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Can Mac/PC compete with High End CDT??

Dear All,

I want to believe (do you?) that the Mac or PC approach can work, at least be good enough. Being that my prime source is analog digital music is secondary but at the same time compulsory for recent and actual recordings.

Reading reviews and opinions floating around online I was curious to hear for myself in a high end system, a sort of A/B singular test was needed; away from commercial pressures and inexperienced ears.

Full of great expectation I head to a fellow audiophile's den, both of us motivated to get to the bottom of this question ourselves.

So we got ourselves organized and ended up with a promising menu: Esoteric P0, Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter, Mac with Amara/iTunes then Kondo Dac with the Esoteric P0 and then Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter using fire wire interface from Mac/Amara/itunes via the Kondo DAC.

All the “virtual music” was obviously uncompressed format.

Preamp Absolare, amp New Audio Frontiers Ref 845 and Acapella Triolon Excalibur and some very good cables.

Being used to the sound of Kondo electronics and Goto horns that furnish my listening room, fed by micro seiki SX8000, CEC TL0x Cd transport at 1st I must say that I was disappointed with the sound that the P0 was delivering via the Weiss Dac.

I will not be long-winded here: this was not good. The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one-dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The resolution of the electronics and speakers told the cruel truth in this 70m² dedicated listening room. No fine-tuning I have ever encountered could solve this even with the widest stretch of imagination.

So the Mac/Amara/iTunes? Okay no gain no pain! Here it was no pain all gain, I mean, it sounded the same including the flaws but with the added advantage of mac based music selection as opposed to cd loading. This seemed promising, made me jump to the conclusion that the culprit was the Weiss DAC, not the fire wire interface.

So in goes the Kondo DAC driven by the P0, okay! I will lack vocabulary here it is truly amazing. My host and I within the 1st seconds looked at each other, not even in the listening seats, we agreed with each other without saying a word! Then we let the CDs play on, simple as that!

We kind of played around here knowing deep down that the next step was the “juge de paix” (for those who don’t master French that is “peace judgment”).

So we wired the Weiss Firewire/spdif interface to the Kondo Dac using the Mac/Almara/iTunes.

As it stands I had spoken to Daniel Weiss (owner/designer of Weiss Audio) a few days before and he explained to me that CD transport and Mac/PC was fundamentally the same thing; delivering 0 and 1 and the interface was just passing those 0s and 1s to the DAC.

So? I may have to repeat myself here : The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The Kondo DAC was telling us all about the sources. I walk way from this with knowing that Mac/PC is not ready to replace a CD transport in high end system dedicated to experiencing music and all the emotional treasures that it has in store for us to enjoy.

So what does this mean? I think that in certain preamp/amp speaker combinations the hard disk be it mac or PC may work and certain reviewers will confirm this. However, if that system resolution comes to change, that its goes up the ladder, then the flaws in this approach will become apparent.

It would be advisable to ascertain your future with music and the associated audio equipment before marching towards the immaterial virtual music world.

Well a good friend of mine who hides in the shadows of the Bavarian landscape warned that no hard disk system could compete with the better CD transports, he is perfectly correct!

Tim
soundlistening

Showing 9 responses by kijanki

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Mapman - Very interesting point. Rip I use (MAX) reads CD like data CD - multiple times if necessary to get correct checksum while CD player cannot do this since it is operating in real time. For that reason CD player has very loose error correction. It gets of course much worse with used CDs (small scratches) while my server will never loose quality. Music on hard drive cannot get "scratched".

I also keep computer at the distance (and at different outlet), to avoid noise contamination, and transmit music wirelessly do Airport Express. Stereophile tested AE for transmission errors and found none. Received S/pdif information was identical to data sent. Word jitter was very low 258ps and my Benchmark DAC1 has huge jitter rejection.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Thuchan - I've never heard any claims about Mini-Disk sounding better than redbook CD and nobody here said that "best CD drives may bring down the quality of music in comparison to a hard disc drive".

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Thuchan - I cannot understand how Mini Disks could be superior with it's smaller media and compressed format.

"One company claims they will stop producing CD-players - it is a kind of marketing campaign, isn`t it?"

Marketing campaign of what? Linn stopped making CDs and perkaps CDPs but only because market is poor, but as far as I know, they don't manufacture hard drives, computers or servers.

One comment related a little bit to the subject. Hard drive + DACs allows to play formats better than 16bit/44.1kHz becoming safer investment. There were attempts to make better CDs (SACD, HDCD, DVD-A) but in my opinion they failed. They failed for the same reason Beta, Minidisk, Zip drives and many others failed - greed. Iomega for instance had incredible chance to make Zip a standard in every computer (Dell was installing already). Instead of propagating their media at low prices they charged in order of $10 per disk and were suing everybody who made them cheaper. Sony did not learn from "Beta" failure and killed MiniDisk - standard perfect for car or laptop storage because of high licensing fees. Mentioned Linn was selling SACDs for over $30. SACD prices went down a lot but it is too late - they killed SACD and CD standard. If they would start with normal prices in order of <$5 most of people would not bother with downloads (plus you get booklet and box).
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Tbg - I feel that investment in DAC and HDD is more secure now than in expensive CD or SACD player since server can play wider range of formats and is more flexible (plus internet radio). In addition it is easy to use - no CDs to change, playlists available, easy to find CD etc. Being not dependent on transport (that sometimes fails and is hard to fix/replace) is a plus as well.

There are still many top notch CDPs like latest Meridian with non-apodizing filtering or DCs Pucinni (I'm not going to spend $16k on Meridian).

I don't understand how HDD can sound different than SSD since both are synchronous devices with buffered outputs. Once data gets into computer there is no way of telling where it came from. People offer anti-vibration pods to place under external HDD claiming better sound. It might work under CDP since laser/media are not immune to vibration and data is asynchronous, but not in synchronously clocked data from HDD. Is this a placebo effect or something else was different during test (computer used, digital cable, Itunes versions, Itunes options etc.)
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
If electronics resonates on soft feet it can have (if any) unpredictable results. Not only that soft feet can provide nice isolation from vibration (as Vibrapods do) but there is no way of telling how it might affect the sound (if at all).

As I said before - keep footers under you SS gear wet to have more liquid sound or hang electronics in the air to have airy sound. What the heck - move it upstairs to have better highs or to basement for better lows. Logical - isn't it?
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
"moving a wire within a magnetic field clearly can induce a signal that isn't the music"

- what magnetic field? I hope you're not talking about earth's magnetic field.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
"Kijanki, no I am talking about the magnetic field caused by the signal current flow within the component."

I'm not questioning that vibration of electronics might affect the sound somehow, but saying that "it seems logical" that soft bass comes from soft footers is plain stupid.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Mapman - I agree, errors are very likely. Even with two identical transports one might have film or dirt on the lens while error correction is very loose (has to operate in real time). Also not every transport is "bit transparent" invoking DSP processing (volume control etc.) ITunes might be the guilty party as well, with its volume control and effects enabled.

I wonder if Kondo DAC was connected directly to MAC with coax or maybe used Spdif output of Weiss DAC (bit transparency lost?). If it was direct connection to MAC then was it coax or Toslink? Toslink makes two time more jitter, on average, than coax and bad plastic Toslink might be even worse.

I cannot tell the difference, with my Benchmark DAC1, between CDP and Aiport Express (getting signal from Mac-Mini server).
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Tbg - I absolutely believe that CD ripped as data (EAC, MAX etc) can sound better than CDP in real time but there are things that people believe (placebo effect) or don't (negative placebo effect) that are simply crazy. Below is fragment of one of the serious professional reviews of Bel Canto S300 amplifier:

"My friend Rocky, a long-time fan of Bel Canto products, predicted that the S300’s rubbery feet caused the ills I heard -- soft bass, subtle veiling. It seemed logical that the "lossy" footers dissipated some of the tremendous energy of which the S300 is capable. We removed the feet and balanced the amplifier on three massive ebony cylinders called Shun Mook Diamond Resonators. The results defy logic. Upper bass expanded filling the room; midrange took on a spooky verisimilitude."

How do you like this reasoning - soft bass because of soft amplifier's feet? This is as stupid as it comes. Maybe feet should be hollow to make sound more "airy" or kept wet to make sound more liquid? (Shadorne is about to jump in - he loves this kind of things)
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