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
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.
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.
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This is a good place to start: http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/index.html Then go here: http://www.computeraudiophile.com Good luck |
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 |
Been on a rather lengthy hiatus from the digital world. It seems Apple works very well as a USB driven system such as a Imac mini integrated with an IPAD or IPOD touch if you want remotely access your files. If you try to use an external hard drive for extra storage to access whether you are using a MAc mini or PC laptop, does this add an unwanted signal path that can affect overall clock speed timing or any other audio performance issues? |
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