Hifi Vs Computer Audiophile DAC’s

[tfarney]

"I can only assume that Tim and Ashley have never heard a really good vinyl front end..."

 

Then you would assume wrong, though my favorite source, in the analog days, was a tape deck running at 15ips. Infinitely superior to vinyl, IMO, and not nearly as fussy, but still lacking compared to a good master, even on redbook cd. MHO. YMMV. And I will not assume your disagreement means you've not heard a good digital rig.

 

Tim

 

[Purite Audio]

Touche Tim, what is your system at home?

 

[daglesj]

...I've never heard a vinyl system high end or otherwise that doesnt have me leaving the room by track three with the distortion that occurs due to tracking angles going awol. Just the nature of the beast, cant be helped.

 

This is even on properly setup decks. After listening to digital the distortion was even more apparent.

 

Cant listen to them. But if folks love em then thats great.

 

Anyway back to DACs......how much do these chips cost from the actual manufacturer? Any pricelists just out of curiosity?

 

 

 

[Opusover21]

I'll stick to my guns on speakers influencing sound the most but hey..I'm running QUAD 2805's...so nothing is mainstream about those! ;-)

 

ANyway created a bit of a str this one but just wonndered why high hifi DACS dont appear as rated as specialist like the benchmark, Weiss...if they were basically the same...the new esoteric transport/DAC looked as if the DAC on its own was a good buy but never seem my usual suspects mentioned here hence the curiosity..

 

[Ashley James]

"I can only assume that Tim and Ashley have never heard a really good vinyl front end..."

 

I'm afraid not as I've already explained on another thread. I did spend quite a bit of money on vinyl in the early nineties, but I couldn't get on with it and I haven't bothered with it since. I just threw all my records away bought digital replacements of what I wanted. But what has this to do with DACs?

 

Ash

 

[darrenwm]

I've just put a vinyl record on it sounds quite awful.

 

Is this the musicality I read about?

 

I think I'll revert to Amy Winehouse Mp3s on a Playstation.

 

[Purite Audio]

That wll be your speakers Darren, get something decent.

 

[darrenwm]

Coops

 

Have you heard a record through a modern loudspeaker?

 

Regards,

 

 

 

[tfarney]

I hardly ever turn on the speakers as they're really only sufficient as background while cooking, etc (and not well-located for any of the above). They are Cambridge Soundworks Model Sixes. Not bad for what they are, but a bit shouty. All my critical listening, these days, happens from a iBook G4>Trends UD10>Panasonic all digital receiver (SA XR-55)>Sennehiser HD580s. There is also a vintage HK integrated amp that has been used a lot, but is currently off-line. It has a warm, tubey sound to it that I like, but the cheapo Panny is a bit more detailed, quiet, and spacious. I'd love to have some speakers right for near field listening, but, alas, current finances do not allow. Soon, perhaps.

 

Tim

 

[Purite Audio]

Thanks for the link ASH, I can't see any turntables though just some computer speakers!

Here is a link with some turntables ,

http://www.oswaldsmillaudio.com/Products/turntables.html

 

[Ashley James]

Coops

 

We take turntables very seriously and put anyone interested in using them with our products in touch with www.fwhifi.co.uk

 

John Townrow and his father before him have had a hi fi shop in Birmingham UK for around fifty years and this includes a small machine shop where he builds and customises turntables to suit different customer's requirements. He really does know as much as anyone in the UK and he supplies broadcasters and serious collectors as well restoring and digitising old records for himself and his customers.

 

I'd draw your attention to his well thought out, intelligent and informative website where due respect is show for this technology.

 

But what does it have to do with this thread?

 

Ash

 

[AV-OCD]

I currently have my Mac Mini connected to a high-end prepro via the toslink output of the Mac. Is there some improvement to the sound quality to be had by outputting via USB to a digital converter that outputs toslink or coax digital?

 

[elrod-tom]

I commented on this in an earlier thread, but IMHO the DAC chip itself is in some respects the LEAST important part of this thing we call a DAC. The analog outstage and power supply are IMHO what turns the signal received from the chip into what we call music. This is why I've tended thus far to favor traditional DACs.

 

Some folks have talked about how the analog output stage ought to be minimalist, and that anything else is simply coloration of the sound. I never do know where to go with this...if it's colored in a pleasant way, I guess that's fine by me.

 

Now, I also do a lot of listening on a USB DAC that's integrated into a headphone amp (HeadRoom Balanced Desktop), and it's an enjoyable listen at that. I'm also currently in the market for a Mac Mini and Apogee Duet, as several folks whose opinions I respect greatly have sold their high-end DACs after acquiring these two modestly priced components. My position is that I'll believe it when I hear it, but I'll be VERY pleased to hear it if I do.

 

Please don't misunderstand...I do acknowledge that, with the newer DAC chips, the difference between a modestly priced "computer" DAC and higher end DAC from a traditional manufacturer are less than they would have been even a few years ago. I don't subscribe to the point of view, however, that an M-Audio Transit (which I own, BTW) is the functional equivalent of a high-end traditional digital source. The good news is that the best implementations of computer audio that I've ever heard used that same Transit as optical out to feed a Wadia with a digital in. So it's my opinion that we can all live together in harmony.

 

[Mallette]

But for most of the good (M-Audio and up) DAC's and soundcards the difference to most of us is measurement rather than audible.

 

As the owner of two main and three smaller but still formidable audio systems I can state that without shutting off my pleasure centers and concentrating on looking for issues I find no significant audible differences between my M-Audio Audiophile USB and my Card Deluxe...or my OPPO player. In fact, even the one system with an Audigy in in is more than adequate.

 

A common thread on this site is measurement vs. experience. I've long since tossed measurement to the engineers. I don't want to pay for measurements...just great music.

 

Dave

 

[tfarney]

I don't think so. The transporter I use does re-clock, but I don't think I'm really gaining anything there. I use it because I have an old iBook G4 without the optical output.

 

Tim

 

[mpmct]

Tim ( AV-OCD ) wrote: "Is there some improvement to the sound quality to be had by outputting via USB to a digital converter that outputs toslink or coax digital?"

 

FWIW, I've switched back-and-forth from Toslink to USB

from Mac to Bel Canto DAC3 too many times the last couple of years.

No difference that I could hear, based on Reference Recordings and similar -- at least in the 30 seconds it took to make the swaps.

But I kept tryin'. ;-)

 

Qualified by ... the DAC3, without the latest upgrade 'only' does 16/44 via USB. Mac to DAC3 via Toslink does 24/96.

And of course one then gets into the settings

on the Mac output ... etc etc. Does the Mac macerate the 16/44s

when it up-samples if one sets Midi to the higher sample rate?

Not that I can tell. Do things sound 'different', even? No,

not beyond the possibility of bias as far as I'm concerned.

 

Do 16/44s sound 'different' when up-sampled by the Mac?

Maybe, but any difference, if one exists, has to be miniscule,

or I need to get back to the ENT doc's office. ;-)

 

The best HDTracks 24/96 recordings I've purchased, are very good.

They are not however, as 'alive' as the best HDCD Reference Recordings

I happen to own, at 16/44. They just ain't. ;-)

 

The 16/44 'alive' recordings sound so similar at either Mac

setting: 16/44 or 24/92, I cannot tell the difference, try as I did,

many times. Sometimes one feels like one of those old geezers

on a beach with a metal detector. God save us that fate.

 

So I'm taking sides with Ashley on this subject. I use Toslink,

a $12 cable from my local 'Cables Are Us' mega-cable-mart.

 

[mpmct]

I needed some cables, I noticed his shop on a side street. I stopped in.

 

He has a degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston,

and a second degree in electrical engineering ( or whatever that degree would be properly named, I don't remember. ) Said he got the second degree some years after the first, when he realized making it

as a musician was kinda' touch-and-go. A man ahead of his time. ;-)

 

He gives music lessons, sells cable he fabricates on the spot, and repairs electronics. He showed me his workshop ... even showed me what happens when a class D amp perishes ... not a pretty picture.

100% charred ruins.

 

He has a small recording room. It contained a MacBook Pro

and M-Audio monitors, and some other stuff I don't understand.

 

I asked him about audio gear, after confessing that I was an audiophool.

What are the issues, starting from the most important? I asked.

 

He said, paraphrasing: "It's all about the speakers, first. They need to

be quality drivers, in a decently designed box,

and they need have an active x-over and multiple amps.

Everything ripples down from there."

 

Can't passive compete, I asked? "Not realistically", he replied.

 

What about silver interconnects, I asked?

He laughed and said they are only fractions as good

as platinum interconnects, but he sells neither.

 

This guy will clearly never be rich. ;-)

 

 

 

[AV-OCD]

Thanks first for turning me onto this website / forum, and second for sharing your experience with USB to external DAC vs. Toslink out from the Mac.

 

I should mention that I spent a couple of hours comparing the sound quality of playing several CDs through my uber-expensive CD player as a transport and playing apple lossless files of the same tracks via toslink from my Mac Mini. I may have heard the slightest difference between the two, but certainly nothing earth shattering and the convenience of the Mac Mini as a music server greatly outweighs any minor improvements there may have been in sound quality from the CD player.

 

But then I started reading this thread and others like it where guys are talking about a hearing significant improvement using I high end transport vs. the toslink out from a Mac, and I start to doubt myself or thinking that maybe I might have been listening for the wrong things.

 

 

[tfarney]

"I start to doubt myself or thinking that maybe I might have been listening for the wrong things."

 

Only if you were not listening for the music.

 

(the other) Tim

 

[Daphne]

Well Ashley, you have mentioned the Pro Audio use of Apple computers dating back more than 20 years at least 3 or 4 times.

 

I started college in September of 1988 and can vividly recall receiving my first computer that Christmas. An Apple Macintosh IIx, with the blazing fast 68030 chip running at 16MHz, with 8 MB of RAM memory, a huge 80 MB SCSI hard drive, and the new Super Drive which could read and write on the new 1.44 MB High Density 3.5 inch floppy discs, the unit had 6 NU-Bus slots, and ran MAC OS 6. It even came with a small color CRT monitor that delivered a meager 16 colors. When I returned to college after the holidays it was the coolest computer anyone had seen, and the cost was just under $10,000, the average cost of a new car that year.

 

There was no SPDIF, Toslink, UBS, Fire Wire, or any type of digital audio output. One could get a serial connection for Ethernet and printer, an analog connection from the crude graphics board, but the Macintosh did not have any audio out. I recall massive 150 MB drives that year which could easily cost more than $4000.

 

So, I am just curious about what applications recording studios were using the Macintosh for. Perhaps to issue limited commands to basic digital signal processors using Motorola chips? I'm just now trying to remember if Apple had an external CD ROM drive in 1988. I cannot recall any ASIC cards or any type of audio software until after 1990.

 

Now move forward in time to 1994 with the introduction of the Power Mac, and the beginning of software-based audio recording systems for personal computers, that would be a different story.

 

Perhaps you can more accurately recall and describe the exact use of the Macintosh II series in pro audio prior to 1992. Just out of curiosity, a little history might be interesting.

 

Thanks,

 

Daphne

 

[mpmct]

I didn't receive email updates to this thread for some reason.

Regardless, you're welcome.

 

I was full of preconceptions about the sonic sacrifices I

would be making in moving to a Mac music server a couple of years ago. My local hi-end dealer, who knows zilch about computers generally,

had 'warned' me. Of course he did. :-)

 

Even when one has every reason to think that someone's advice or commentary is probably not based in reality, it still impinges. The incredible power of suggestion/bias/preconception -- most of us have no idea, or are loathe to consider, let alone admit, how powerful those things are. Just MHO.

 

Now he has a Linn music server, with what strikes me as an awful little PDA

interface gadget with arcane icons and terrible typography, requires a stylus etc. etc. Basically, 2-3 years behind Steve Jobs. Of course this music server makes hard drive servers OK/official because, according to him:

"It has a Linn DAC!" Of course. ;-)

( And I really like this guy, by the way. He's good people. But ... )

 

 

 

[Ashley James]

Daphne.

 

I suspect that you're right, you know a great deal more about computers than I do, so I'll explain and you can add the correct dates.

 

I started regular visits to the States in 1987, I did the CES's and visited recording studios in New York and Los Angeles and also Warner Bros and I think Sony or Universal. I also visited studios in HK and all over the UK and some in Europe. We were selling a lot of Monitors (Big Active ATCs) and mostly to top studios and famous people. Apple Computers were often present in control rooms, but I didn't know what they did. I'd got my first office one in '87 and was fighting with a hideous program called Word Perfect! However the first time I saw an Apple Computer, I think mastering and editing, was with Bruce Leek who was working for Jack Renner at Telarc. I didn't understand the process well, but I believe a small section at a time was lifted from the master tape, processed and passed on to a new tape. I believe the recordings were digital and I think the recorders were open reel. At the same time I visited a sound man attached to the LA Philharmonic and a scoring mixer working for Shawn Murphy. All were using the same process. I stopped visiting the States in '93 but continued to go to UK recording studios until '95. Between '93 and '95 larger Apple Computers appeared that could process multi tracks and had colour monitors, although they still held only about 10 minutes of music.

 

I believe David Lord who'd produced music for Peter Gabriel, Jean Michel Jarre and INXS also used Apple very early on too. He was very clever with Fairlight Synthesisers and had a bank of Alesis digital tape recorders that used Video cassettes. I think each machine had eight tracks.

 

I thought that this process started before 1990 and grew exponentially, but you're probably right and it was 1992. I'll leave you to fill in the gaps!

 

Ashley

 

 

 

[Franklin]

I will say that specs are specs, regardless of brand, with the following observations:

1. You might find the build quality, parts, fit and finish of the HiFi Dac's to be superior to ones marketed to computer audiophiles. HiFi Dacs will be purchased by folks used to gold RCA's, discreet power supply's, heavy vibration resistant housings and living room safe (read: spouse approved) aesthetics. This is not to say that there are quality computer Dac's out there, its just that the markets, end-users have been traditionally different. Most audiophiles I know, including myself, are jaded by the gear we have come to know in our world. Not right or wrong, just different.

2. To build on the above, since the audiences have been traditionally different, the related trade mags have existed in isolated silos, although the most recent issues of Stereophile and Absolute Sound feature music servers, dacs and high end hard drives. I am sure we will see more of a convergence in "Dac marketing" over the next year or so. I would imagine that there is still a lot of business to be had by companies already established for both sides.

 

[Gordon R]

Happy newyear everyone.

 

I reckon computer audiophile has saved me in the region of $16000 dollars, which is what I would have spent on cables, cd player and preamp. My only regret is I did not find it sooner. As to the whole debate with regards to hifi or pro audio dacs and which are better. There are price extremes in both segments, but do you really think that something like the m audio fast track dac is sonically equivalent to a Weiss dac2 or Lavry gold? Do you get more for your money vs hifi dacs? yes. Are ordinary hifi dacs suited to computers? Yes so long as they can accept an optical signal and handle different sample rates eg 24 bit/192 khz etc.

I bought and use a chord qbd 76. The swingers for me were its ram buffer, multiple inputs and outputs, including clock output. I've tried optical, usb and bluetooth at 16/44 and could not tell the difference with wav or aiff files. 24/96 was clearly superior and thats the rate i've left my mac mini at. I've also used it with a laptop pc running vista. The problem with the pc is that the playback software each sounds very different.

 

j river= accurate but flat.

medimonkey = good

lilith = best balance but fidly to use. (hope you understand japanese)

wmp = easy to use but worst sounding

sony sonicstage = not as good as wmp

win amp = average

 

I tunes on mini = best and easiest to use.

 

I hope this helps.

Regards

 

Gordon

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Daphne]

Ashley:

 

Thanks for the reply. From what you described started me thinking about that time. The Macintosh II was a dream machine. There was not an abundant of applications available which inspired everyone to explore the possibilities of a personal computer. I can now recall the main focus for audio use during the late 08s and early 90s was synthesizing sounds. When Apple abandoned NeXT and adopted the RISC architecture in 1994, software developers expanded and offered all kinds of wonderful applications.

 

I seem to recall that sometime around 1990 and 1992 someone developed a program for cleaning up the sound from analog tapes so older recordings could be converted to CDs. I believe the original program was written in UNIX and converted for use on the Mac II. Originally, it was a time consuming process because few applications processed in real time due to the limitations of RAM memory and the read and write times on the hard drive.

 

When it comes to synthesizing sounds during that time, for some reason Yamaha comes to mind, but I'm not sure about the role they played.

 

I just had to laugh about that about Word Perfect comment, I can remember cursing that program on many occasion.

 

I do seem to recall a bit of trivia: during 1985 Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms was the first CD to sell more than a million copies.

 

Thanks Ashley for taking us down memory lane for a few moments.

 

Daphne