Interesting comments, Sean. I've been thinking of building a similar type of DAC myself for some time (based on Andreas' Ciuffoli's design, with upsampling mods). There's definitely something smoother about designs that don't have an active analog filter. Digital filterless designs I'm not as...

Quote: Originally posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi You can also replace the fixed resistor R1 with a 20k ohm pot or stepped attenuator and call it Sistah Steve's Buffered Passive Preamp. Loved the reference to Aunt Corey's Buffered Passive Preamp! Thanks for posting this -- nice design.

Yeah, the Senn 580 are $160 at Amazon, so if you shop around online or in the For Sale forum you should be able to find them for even cheaper. Or post an ad in the For Sale forum with your maximum price (maybe $120-130) -- someone will jump on it.

Quote: Originally posted by master83 But is it necessary to encode OGG files at 500 kbits? No, definitely not. If you're going up to 500 kbits/sec, you might as well use a lossless format (most average around 500 kbits/sec).

Also worth considering if you're going with Canare cable is Canare GS-6. It's their cable specifically designed for interconnects (as opposed to star quad, which was designed for microphone cable, but is still excellent as an interconnect).

The chickens always come home to roost (so don't burn bridges, etc.).

For what it's worth, I've found that kernel streaming doesn't always bypass Kmixer, but it does on some configurations. So much of all this is in the specific driver/OS combination that it's hard to comment. Would it be possible for you to borrow a friend's receiver for an evening? Hate to...

Quote: Originally posted by asdfeproiu9 Does this mean it resamples? I thought that when it outputs optically, it would just leave the signal alone ... Yeah, that's what you'd think. The reality, at least in my experience, is somewhat more complicated. With the M-Audio Sonica...

Tyson, any updates? I'd be interested in a more detailed comparison between the Ultrasones and the Beyer DT250-250.

Quote: Originally posted by djgustashaw i'm coming up on the end of my 14 day free rhapsody trial. and i have to say, i'm pretty damn impressed with the selection and ease of use. unfortunately, though, i'm on 56k which severely limits the sound quality. Did you know that you can...

Quote: Originally posted by aerius Copy protection? What copy protection? I just used EAC to make a perfect copy of the audio tracks and I don't hear anything weird going on. No pops, no skips, no beeps, everything works and sounds fine. It ain't copy protected as far as I can tell...

pbirkett, don't you miss the bass when listening with your Mission M51s? (Their -3dB point is 58 Hz.) IMHO, I've found that if you insist on good bass performance, speakers start to get a lot more expensive very quickly. The cheapest semi-decent subwoofers I've found start at $350 and most...

For the iPod, you definitely want the Koss KSC-35 (about $30). I agree with psycho1.

Does anyone know if this "album" is going to be released as an actual CD? Right now it seems to be exclusive to the Apple iTunes store, but there are various press releases online saying that it is going to be an iTunes exclusive for only 30 days, starting October 21. Does anyone know if this...

Quote: Originally posted by fewtch The noise shaping (if it's predictive) will be correct for whatever signal is fed to the DAC... period. That's right, it is the correct noise shaping for "whatever signal is fed to the DAC." Problem is, if that signal is some junk perversion of the...

Quote: Originally posted by blueice Hi I just switched from winamp to foobar. There seems to be quite a lot of options, but I dont know that much about the computer settings. I just know that my sound card outputs 16 bits. So should I stick to 16 bit fixpoint output? Yes...

Quote: Originally posted by fewtch Errm... not sure you understand the nature of digital here. There's no such thing as "bad" bits -- a bit is either on (1) or off (0). Whatever is fed to a DAC will get noise-shaped/dithered, including any "corrupted" bits (which would consist of noise...

Quote: Originally posted by fewtch The noise floor of CD (the full 16 bits) is 96dB, and it's very rare that much of that dynamic range is even used. I guess if you're concerned about losing that 5dB of signal down there it's worth it... provided you listen to your equipment at...

Quote: Originally posted by pbirkett No. Most of "sound quality differences" people "hear" are placebo effect (at least with real music), as actual differences in produced sound data are below their noise floor (1 or 2 last bits in 16bit samples). I use Foobar myself. That said, the...

One thing worth mentioning is that the MG Head + Etymotic combo is much faster sounding than the MG Head + Sennheiser combo.

If you're going to college, you should definitely get Etys. When you're trying to study in a noisy library, or work in a noisy lab, or deal with an annoying roommate or neighbor, there's nothing better than putting on a pair of Etys and feeling the world disappear. They reduce your stress level...

If you're just using the optical output of the Sonica, it won't make a difference provided that you're using either Windows 2000 or Windows XP with the version 1.2.05 drivers. The newer 1.2.20 drivers on Windows XP do not produce a perfect digital bitstream; this is a driver bug.

Absolutely! In fact, I encourage you to perform this test for yourself. (I used to believe that all digital outputs were basically the same until I actually tried this personally.)

Quote: Originally posted by sygyzy Are you sure the Soundstorm digital out is not bit to bit? How do you test if an output is being affected/degraded or not? The easiest way is to borrow a friend's receiver that can decode Dolby Digital, and test it out with a PCM encoded DTS file...

Good suggestion about the Audiophile USB! Kills two birds with one stone, and inexpensive too. There was some discussion briefly on AVSforum about using the M-Audio DiO 2448 drivers with nForce motherboards in order to get bit-perfect digital output. Not sure what the end result was, or if it...