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Is PC the best sound source? - Page 8

post #106 of 120
8/27/05 at 11:45pm
ROFL, I've decided on seasonic's SST-500 already, no point making my budget bloat anymore with 500 additional watts that I'll never use =P
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post #107 of 120
1/20/08 at 1:45pm
I agree with saturnine, my buddy's pc with the prelude x-fi and opa627 opamps sounded better than my uncle wadia
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post #108 of 120
1/21/08 at 5:09pm
My modded 0404 (AD8620s and bypassed caps)
IMO.[/QUOTE]

Hey Saturnine - I am looking at the 0404 and would like to make this mod if I get it - can you give me the details? Or - do you know of another USB interface with quality equal to or better than the 0404 that has more inputs? I would like to be able to record 4-6 channels simultaneously if possible but if it means spending $1K or more then I would rather get a stand alone hard drive based recorder and the 0404 for digital out from my computer, and make the mods if needed to maximize the sound quality.
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post #109 of 120
1/21/08 at 6:53pm
Having never heard an extremely expensive Cd player, I pick PC's. Why? Because they offer bit-perfection. And, honestly, there's no way of ebating that. Adding a quality DAC to that will get you sound quality above that of any CD player, especialy since there are no errors to be made from reading your hard disk. Using EAC and ripping into FLAC would be required as well. Also, using Linux might make you benifit from greater checks down the sound path, but it doesn't matter when you get bit-perfect playback, of course.

I already have an insanely good computer. A quod-core with 4 gigs of memory, and a well-regarded PSU (Corsair HX520), and I believe that, if I were to put one of the best sound cards in excistence inside it, it would play any CDP out of the room. Is any CDP capable of bit-perfect, anyway?
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post #110 of 120
1/21/08 at 7:14pm
I plan on using my PC as the center of all things media once I get some more monies saved up

Need to do research on the best way to stream lossless audio and HD video to a tv/receiver
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post #111 of 120
1/22/08 at 4:14am
I use my Cambridge 840c as both my cd player and dac. The cds sound better then their flac counterparts which is why I prefer to use the 840c as a cd player when critically listening.

I use an Edirol ua1-ex and an optical cable to connect my laptop to the 840c. I suspect the usb + optical cable is somehow degrading the sound, so the fewer connections in your system the better.
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post #112 of 120
3/29/08 at 5:49pm
Well, computer as a sourse actually sucks!
Why? Because internal soundcard physically can't deliver perfect sound and never will.
And when we're using external DACs and amplifiers, that means that we use computer as a transport. In that case we should just worry about jitter. If our DAC has buffer with reclock, it's no longer differs what transport we are using: standalone CDP or a computer.
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post #113 of 120
3/29/08 at 6:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fizmax View Post
Well, computer as a sourse actually sucks!
Why? Because internal soundcard physically can't deliver perfect sound and never will.
Why not ?, is there some technical reason for this? The components, DAC and post-DAC analog stages do the same thing on CD and Soundcard, if the PC soundcard DAC cannot recreate the waveform perfectly then surely it is faulty. I can see that the analog stages i.e opamps on a soundcard might be cheap, but all that needs to do is supply gain

Quote:
And when we're using external DACs and amplifiers, that means that we use computer as a transport. In that case we should just worry about jitter. If our DAC has buffer with reclock, it's no longer differs what transport we are using: standalone CDP or a computer.
As far as I am aware nobody has ever found a component with jitter worse than 3ns, this is well below the threshold of audibility as demonstrated in several peer reviewed journal papers by folks such as Ashihara(JAES) and Gannon /Benjamin (Dolby Labs).

The only issue I have with PCs is that the USB connection I use is prone to blips when the CPU is responding to DPCs, other than that my external USB sound card is bit-perfect and noiselesss.
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post #114 of 120
3/29/08 at 8:18pm
Lynx Studio makes internal PCI sound cards that are highly rated, sonically and spec wize

Serious instrumentation people make very high speed, high resolution PCI cards:
Find the Right Data Acquisition Product - Products and Services - National Instruments
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post #115 of 120
3/31/08 at 3:59am
about ripping CDs, from Nero benchmark, some say that not all drive are a good scanner for a CD quality, so I wonder is different drive rip differently? regardless the EAC is used?
so what is best drive for ripping?
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post #116 of 120
3/31/08 at 4:18am
Does anyone know if the PSU in a pc would affect the sound output? (given that it's not defective..)
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post #117 of 120
3/31/08 at 6:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nick_charles View Post
As far as I am aware nobody has ever found a component with jitter worse than 3ns, this is well below the threshold of audibility as demonstrated in several peer reviewed journal papers by folks such as Ashihara(JAES) and Gannon /Benjamin (Dolby Labs).
I have never made any experiments with time precision, but if 3ns is maximal inaccuracy, then jitter is not a beast to be afraid of. And this make no point to build reclockers.
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post #118 of 120
3/31/08 at 11:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by fizmax View Post
I have never made any experiments with time precision, but if 3ns is maximal inaccuracy, then jitter is not a beast to be afraid of. And this make no point to build reclockers.
Update ......

The worst measured performance of any CD playing device available is the Oppo DV970HD which was measured by Stereophile at a whopping 4ns, from the graph the noise spectrum looks impressive

Stereophile: Oppo DV-970HD universal player

but inaudible is still inaudible no matter how impressive it looks
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post #119 of 120
3/31/08 at 11:37am
i play lossless files from my laptop via keces da-151 usb dac and gilmore lite amp, and it sounds just as good as any cd players i've heard.
i dont hear any jitters, hiss or noise except when i have internet browser up with lots of flash objects running on it.
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post #120 of 120
8/13/11 at 3:51am

Stand alone is better since its manufacturer spends time focused on Sound while a PC has a lot of other stuff to do.

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