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Showing results for tags 'simplification'.
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After seeing a thread titled No More Computer Hassles (in which a computer was replaced by a physical media player with a computer), it got me wondering how much of a performance hit one might take if one replaced all of the audiophile-oriented features with decent-quality consumer-grade options. Let's say for example 99% of my music files are either redbook, AAC/mp3, or 24/48 or 24/96 PCM. How much of a performance hit would I take if I just used iTunes and set Audio MIDI setup to 24/96 output, so that coreaudio would just upsample everything to that and send it to my DAC? How much of a performance hit would be entailed in using, for example, a $1K consumer-grade TEAC DAC (which is the best I have, fwiw)? How much of a performance hit would be entailed using a well-engineered, well-measuring, but moderately-priced generic amplifier (pick your favorite "topology")? How much of a performance hit would be entailed using well-behaved speakers that cost $100s of dollars rather than multiples of $1K, especially if these used room/speaker correction and/or active monitors? In other words, would we really lose all that much by forgoing all the audiophile expense and angst in favor of carefully-selected quality mainstream consumer-grade alternatives and focused more on enjoying music? Could we actually gain anything just by simplifying the signal path?
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