Are there any young audiophiles?

[davidR]

Hey Chris, that is really exciting to hear! What a cool experience!

 

[MahlerFreak]

Yes Chris, the V3s, with AlphaDAC as the front end, represent by far the most transparent, dynamic, musical system of my 30 years as an audiophile.

 

OT, but speaking of music servers that go beyond most, I recently talked to Blue Smoke about their Black Box server. At first glance, it appears to be just a $7K fanless PC, but they've custom designed all of the digital audio hardware and drivers, and implemented upsampling/filtering algorithms that they say are audibly superior to those in any DAC they've tried it with. After I've sunk over $3K into a fanless PC server that didn't work quite as well as I wanted:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Warning-potential-issue-M-Cubed-hFXAES16

 

I can appreciate the appeal of a solution like this more, even if it's beyond the reach of most folks here.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi MahlerFreak - Your issues with your current mCubed server are something that a good dealer could help you clear up in a heartbeat. These dealers are tough to find right now, but I know they exist because I consult to them :~)

 

I am interested in the Blue Smoke products and I did talk to them at CES. However, the details remain very vague in terms of what they are doing and why it should be better. Also, the Blue Smoke unit seems very closely linked with the MSB DAC which may not thrill many people. Don't get me wrong though, if the Blue Smoke music servers perform great and a functionally easy for the end user I am all for them! I'm just withholding my assessment until more information is available.

 

[MahlerFreak]

Well, I'd be interested in knowing what you, or a good dealer, would try. If it's software tweaking, I'm skeptical - both because of all the things I tried, and because it sounded better in a quick test in another box with no S/W tweaking at all. If it's something like a Faraday cage for the AES16, that's something I haven't tried, and I could easily see that making a difference. I don't know if any of those dealers are in the Pacific NW, but in any case I'm not sure how many would be interested in fixing my DIY project

 

I didn't personally find the details of what the Black Box is supposed to do better to be vague: good jitter management, and advanced, listening test-based, field-programmable DSP-based digital filter design, a la Spectral, Berkeley, Meridian, Ayre. While the consensus on the superior general class of digital filter is converging - minimum phase filtering - the exact filter coefficients are all selected by the ears of the individual designers, and obviously aren't going to be made public. Also, while Blue Smoke represents MSB, and considers the top-line MSB the best DAC, they test with numerous others, including the AlphaDAC.

 

[sshd]

I am 33, but have been an audiophile since I was 17.

 

I think the ipod is blameless for the decrease in audiophiles. It is just a natural evolution starting from Walkman > Discman > Minidisc.

 

The real culprit is the DVD with Dolby Digital surround. It was an obvioius improvement over the old VHS. I think a lot of audiophiles, myself included, started taking interest in surround, thus losing focus on stereo.

 

As the focus changed so did the product lines of the hardware makers. Take Sony's famous ES series as an example. First it was heavily reduced, then changed to focus on surround and finally almost dropped. The ever increasing number of speakers required made it almost impossible for the consumers to buy good quality. And so the quality went down.

 

Of course, the dynamic compression since 1994 did not help either.