The title is:"There's No Such Thing As Digital..."


Subtitled: "A Conversation With Charles Hansen, Gordon Rankin and Steve Silberman". It's an interesting read if you're not yet familiar with this particular topic...or have only considered it briefly. I wouldn't call myself a digital expert, but I can see no reason to quibble with it one bit:

www.audiostream.com/content/draft

Enjoy.
128x128ivan_nosnibor

Showing 5 responses by mapman

"I've yet to hear a PC system easily trounce a really good CDP."

Really good is really good no matter how you get there.

I've heard lots of really good players for reference and think my current PC music server based system is really good in comparison as well.

It's hard to say that any really good digital setup would trounce another one I think if both are played in the same system. Where significant differences are heard, I suspect personal preferences would be the main determining factor.
Jitter is bad but I am not convinced that it is nearly as widespread an issue with most modern gear as it was even 10 years ago. YEs, there are always ways to do better, but the question is how much matters to be "musical".

I do it with Squeezebox Touch (no longer available unfortunately but a fantastic bargain while it was for <$300), a Wifi connection to a standard $500 Samsung laptop with 2 external USB drives (Wifi eliminates a wired connection from music server computer to player which greatly benefits from a noise and isolation perspective and enables most any computer to be used as music server witn no ill sonic effects) and two separate mhdt DACs connected via not expensive Audioquest Toslink digital wire, a SS COnstantine ($300 used) and tubed Paradisea ($450 used). Its hard for me to imagine how the results could be much better. The Wifi connection/isolation is key. CHoose your DAC to get the sound you like, and just experiment with lengths if needed to make sure the digital connection to the DAC is functioning well.
Kijanki,

Yes, I agree and have considered, but hard to justify when things are sounding just the way I want them to already. I may give a re-clocking device a try still sometime in that I am certain I could do even better. It took some time and thought to get to where I am currently. I feel fortunate I have managed to achieve excellent results for relatively small investment so far. The rest of the system makes a difference. My OHM speakers are not hard to get sounding musical to the nth degree in comparison to many. My smaller monitors from Dynaudio and Triangle are a bit more challenging in this regard, but they sound quite "musical" as well and are not my references.
Squeezebox and similar devices are essentially specialized computers optimized out of the box to various degrees for playing music. It makes sense to use a computer designed specifically for good sound quality in high end audio applications. General purpose computers can be rigged to work well, but they are general purpose out of the box and not necessarily optimized for high fidelity audio, though I have gotten surprisingly decent results as well in the past by just connecting analog headphone output to the hifi using a decent quality stereo rca to dual rca phono Y connector. The one I have used is also from Audioquest. ITs the easiest way to just get started and establish an initial baseline for computer audio that one can work with from there as needed.
Note that with the analog Y connector approach to connecting computer to hifi, it helps to use a very long wire between computer and hifi. All computers are noisy and you want to keep them as far away from your audio gear as possible. The Audioquest Y connector I've used to good effect is 12' long, for example.