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digital v dedicated source component...

post #1 of 17
6/30/10 at 7:44pm
Thread Starter 

 

 
new to the forums been reading a bit about the imod for the ipod, 
 
read on red wine audio the makers of these imod cables;
 
"We take the analog output (line out) signal off of the Wolfson DAC chip and send it directly to the internal 1/8" headphone jack (converting it into a dedicated line-out jack) via high-end Black Gate Non-Polarized NX-Hi-Q coupling capacitors (to block DC offset voltage).
This completely bypasses all the components listed above that degrade the sound quality of the Wolfson DAC’s line-output.
The Red Wine Audio 4th Gen iMod converts the 1/8" headphone jack into a dedicated line-out jack (constant voltage output direct from the dac chip…no volume control), so the headphone output is disabled. The iMod is intended to be connected to either a high quality headphone amp with volume control or home stereo system"
 
so it bypasses the line out and uses the wolfson dac to whatever dac, preamp or amp you plug it into... ?
 
how does this compare to a cd player outputting optical source to a dac... or an optical out from a soundcard to a dac....
 
on ALO Audio they have an imod jensen dock for 750 bucks, so that connects to a dac... ?
 
how is that different to the imod cable only...
 
how would this rate as a source componant as opposed to a dedicated cd/sacd player?
 
what am i misunderstanding here...
i have no idea about all this stuff just need to learn about how sound is outputted from any source as thats where the first bottleneck obviously occurs.  (if the file is lossless)  
want to know about this before deciding about any dac/amp/preamp/headphone amp etc etc..
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

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post #2 of 17
6/30/10 at 8:01pm

The iMod or iPod is a dedicated source.  And a decent one at that.  The iMod/iPod outputs a analog signal to a amp or pre-amp.  I've read people who compared the iMod with the ALO iMod dock to 2000 dollar CD Players.  I used my iPod as my sole source for months and was plenty happy.

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post #3 of 17
6/30/10 at 8:17pm
The problem with the iMod, or iPods in general, is that they're designed and engineered as disposable products. Sure, it might bypass whateveritis and lead to sonic perfection, but the thing is only meant to last 24 months or so. Do you want to go heavily invested in something that is, inevitably, going to break?

Apple cycles out products completely every few years. My parents are still using the original iPhones, which still suit their needs. However, iOS 4.0 won't even run on their phones. If something goes wrong with either, they won't be able to have them repaired. They would only be able to buy other used ones and cannibalize them. Eventually, even that will not be an option as remaining ones dwindle.

Planned obsolescence is the rule with most consumer devices these days. As much as I love the iPad I'm typing this on, I know I'll have something newer within 24-30 months. And I'm OK with that, since later models will have more features, more storage, etc.

Anyhow, the problem with the iMod isn't the sound quality. It might be the best thing ever. I don't know, I haven't listened to one. But I do know that in a short period of time, it will become unusable.

This is why I don't invest a whole lot in digital components and usually stay a generation or two behind. They're all disposable. Replacement parts are impossible to find after a few years, generally, and then you have a very expensive piece of junk. The next expensive piece of digital gear will eventually do the same. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So I don't put much into digital. I'll buy reasonable quality and then spend money on gear with long-term potential. My Orbe is based on the Gyrodec, which was released in 1981. I will always be able to have it repaired, and not necessarily at the factory. I can get a new bearing at any machine shop. I can have the motor rewound, if a coil shorts out. Or I can use a different motor. There is very little that can go wrong and it is a solid investment. The SME arm is the same - it's been around since the mid-1980s and I can have it repaired. All of my tube gear can be repaired, as can my tubed FM tuner and I'll always be able to DIY new diaphragms on the Quads.

The SACD player? I'll hit the recycling if (or when) it starts acting up and I'll get another one.

Anyhow, take a hard look at the longevity of whatever you're going to invest in. An iMod will, eventually, crap out and there will be nothing you can do with it. If you instead put the money into a Rega Planar 3/P3, you'll be able to get parts and fix it 50 years from now. It's been around nearly 40 already.
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post #4 of 17
6/30/10 at 9:52pm
Thread Starter 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Erik View Post
 Sure, it might bypass whateveritis and lead to sonic perfection, but the thing is only meant to last 24 months or so.
So I don't put much into digital. 
 Anyhow, take a hard look at the longevity of whatever you're going to invest in. An iMod will, eventually, crap out and there will be nothing you can do with it.

 

in regards to the recyclability of digital type technology, yea i agree.  but if this imod is not losing anything when transferred optically to a dac... then that would be the best way i could transfer digitally to a dac... if it would last 2-3 years ild be happy,.  im sure i could be looking at an even better way to transfer optically digital music to a dac in the future, but for now this is probably the best way right,.. ? 

 

 

 

my main issue is with quality .. im wanting to know where is the bottleneck of quality loss.  , if its not optically transferred to a dac, like it wouldnt be with the imod, wouldnt there be a loss of quality... , you mentioned sonic perfection?   is this because its not through line out analog it is a digital copy to the dac via this imod cable,.. 

 

then what is the difference between using an imod and other forms of dedicated source components.. it is all lossless transfer, then its just up to the dac onwards on how it reproduces the sound yeah... ? ,. ....


Edited by krohm - 6/30/10 at 9:53pm
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post #5 of 17
7/1/10 at 11:01am
Thread Starter 

 

can someone please address this digital to dac issue... i read on another post,

 

'Bypassing the headphone output of the iPod and using the the line out dock outputs is the first step in better sound from an ipod. Bypassing the internal iPod dac is the next step. Using Wav or Lossless compression is next in line. 
There is only so much circuitry that can be stuffed in an iPod. Using it primarily as a storage and transmit device and letting other more powerful gear do all the work will yield as good as CD results.'

 

so using an imod will essentially do all of this, providing my music is in lossless, and using the jensen doc on the alo website will do this with an imod?

 

or, just read further that i could get a Wadia Digital 170 ITransport and that will losslessly digitally transport my music from most new model ipods/iphones to any dac digitally.... with no loss of quality... or where would there be quality loss... how does this compare to another source component like a cd player...

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post #6 of 17
7/1/10 at 4:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by krohm View Post

 

or, just read further that i could get a Wadia Digital 170 ITransport and that will losslessly digitally transport my music from most new model ipods/iphones to any dac digitally.... with no loss of quality... or where would there be quality loss... how does this compare to another source component like a cd player...


The Wadia solution adds $350 to get around a design limitation of the iPod (no digital out) ...

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post #7 of 17
7/1/10 at 5:16pm
Thread Starter 

but it turns the ipod into a digital out dedicated source?

where is the quality loss with digital output...

 

so if if you use optical cable to a dac then that is like an optical out from a cd player...?

 

and how would it compare to a cd player as a dedicated source..

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post #8 of 17
7/2/10 at 6:06pm
Thread Starter 

 

can someone please explain further this digital vs source component issue...

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post #9 of 17
7/3/10 at 9:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by krohm View Post

but it turns the ipod into a digital out dedicated source?

where is the quality loss with digital output...

 

so if if you use optical cable to a dac then that is like an optical out from a cd player...?

 

and how would it compare to a cd player as a dedicated source..



Yes, in theory if you have two clean bit-perfect digital outputs with less than egregious amounts of jitter feeding a DAC then the output from the DAC will be , for all intents and purposes identical, of course not everyone believes this, but if you want **hard** evidence that two **competent** digital transports feeding a DAC can sound fundamentally different you will need to look elsewhere...if two digital transports really do result in **verifiably** different sounds then at least one of them is functionally broken !

 

hard - competently proctored Double-Blind tests

competent - does not alter the bit-pattern from source media to delvery to DAC

verifiably - subject to controlled listening tests

 

I should add that it is *possible* for digital devices to output a digital stream that is not bit-perfect, my own WD HDTV digital music streamer does so, it , for reasons I fail to grasp amplifies the signal prior to digital output, I have measured this, this means that it actually adds distortion to some tracks which are consistently at or very close to digital full scale (0db) , luckily I only have one album on which this is audible (so far) but it is a technical foul-up...I suspect it is due to an internal  44.1/48 resampling.


Edited by nick_charles - 7/3/10 at 9:19am
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post #10 of 17
7/3/10 at 9:50am
Thread Starter 

 

when looking up the wadia 170 itransport i found this pic and some of the owners comments regarding the digital to dac stream..

 

Wadia 170 iTransport + iPhone + Accuphase.jpg

Wadia 170 iTransport + iPhone + Accuphase.gif

 

"while it has great potential for nice sound, it requires a lot of tuning to make it sounds right.

Seemingly, Wadia does not do any sound tuning for this relatively cheap device to make it sound like its other hi-end products. There are 2 deficiencies I found with this device:
- It is too light that vibration / resonance affect its performance to a great extend
- It comes with a very cheapy power supply. I wouldn't expect to get hi-end sound from such power supply.

Before applying any fine tuning, it provides great detail and doesn't sound harsh.

However, it generates poor imaging with inadequate bass extension as compare to my CEC transport.

The tricks I applied includes:
- add magnet rings to the power supply to filter out unwanted signal
- use better support for the device

The result? Compare to my CEC transport, the iTransport now generates better imaging, with better analytical power and similar bass performance. However, the iTransport sounds less musical than my CEC."

 

 

could someone comment on some of these comments and/or could i get some more information regarding perhaps a better alternative to transport digitally, or other alternatives to transport digitally to a dac... cheers

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post #11 of 17
7/3/10 at 10:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by krohm View Post

 

when looking up the wadia 170 itransport i found this pic and some of the owners comments regarding the digital to dac stream..

 

Wadia 170 iTransport + iPhone + Accuphase.gif

 

"while it has great potential for nice sound, it requires a lot of tuning to make it sounds right.

Seemingly, Wadia does not do any sound tuning for this relatively cheap device to make it sound like its other hi-end products. There are 2 deficiencies I found with this device:
- It is too light that vibration / resonance affect its performance to a great extend
- It comes with a very cheapy power supply. I wouldn't expect to get hi-end sound from such power supply.

Before applying any fine tuning, it provides great detail and doesn't sound harsh.

However, it generates poor imaging with inadequate bass extension as compare to my CEC transport.

The tricks I applied includes:
- add magnet rings to the power supply to filter out unwanted signal
- use better support for the device

The result? Compare to my CEC transport, the iTransport now generates better imaging, with better analytical power and similar bass performance. However, the iTransport sounds less musical than my CEC."

 

 

could someone comment on some of these comments and/or could i get some more information regarding perhaps a better alternative to transport digitally, or other alternatives to transport digitally to a dac... cheers



These are just the usual uncontrolled sighted anecdotes and not backed up by any unbiased (i.e blind) listening tests or empirical measurements, thus they have limited validity. I really would not take them very seriously. There is a lot of magical thinking in HiFi forums. A big shiny CD player will almost always sound better than a cheap small gizmo ***when you know what you are listening to***, remove that expectation effect and you can get very different results. This is just very basic human behavior. If you had paid $2K for a CD transport it is hard not to hear it as better than a tiny DAP otherwise you start to question the value of your purchase. In a iconoclastic experiment back in the 1980s Masters and Clark got listeners to test several amplifiers. Wheh the tests were sighted the listeners could easily hear and describe the differences, when the tests were blind the listeners failed to tell the difference between amps costing $12K and amps costing $230

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post #12 of 17
7/3/10 at 11:07am
Thread Starter 

 

so there is no real difference in the dedicated source component if the output is losslessly transported.  ie through a Wadia i70.

 

then there is no difference between an ipod with a wadia and a $4000 cd player.. if both are losslessly transporting the output to the dac its really up to the quality of the dac, preamp, amp, speaker combination that is really going to determine the quality of the sound.... 

 

in other words, if you have the same dac, amp, speakers etc it will play the same...

 

what am i not understanding here.. could some more people weigh in on this issue...

 

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post #13 of 17
7/5/10 at 2:54pm
Thread Starter 

 

bump^

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post #14 of 17
7/8/10 at 2:34pm
Thread Starter 

 

please can someone address this digital vs source component question...

 

if 'losslessly transporting the output to the dac its really up to the quality of the dac, preamp, amp, speaker combination that is really going to determine the quality of the sound...'

 

not the source component if its digitally transported....

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post #15 of 17
7/8/10 at 3:48pm

whats the question? 

 

if writing, "if 'losslessly transporting the output to the dac its really up to the quality of the dac, preamp, amp, speaker combination that is really going to determine the quality of the sound...'" was somehow a question, I didnt see it.  it looks more like you are stating the obvious! 

 

sure, some people are convinced that different cd transports sound different... but it's typically a good bet to ignore them

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