a system that don't cost money.

 

I'm still mulling the options DAC-wise. In the meantime, I decided that with the good deals on Friday to max out the RAM and buy an SSD to replace the stock drive in the Mac Mini. The original drive will go in an enclosure and become a dedicated data (music files) drive.

 

I'm going to do a bit of googling into the following question:

 

Is there merit in getting a firewire enclosure for the data drive so that the USB circuitry can be dedicated to the DAC? It seems like good isolation measure, but I have no idea if it truly matters. Same question with respect to the USB mouse and keyboard - I could (and have) run the Mac Mini headless.

[bdiament]

Hi Cubist,

 

...Is there merit in getting a firewire enclosure for the data drive so that the USB circuitry can be dedicated to the DAC?...

 

It is always a good idea to run the data drive and the DAC from different busses.

For example, I use the USB port on my external drive(s) with a Firewire DAC.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

[Cubist]

Hi Cubist,

 

 

 

It is always a good idea to run the data drive and the DAC from different busses.

For example, I use the USB port on my external drive(s) with a Firewire DAC.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

Well it does seem logical... I guess one option I had not conisdered is to hang USB(?) drive off my Airport Xtreme and connect the MacMini by ethernet.

[bdiament]

Hi Cubist,

 

Well it does seem logical... I guess one option I had not conisdered is to hang USB(?) drive off my Airport Xtreme and connect the MacMini by ethernet.

 

Does your DAC allow an Ethernet connection? Or did I miss something?

 

One thing I did miss is the Toslink connection. I believe another means of connection to the DAC could yield immediate sonic improvements. It isn't a problem if the setup is just used for background listening.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

[Cubist]

Hi Cubist,

 

 

 

Does your DAC allow an Ethernet connection? Or did I miss something?

 

One thing I did miss is the Toslink connection. I believe another means of connection to the DAC could yield immediate sonic improvements. It isn't a problem if the setup is just used for background listening.

 

Best regards,

Barry

Soundkeeper Recordings

Barry Diament Audio

 

No I just mean that I can plug an ethernet cable into my Airiport so that I have wired rather than wireless access to the drive at the cost of a (cheap) USB enclosure. If that solution proves lacking then I can get a (more expensive) firewire enclosure and plug that directly into that Mac Mini. In either case my future USB DAC will have exclusive use of the Mac Mini's USB.

[Cubist]

In my opinion, far from sounding trite and soft-headed, you've described the ambition of this pastime most accurately. However, I personally found continuously planning ahead for the next upgrade a major distraction when it came to enjoying my music collection. After much box swapping, I chose to get off the treadmill and have been enjoying listening to my music in a more relaxed way, without concerning myself with the ultimate replay quality being more important than the music itself.

 

Whilst chasing the next upgrade, I listened to systems costing between £40,000 and £50,000 and found there was very little difference, relative to the necessary expenditure, to my own £15,000 system, and really only supplied more of the same. I had a good think about my next move, and deciding to stop pursuing what was never going to happen anyway (what you described above), simply stopped chasing my tail on the continuous upgrade path.

 

Good news! Based on your down to earth approach for your current purchases, there is a way to achieve maximum sound for pound enjoyment from your high fidelity system. If you bought the best second-hand PrimaLuna integrated amplifier your current funds allowed, and retained your other components for now, you would have very fine amplification on which to build a system well into the future.

 

Following with an integrated network player would provide a neat and economical source. I imagine we'll all still be chasing our tails for front-ends, but with technology changing so quickly, we shouldn't be too far behind the current trends of the time, whilst buying second-hand components at half-RRP. On the other hand, with amplification sorted and front-ends being dictated by technological advances, loudspeaker purchases may be left to as and when an economical improvement presents itself in the second-hand market.

 

This is only one man's solution, but from personal experience I feel able to say it certainly possesses great economy, whilst providing the essentially required fun-factor which is missing from most systems costing tens of thousands of pounds. With this approach I find myself concentrating more on the music, rather than the collection of components it's being played on. Freedom!

 

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I do not wish to get into an audio arms race with myself either. And I agree that we are trying at great expense to attain something that is very likely unattainable. However, I do get, from time to time, glimmers of good-enough that make me think that with a few augmentations I could reach a consistent state of good-enough.

 

On the PrimaLuna, (and I'm glad there is good news) I'm a bit surprised. In relative terms, I rank my Primare integrated as the second highest-end component in my system. (the Mac Mini is the highest, becuase it is the one component that is common to systems costing 20 times what mine did) My DAC on the other hand is as cheap as borscht. I will check out the PL though, because it is always interesting when someone feels strongly enough about a product to recommend it by name.

[John R Leddy]

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I do not wish to get into an audio arms race with myself either. And I agree that we are trying at great expense to attain something that is very likely unattainable. However, I do get, from time to time, glimmers of good-enough that make me think that with a few augmentations I could reach a consistent state of good-enough.

 

On the PrimaLuna, (and I'm glad there is good news) I'm a bit surprised. In relative terms, I rank my Primare integrated as the second highest-end component in my system. (the Mac Mini is the highest, becuase it is the one component that is common to systems costing 20 times what mine did) My DAC on the other hand is as cheap as borscht. I will check out the PL though, because it is always interesting when someone feels strongly enough about a product to recommend it by name.

 

In my opinion, the most important component within a hi-fi system is the pre-amplifier. Some say the source, while others say the loudspeakers. In a number of systems I've heard, the pre-amplifier choked the life out of perfectly good high fidelity components. As much as I like Primare, to me, the description you gave of your ambitions really does warrant trying valve amplification. If it doesn't suit your tastes you already own a perfectly good amplifier, as you say.

 

If it was me, I wouldn't be rushing to buy a replacement DAC just yet, as I intuitively think the second-hand market is about to become glutted with cheap DACs. Just my thoughts on the matter. Might just be, with the emergence of DSD DACs, there will be a few bargains to had by early next year, and things will only get better after then. This is why I was suggesting we could virtually ignore our digital sources, and allow availability and price to dictate our purchases as and when they become available. Same goes for loudspeakers, in my mind. I would want them to be a local purchase, so as to be able inspect the corners, edges, and faces; and there's shipping costs to be considered as well.

 

So, while it would be nice to have the latest and greatest front end, I'm not losing sleep over my next purchase. I have over 2,000 x 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC albums, and I won't be rushing to replace them anytime soon. I like network players, simply for what they look like, so what comes along in the future is what comes along. I'm not overly concerned with specifications. As long as my system is heading in the right direction, as far as my taste in presentation is concerned, I'll be happy. In my opinion, this can't be achieved without the correct amplification, no matter the source or loudspeakers.

 

As I've said previously, this is only one way of doing things. Others may take a different route. However, to experience an immediate and possibly lasting assessment of what may, or may not, sound pleasant to your ears, I would recommend starting with the heart of your system by auditioning a valve amplifier.

[Cubist]

In my opinion, the most important component within a hi-fi system is the pre-amplifier...

 

However, to experience an immediate and possibly lasting assessment of what may, or may not, sound pleasant to your ears, I would recommend starting with the heart of your system by auditioning a valve amplifier.

 

Thanks John. I am intrigued and slightly unsettled by tubes. I worry that they become and obsession in themselves. I've stayed away from vinyl too precisely because it would give me too much to fret about. (That, and the wife said "No.") Your point on DACs seems like good strategy.

 

This thread and some of the reading I've been doing have caused me to review my whole approach. I think the best thing I can do right now, is look at the room. Getting the fundamentals of the room right, getting it quiet, neutral, balanced, comfortable and served with clean dedicated electricity conveyed by high quality electrical wiring and receptacles will, in my view, pay dividends when I begin to evaluate and upgrade components, a valve amplifier for example.

 

Thanks to you and the others who contributed. I will post shortly about 'the room' in whichever of the fora seems appropriate.

[Guidof]

Starting with the room (including treatment and digital room correction) seems to me an excellent strategy. In the long run, it will make a major difference.

 

Best luck!

 

Guido F.