[dclancy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif The gang here is great. We joke, argue (passionately), help and most of all act as a family here. Jude has created a wonderful place for music geeks and does lots of charity work. You see really high post counts and early date of joining from people who truely enjoy being part of the Head-Fi community. They are who make this place so great. Learn, participate and enjoy.

Come on guys, I can't be the only one getting misty here.

 

[Raez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you were told these things up front, well, nevermind. It's the romance that drives the forum. Audio crack. The hope is that if you get hooked, you will buy one of everything. There are three methods to get to your end goal, spending quality time listening to your definition of good sound. You can start at the beginning models and buy up, selling as you go. You take a journey through lots of gear (and money). Another way is to study, sample, compare the level of gear you want to attain, then get as you can. You may not be able to get everything at once, so you make concessions where to accept less for the time it would take to get where you want to be. Hps are the cheapest investment so those can be bought easier. The third method is to build your own gear. DIY is very popular and you learn so much about the hobby this way. There are several threads discussing the budget ratios of source, amp, hps, cables, etc. There are also threads discussing which piece should be bought first. Of course, everyone knows its tubes. The search function is your friend. Saves receiving the rath from grouchy old farts for being lazy. Type in information such as $xxx, DAC, Littledot, Grado RS-1, etc. There are a couple of "All the ------- money can buy" or "shoot out of xx amps, dacs, cables, etc. throughout the history of the place. If you can't find one, ask for a link and someone will be of assistance. Portable amps will not drive full sized hps to their full potential. Portables are made for convenience, not as high end components. The first time you hear what a competent home amp can do to a pair of hps, you'll understand. That said, you can get some really nice mid-fi and arguably, hi-fi portable gear. Imods, Rockboxed software, cryo treated LODs, even portable mini tube amps make for really nice sounding rigs. Don't confuse loudness as the reason for an amp. There are many things that can get a hp loud. The issue is control. A good amp will dig out all the details and present them evenly. The result will let you hear the dynamics of the music without as much volume. Good amps put quality components into the power supply. Since an amp's heart is the power supply, you want to get as much as you can afford in that area of upgrade. Volume knobs, locking jacks, etc. don't have the same bang as an upgraded output cap. No, designers do not use the absolute best components to make their products sound their best. So you see boutique upgrade services on products that benefit from a tweak or twelve. This is offered by the vendor and modding services. A dedicated component will do a better job than a computer or combo unit. A dac may have a hp jack and do a decent job but it won't compare to a decent amp. The only exception I have read about that will challenge this is the Red Wine Isabella. A computer is a compromised multifunctional machine. The design has many trade-offs to fit a price/market. Even upgraded sound cards won't do what a reasonably priced outboard dac or amp can do. For one, the circuits in a computer are not well isolated. Cooling fans, hard drives and transports generate mechanical noise that impacts sq. Transformers, power supplies, high freq. noise is another source of noise using onboard dacs. As mentioned, everything in the computer shares the same power supply. Some of the best things to do to help computer sources sound their best is to use good rippers, playback software, lossless files. Bypassing digital controls as much as possible will sound better. Keep your digital volume controls at max and use your amp for volume control. Using digital volume controls removes word bit length, which degrades sq. Everything we are discussing are throughout the threads. It would be nice to get a noob's sticky on how to use the search function for detailed searches. Several polls could also gather lots of information but I don't think the vendors would like that if they got a bad rating and loose sales. Donate to the cause if you feel the help has benefited you. You will find the music forum to be particularly insightful. I have found so much good music I would have never tried on my own. The gang here is great. We joke, argue (passionately), help and most of all act as a family here. Jude has created a wonderful place for music geeks and does lots of charity work. You see really high post counts and early date of joining from people who truely enjoy being part of the Head-Fi community. They are who make this place so great. Learn, participate and enjoy. Sorry to be rambling. This is my view and not to be taken as the only way. Just another two year old noob commenting on what I perceive to be lessons learned.

Right, sorry about that. Maybe instead of putting the search function sticky, we should sticky this topic!
Quote:

Originally Posted by dclancy /img/forum/go_quote.gif RE DAC:Turn beeps and boops into bloops and bleeps. Buy a good one.

Hehehe.

 

[Happy Camper]

Raez,

My apology. I did not intend that you are wrong to do this thread, to the contrary. Noob questions have been asked hundreds of times, and usually, a link covering their question is added to the thread. Noobs want to participate but don't have a lot to say yet. So patience is shown by the wise ones and the search function is mentioned. I was putting it out there as a means of help to the noobs, not to scold you. I would like to know how to better use the boolean search methods.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nubster /img/forum/go_quote.gif So if the computer can act as the DAC, why get an external DAC? I am guessing that the analog signal coming from most computers will not be the best and the external DAC with refine those signals making them better to listen to?

Not quite. The biggest reason is that computers have a huge amount of RF noise and garbage inside.

The biggest offender is the power supply. Computers use what's called a "switching" power supply instead of a "linear" one. I won't go into details, but a switching supply switches on and off rapidly to produce the power the computer needs. Switching electricity on and off with coils, wires, etc. is an excellent way to throw off RF (radio frequency) noise. It's much the same way that radio transmitters work. This means there's a bunch of radio waves going around inside the computer. [As a footnote, switching power supplies are a good thing. They're lightweight, inexpensive and hold up. If you used a linear supply in a computer, it would probably add another $300-$400 to the price of the machine as well as another 25 lbs. of weight.]

Soundcards don't have RF shielding. Neither does a sound chipset on a motherboard. Yes, you can put shielding on a card. However, locking out RF is a very, very tricky business. Have you ever tried to make something watertight, only to find water getting in again and again? RF is like that. Except you can't see it coming in, like you can see water. It reflects off things and gets in through the tiniest cracks. RF is a total pain in the ass to deal with. I'm also a radio guy - I have an amateur license - and a big part of the tests and operation of radios deals with RF.

The upshot of this is that it's very, very difficult to keep the computer's RF hash out of the signal you're listening to. The noise isn't bad enough to be noticeable from cheap computer speakers, and probably not that bad through mid-fi speakers, either. But when you hook up a high-end headphone, that's highly sensitive, and put it maybe 1-2cm from your ear, you will hear the noise. The RF pollutes the signal with distortion and hash.

This is the point of an external DAC. When I ran computer-as-source, I liked Toslink. RF won't conduct through an optical cable, so that was the end of most of the noise. You can run coax, too, but I liked optical.

I started out with a computer-as-source setup. It was pretty good, but a deal came up where I got a Sony SCD-CE595 for $60 or so refurbished. I was interested in SACD, so I gave it a try. Wow. Much better than the computer setup, and only $60. Later that year I became curious about vinyl. Found a used Rega Planar 3 in town for $200. Wow! That was even better! So, between SACD and vinyl, the computer rig idled. Then I gave that computer to my Dad when his computer died and ended up selling my DAC/amp.

I haven't missed the computer rig. And it only cost me about $600 (had to buy a cart, phono stage, etc.) to make the jump into SACD and vinyl. I paid about $500 for a used Singlepower PPX3, so that setup was about $1,100. The computer and DAC/amp ran just about $1,100, too. But the vinyl/SACD/tube setup was much, much better. So good the other setup gathered dust.

Anyway, my point is that you don't have to spend a fortune on the "good" stuff. You just have to choose carefully and buy used whenever possible. You can have terrific sound on any budget.

 

[Alai]

To prove a point in how easily an audio component can be affected by so-called "junk" flying around, try to listen to a headphone amped for about 15 minutes with a cellphone lying next to it or on top of it. You will hear some great music.

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nubster /img/forum/go_quote.gif So if the computer can act as the DAC, why get an external DAC?

For the same reason we use Stax, Grado, Sennheiser, ... headphones over Apple iBud's. Sound quality improvements, caused by higher quality parts, less space restrictions, ...

The DAC built into the computers sound card are far from state-of-the-art!