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Dac Questions from an Analogue guy :

As you can see from my Forum name I am a vinyl enthusiast at heart but do from time to time have digital needs so to speak. Upon learning that my DAC on my old CAL LABS ICON MKII Cd player seems to be dead as there is no audio out of the RCA's I figured I would use the digital coax O/P utilizing a friends PS audio NUWAVE DAC since I have never used the digital coax out before. I figured the player was not totally dead because of the fact that when a CD was inserted into the transport all the of the CD info appeared on the player. So I gave it a shot and voila it worked with very nice results. Simple, done. My curiosity furthered me into the other connections on the unit being the USB and the optical. I gather the Optical acts as a link such as the digital coax from my CD player but the USB connection puzzled me a bit. Having looking at the specs of the DAC, it of course is capable of 16/44 audio but can also do 24/96 and 24/192. Of the 2 latter formats, how are these utilized? Through the USB say using a computer or note pad device? I did not do any research as you can see, so these questions I know are rather rudimentary. Do correct me if I am wrong, is the 24/96, DVD audio? ANyways, my whole curiosity of this is how one utilizes the USB connections and all the higher resolution audio features of this DAC. How is the overall Audio quality of these formats? What are my options if I want to delve further into this? yeah I looked on the Net and saw a huge plethera of products which confused me even more so you can say I am a bit brain lazy when it comes to this whole digital format.
I do have an Ipod with MP3's mostly for my car but I can't see that being the end to be all to be utilized with the Dac since I personally find that this overlly compressed format to be inferior. Anyways, any answers starting from 0 would be greatly appreciated.
vinylmad814
realremo
455 posts
 
Vinylmad814, I have a computer based front end, and have done extensive research in the areas of redbook CD playback and upsampling. The CDs you gave your friend can all be ripped to FLAC, or WAV, or AIF, all of these are lossless formats. WAV and AIF can be played by pretty much any software player out there, FLAC cannot be played back on iTunes to my knowledge. High-res files, i.e. 24/96 or 24/192 files you buy on HDtracks.com, can also be formatted into these same file types. What you will get from your friend ripping your CDs will be 16/44, which is the standard for CDs. 16/44 can still sound very, very good; like everything else, it is all about the quality of the recording.
Upsampling is not the same as playing a high res track. Your DAC upsamples the signal to 24/96 or 24/192, but the music signal you are sending the DAC is 16/44, if you are using the CD rips your friend is providing. Upsampling is pretty much what all modern DACs do, it re-samples the 16/44 track at a much higher rate, and it is supposed to push noise artifacts beyond the range of human hearing. Highs are supposed to "smooth out." I cannot really test the difference between a 16/44 track played at 16/44, and that same track upsampled to 24/192, because my current DAC upsamples only, I don't have the choice of non-oversampled playback. So I cannot say that upsampling sounds good or bad, I got into this computer-based-audio thing kind of late. I can say that my PC-rig mops the floor with my Denon changer in sound quality, but the cost differential makes that comparison unfair.
If you purchase iTunes music in 256K mp3 format, those are *not* high res files. the MPEG3 codec cannot push high-res data at that low of a rate (256K).
vinylmad814 OP
59 posts
 
Thanks for the info folks. I just had a chance to go and see a high end audio provider who's main focus is analogue but has been impressed with some of newer digital advances in the past couple years. He is now a dealer for Weiss, a manufacturere of high end Dacs. Like 6 or 7 K!!! Anyways, I just learned of how these high res masters come. With the Weiss Dac a DVD disc with 24/176 files. No player can play these files, so they have to be downloaded to a computer and played through some type of media player of some sort to utilize these files. I must say they sound absolutley fantastic. The best digital sound i have ever heard, hands down. Mind you this is played on a $7,000 dollar Dac with files that have been mastered utilizing this high bit/res rate. From what he understands alot of the material available is not originally mastered at this high level which in turn goes through an upsampling process. Apparently some of these files do not sound all that good and are not worth the cost over its 16/44 counterparts. So buyer beware. Well i am going to have to press on further and actually to a sound test. I can't believe the digital realm has me mildy stoked. lol
wtf's avatar
wtf
306 posts
 
This is a good place to start:

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/index.html

Then go here:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com

Good luck
realremo
455 posts
 
I go to RMAF every year, and have heard some truly incredible digital-based systems there. A $7000 DAC is not a price range that I will ever be in, but happy listening to those that are!
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Some imortant things to understand about USB and computer audio:

1) Just like jitter from a CD transport, jitter from a USB interface is the most important sound quality issue - each USB interface has different jitter levels and therefore different sound quality. Think of it like a phono cartridge. The better the cartridge and technology, the better the sound.

2) You do not need any special server. A Mac Mini works great playing iTunes, however SQ can be improved by loading better playback software such as Amarra, Pure Music or Audirvana. You actually have a better chance of great SQ by using your own computer because you have control over the ripper, music formats and plaher software etc.. This does require some work on your part though.

3) Another option which can also deliver world class SQ is using a networked device such as Sonos, Squeezebox or Apple TV. A reclocker such as the Synchro-Mesh can lower the jitter of these and then feed a good DAC. Like a Transport, these usually only support lower sample-rates such as 44.1kHz.

here are some more tips:
http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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