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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
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).
blindjim
3,092 posts
 

Optimizing the computer in use for this exercise is very important, and it will provide an audibly distinct improvement..

Meaning background services that aren't critical need to be shut down. these services are listed online at various 'pc geek' sites. A goodly number of them can be shut down by simply reading the description of each and making a prudent decision

Or by the one at a time method, so you'll know if it needs to be turned back on real soon, and which one.

When in doubt you can Google the service name and find out if it’s vital or not for media services/playback.

I switched my M Audio 24/192 card into a newer XP Pro Desktop which I have yet to fully optimize. I found also a newer itteration of the software for this device at the MA web site. I installed that newer app and was not happy with the results. Did a bunch of checking online, and with the system services on board the new pc, and ultimately reverted to the previous version of the software.

Big improvement!

Why?

It’s the FM circuit. Huh? Yep… the “Freakin’ Magic” ckt. Beats me, but it’s better now and as yet, again, not fully optimized. In fact I had to install and uninstall it a couple times before it settled in and acted at it’s best.

Pits or bad sectors on the hard drive? Could be. It’s moot now however.

So some greater attention to setting up the server/PC/Mac does improve things, or such are my experiences.

I need to say here as well that the new pc is not sounding as good so far as the older one yet. Optimization? Maybe. Not run in fully? Perhaps. Stand & isolation? Could well be as those were changed too.

So all in all, I’ll say be persistent and eek out the best level of performance which is available to you from front to back, just as you would with your standard audio system. They have much in common in terms of setup techniques.

My pc HDD music system is Ethernet direct… not wireless.
charleswcy
5 posts
 
We were very satisfied with Macbook Pro-Weiss AFII-DAC 1mkII-Gryphon Mirage-Colosseum-Posiedum speakers. Amazing sound, great PRAT
jdoris
972 posts
 
My experience is with lower cost gear than described in the OP, but FWIW:

I replaced a heavily modded Musical Fidelity A5 with a Macbook, playing iTunes/AIFF, into a PS Audio Perfect Wave Dac, via a Locus Design Polestar USB cord.

I could not do direct comparisons (CDP traded in on DAC), but the Mac/PW was a very obvious improvement over the MF CDP.

I A/Bed the Mac as transport vs a modded Jolida JD100 as transport: I thought the Jolida was very slightly better; a local audio manufacturer, with vastly more experience than me, slightly favored the Mac as transport. Probably safe to conclude that any differences are not huge, one way or the other.

My experience suggests that with a bit of fooling around, you might very well get performance you're pleased with using a computer as transport, and I'd not undersell the convenience, which translates into hearing a lot more of your collection, IMO.

So Acrylic, I'd advise experimenting; I predict you'll be pleased. I second Swanny's suggestion of computeraudiophile dot com, which is a great resource. It does take a bit of work to "go computer", but I doubt it's out of line with the energies many here expend on their hobby.

John
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.
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