Popular Post kumakuma Posted December 29, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 29, 2020 Siltech817, sphinxsix, lucretius and 4 others 7 Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley Through the middle of my skull Link to comment
Popular Post kumakuma Posted December 29, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted December 29, 2020 Ishmael Slapowitz, lucretius, DuckToller and 4 others 1 6 Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley Through the middle of my skull Link to comment
Popular Post kumakuma Posted January 1, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted January 1, 2021 13 minutes ago, GUTB said: Last month I received a CD transport from AliExpress which claimed to copy a Wadia circuit. It was close to $1k after shipping. I ended up breaking it trying to open the case but luckily the seller was willing to ship me a replacement cable harness for the front panel. After fixing this and soldering a lose power line to the power button, it's fully operational. So, with my new transport I decided to go back to my Jazz MQA-CD sample pack I got from JapanCD. It includes both the MQA-CD and regular CD of the same tracks. This time I hooked up my reference MQA DAC, the Mytek Liberty + linear power supply directly up to the amp and used it's built-in analog volume control chip, bypassing my Yaqin B-2T. This way I hoped I could get maximum resolution / lowest noise possible with my system. The Liberty's linear supply was plugged into my 500VA balanced isolation transformer, and the amp (Odyssey Kismet) plugged in to the Furutech outlet using a Lessloss Level 1 power filtering cable + Lessloss Firewall 64X. The Liberty to Kismet connection was SE on both ends. The transport connected to the DAC via AES/EBU. Testing procedure was to listen to a track, stop the CD, replace it with the other media, and play the track again. By nature this will result in a perfectly level-matched scenario. The MQA-CD displayed the effect of certain instruments and vocals appearing to be more forward / louder. Position in the sound stage doesn't change, just the more forward, as if leaning into the mic. Cymbals took on a more 3-dimensional character. Image size and position doesn't change, there appeared to be more air around it, better defined against the other instruments and vocals, giving the illusion of a more 3-dimensional presence. The bass is a little more defined; you can hear the harmonics a little better. NOTE 1: MQA-CDs from Japan are actually pressed on UHQCD. This is a new CD and physical mastering media technology which supposedly returns a stronger and more uniform signal to the laser pickup. In my previous testing with a UHQCD (not MQA-CD, just a regular CD sampler pressed on UHQCD vs the same tracks on a normal CD) I believe I noticed a minor improvement to bass definition in some tracks, so the above findings should be taken with a grain of salt. NOTE 2: as this is a sampler meant to evaluate the performance of MQA-CD, it was obviously designed to put MQA's best foot forward. Weather or not one finds the forwardness of certain midrange pleasing, it's very clear there was a significant and very noticeable difference, and the differences just weren't in midrange presentation but also in dimensionality and definition with certain aspects (with the caveat in NOTE 1 applicable). Now I wonder if there is way to analyze the unfolded MQA stream? I guess it would be possible to plug the Liberty's SE out to a 3.5mm plug into a PC or maybe my iPad, but that's going to run it through a ADC phase. How would one go about grabbing the digital output of the unfolder? I guess I can rip the MQA-CD easily enough. https://www.avsforum.com/threads/are-mqa-cds-better-simply-because-theyre-louder.3002934/ MikeyFresh, Teresa and botrytis 2 1 Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley Through the middle of my skull Link to comment
kumakuma Posted January 5, 2021 Share Posted January 5, 2021 2 hours ago, GUTB said: Wait, I forgot that General is for non-audiophiles. It’s been a while since I was last active and I forgot about that. Audiophiles are in other sections and don’t often post in General. botrytis 1 Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley Through the middle of my skull Link to comment
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