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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 13 responses by tbg

tbg
5,263 posts
 
Rick, can I ask you about the Saracon software from Weiss. How do you use it? Is it used in conjunction with Itones as is Amarra?
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Jaymark, I don't know about the Delius or Purcell, but I think music servers are the future, if for no other reason than ripping to harddrives and playing them is superior to optical drives.

I guess I understand your conversion of pcm into dsd on playback, but this is something I have not explored other than a short stay with EMM quite some time ago.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Acrylic, for the last ten days I have had a modified Oppo 83 with the mods done by Exemplar Audio. Last evening I carefully compared it with my Mac/Amarra/Firewire/Minerva. It is very close with the Oppo with all the mods being $2500 and the Mac server being about $7800. I'm keeping both as the Oppo will play sacds and blu-ray.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
I will share my experience concerning using a music server, a new Mac server, and various cd players and transports. I do think Soundlistenings conclusion are grossly premature.

Two years ago I got an Exemplar music server that uses Windows XP home with a S/P DIF output. It uses Foobar and EAC as software. I have driven several dacs with this server, but mainly a Xindak Dac-5 as modified also by Exemplar. During this time I have had several cp or universal players also as well as several dacs. One, the Lindemann 820S had a digital input so it was also used as a dac.

I never heard a circumstance in which the cd or universal player did not sound better used as a transport to the external dac. Nor did I ever hear an instance in which the Exemplar music server did not sound better than any optical transports into the dac. Although as a Mac person, I fretted about how user unfriendly and cumbersome Foobar and EAC were, I concluded that servers were the future and certainly were quite convenient in use.

Then I heard a new Mac running Amarra with its Itune software driving the Weiss Minerva through Firewire. I was wowed by what I heard as well as its convenience as it used Itunes. I have since gotten this system up and running here, with one addition. I have a SSD in the Mac. I have been told that SSDs sound better than HDDs. I have tried to assess this but the Macs have only one Firewire port. So I can only say that a HDD connected with the Mac by USB2 in inferior to a SSD. Overall this system far surpasses any other that I have used or heard.

It is quietness or the richness of very low level information, the realism of the sound stage, and the extension of the bass as well as its being well defined that is what so thrills me.

I have used the Minerva, which incidentally does not sound like the Weiss Dac 2 despite the statements that it is the same circuit, as a dac with S/P DIF input from both the Exemplar music server and optical reader transports. It still retains much of the character noted above, but I think Firewire is much better although I have no way of checking, as the Mac has no S/P DIF output and none of my other dacs has a Firewire input.

Enter the Exemplar modified Oppo 83 with its one bit dacs. I already had found the Oppo is not a very good device as a transport only. This still holds. But the mods have just dramatically improved this cheap unit although at a tripling of its price. But as a standalone universal player (I have yet to play sacds or blu-ray music discs), it is in many ways the equal of the Mac/Amarra/Firewire/Minerva. But it is a different sound. I should note that it only have about a week’s break-in on the Oppo and it has been better each day.

It, as yet at least, does not have the soundstage realism of the Mac server with the Minerva, but on piano and sax, I note a greater body to the sound or tumbrel accuracy.

I should note that I will soon be getting the new Weiss Dac 202 which replaces the Minerva. It is a 32 bit dac, although I have no idea why that would be an advantage given that we have nothing with greater than 24 music. I believe the Weiss DAC2 will also be replaced.

My conclusion is that digital is making great leaps forward of late, that music servers are in our future as they can read and reread discs until they get the information right, and that some will look primarily for realism and others for musicality.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, I cannot really say that I have seen written claims of HDDs being superior to optical, but in my experience that is clearly the case.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, well, I firmly believe in trusting ones ears. I have heard too many instances where implausible things are audible.

In the case of an amplifier moving a wire within a magnetic field clearly can induce a signal that isn't the music. I would never use rubber feet under anything. Springs and like-pole magnets, in my experience, also muddy the music. I probably have fifteen different isolation devices here that don't work. Some of them, I must say, are preferred by others.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Thuchan, my experience is comparing music from the SSD in my Mac Powerbook Pro versus from my Western Digital HD connected to my Powerbook. The same Minerva was used for both. I have heard that single cell SSDs sound better than multiple SSDs find they are too expensive for my blood.

I did connect the WD drive both by USB2 and Firewire 800. The Firewire was sonically superior.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, I have to retain a Blu-ray player as I have 400 sacds and want a quality blu-ray player, but I agree with you on convenience and greater accuracy of reading from memory rather than optical devices.

I must say that I got a Mac with SSD on the advice of some top people in digital, but got a HHD to serve as backup. I decided to do the comparison out of curiosity. I have heard others say that it is the lack of moving parts that is the SSD advantage.

I must say that curiosity also lead me to using cd mats on cds while ripping to hard drives. This on my other music server as the drive on the Mac, of course, will not allow a mat. The ripping speed using Exact Copy was about 40% faster than without and the sound was much preferable. I demonstrated this at the 2008 RMAF. While I ripped a second copy onto the harddrive most were saying that this was a waste of time. On hearing the improvement, I heard many saying that this was impossible, but most left to buy the mat that I was using, the Millennium.

I have much training in psychology dealing with selective perception I know it works both ways, namely that if you don't want to hear a difference you don't. Clearly those in the room at RMAF did not want to hear a difference. In neither the mat experiment nor the SSD vs. HDD was there any difference in the test other than what was experimentally introduced and I don't think there was any selective perception. At least even were there, I wouldn't care.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, no it is illogical. Everything has a resonant frequency below which all hell breaks lose.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, no I am talking about the magnetic field caused by the signal current flow within the component.

Tvad, now many professional recording studios have you seen. When you were in them did you see many highend power cords? I see that is one of your concerns at present.

Why would recording studio use have relevancy to this discussion? I suppose that you know most are now out of business as most popular music releases rely only on digital mixing of often home recorded digital tracks. There is very little capturing of recording sessions in studios.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kijanki, if the component resonates on soft feet, you have the component and its wires moving in the very magnetic field that their circuit produces with some delay. This is why isolation can so improve a component. Nothing stupid about this.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
TVAD, I have only seen one in Nashville. I was heavily treated with real monitor speakers and extended bass and good balanced cabling.

In fact, there is still a good deal of studio recording happening in Hollywood, although there are many home studios as you say. I have seen a few home studios as well. They are not as well treated acoustically as are the professional studios, but sometimes the lack of acoustic treatment in the home studios is purposeful.

Or because they are indifferent to capturing a performance and only interested in a recording that is loud and which can correct for their being out of tune.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Rick, thanks for the information. I'm going to look into getting it.
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