[West726]

I recently bought some GS1000s for home listening. I use them with ipod as well as out of my macbook air with Pico USB/dac. Sounds fantastic; I'm happy with that purchase for all the reasons that people generally are happy with GS1000s.

Here's the issue: Using the GS1000s, I can't hear a difference in anything. I can't hear a difference between the ipod and the mac. I can't hear a difference -- ok, maybe a very, very subtle one of warmer bass -- between amped and unamped. I can't hear a difference between dac and no dac. I can't hear a difference between 128 kbps and FLAC. I've gone back and forth over and over and I just can't tell the difference.

Either my 40-year-old ears are reaching their expiration date or the equipment isn't good enough to change the great sound of the GS1000s.

Like I said, I love how the GS1K sound, but I keep wondering hmmmm maybe throwing more money into this more would make the sound better, as good as people say it should? I'm thinking of getting a desktop amp in the $1000-$2000 range, like the Woo 6SE or a Zana Deux. Am I and my perhaps not-so-good ears going to be able to notice the difference in sound? I would want a huge, knock-your-socks off difference in sound, or it's not worth it. Or should I just be happy with my sound?

Sorry for the newbie question; I've read through the stickies and searched, but I can't quite find the answer to this.

 

[jojo_b2]

To me, it seems that you music is limited by source. Try a good CD Player. the difference will really be alot. I use my Notebook optical to my Dacmagic but it can't come close to a lowend Cambridge Audio CD player connected by optical to my dac Magic. The details are just amazing.

For the AMP question I haven't tried either of the amps indicated. But my Yamamoto HA02 beats my IPOD even my Laptop Headphone out by a mile. The sound stage created on a properly amped GS1000 is amazing the bass very deep. To note a friend loaned me his GS1000 for a week. Since I was deciding between an RS1 and a GS1000. I went for the RS1 though. Personal taste. =)

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jojo_b2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif To me, it seems that you music is limited by source. Try a good CD Player. the difference will really be alot.

There should be no real quality jump between a good CD player and a Macbook playing FLAC files to a Pico DAC/Amp. The Pico holds its own as a very good bang/buck source under $1k, whether its going up against CD players in that pricerange or other dacs.

West726, my best advice would be to get to a meet if at all possible, or failing that track down some other Head-Fi'ers in your area and arrange to drop by their place and listen to their gear. That will tell you for sure if the issues are with your ears, or just using the wrong equipment for those GS1Ks. I have heard that they are very finicky over amp-matching, if that helps.

 

[Uncle Erik]

You will probably hear a noticeable difference going from solid state to vacuum tubes. It's hard to say whether you will enjoy that, though. It's a matter of taste.

If you live anywhere near a meet (check the meet forum) take your GS-1000 and go. If you're not familiar with meets, members get together, bring their equipment, and share. Gear aside, meets are a lot of fun. You'll find lots in common with other members and the party will continue after you turn the gear off.

 

[nigeljames]

"There should be no real quality jump between a good CD player and a Macbook playing FLAC files to a Pico DAC/Amp. The Pico holds its own as a very good bang/buck source under $1k, whether its going up against CD players in that pricerange or other dacs."


Sorry just had to laugh at that statement

 

[XXII]

I agree with Covenant. It's more your amp's problem than your DAC's. GS-1000 are not easy to amp.

 

[limpidglitch]

Mr. West, sorry about not giving you a reply. I'm afraid I'm half procrastinator and half perfectionist, but it seems like you made a good choice, the main thing the RA1 miss is a DAC.

As to the OP, there are plenty of 40s and 50s here, and I wouldn't be surprised if a healthy part of us are 60+, all enjoying the subtle differences of high end audio. Age will rob us for some frequencies, but there is plenty left. What you might be a subject to is in-experience. I'm not trying to sound like I know all these little secrets, in fact, despite my relatively high post count I'm still very new to all this hi-fi business, but I've experienced that over time I've become 'better' at listening, I'm learning.
Then there is the the technology issue. I don't know about the Pico, but there are miles between my RA1 and Trafomatic, Head-Fi miles anyways. The DAC part of your Pico gets a lot of praise around here, if I'm not totally mistaken, member lisnalee still uses his Pico as a DAC/pre-amp for his Woo Audio GES and Stax Omega IIs, that's quite a statement.
Bottom line: Don't give up. Meets and visits, as has been mentioned, and maybe a visit to a well assorted audio store, if there are any around where you live, Michigan?
To shell out a grand for a stationary dedicated headphone amp might seem ridiculous, but the experience of countless members on this forum is that that is what is needed to make the GS1000 truly sing, they are indeed picky. You seem to have chosen an entry into high end headphones very similar to mine. I started with the iPod, RA1 and GS1000 that you've seen, and was very content with that. I noticed subtle differences going from iPod to portable CD player to RA1, with sonics improving in that order. From just iPod to iPod+RA1 the main differences were a little smoothness and body. From that to CDP (optical)+DAC+desktop amp, my current setup, were a significantly bigger step.

 

[West726]

Thanks so much to each of you for the helpful advice! I really appreciate it.

Just one question, for Nigeljames: OK; you either (a) find a good CD player's specific sound to be superior to the Macbook FLAC to Pico DAC/AMP or (b) think the Pico isn't very good in general against other equipment in that price range. I'm still learning, so . . . could you please explain to me either the science behind that opinion (please pretend I'm a 5th grader with a good vocabulary) or the difference that your ears hear?

And if I've misinterpreted your

, could you please let me in on the joke? Sorry to be such a newbie.

Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by nigeljames /img/forum/go_quote.gif "There should be no real quality jump between a good CD player and a Macbook playing FLAC files to a Pico DAC/Amp. The Pico holds its own as a very good bang/buck source under $1k, whether its going up against CD players in that pricerange or other dacs." Sorry just had to laugh at that statement

 

[nigeljames]

Firstly I would like to point out I never meant to offend anybody with my original post but I have always been an advocate of 'garbage in garbage out' and have always considered the source as the most important part of the hi fi chain in determining the limits of a system. jojo_b2 has posted in this thread a similar observation that your source is your weak link.
As an example how do you think £30,000 worth of amp/speakers would sound if the source was a AM radio broadcast!

Now I never intended my comment to come across as an attack on the Pico or the Macbook as I have never heard either one. I am sure the Pico is very good at its price point. You state yourself that you cannot hear a significant difference between the Macbook and the ipod and I don't think anybody on this site will say that the ipod is a hi-fi or even a med-fi device! and I seriously am not being rube to anybody when I say that anybody who believed it is has not heard a real piece of hi-fi equipment.
Your phones are definately being held back by the Pico which in turn is being held back by your source, Macbook or iPod. I don't think any computer sourced audio is capable of bettering any good, say £300 or more CD player, assuming the player in question matches your tastes.
The more revealing the amp/phones become the more the limitations of the source become evident. Moving up to the W6se (an amp I am interested in myself) or Zana will no doubt lead to improvments overall but they are also much more likely to expose faults of your source that you never knew existed. If you can afford the Zana I would personal recommend the w6se and spend what you have saved on a better source.

I suppose I did things differently to most people on this site. I had a £10000 Linn/Naim system years ago which I sold and did not take much interest in hi-fi for sometime. A couple of years ago I decided to invest in a headphone based system. The first thing I did was decide,given my musical tastes, what type of CD Played I wanted. I narrowed it down to 4 choices but was only able to listen to 3 of them. They were Cyrus CD8x,Rega Saturn and Naim CD5x. Of the 3 the Cyrus was my favourite with the Naim a distant third even though the dealer was using Raga & Naim cables. The Cyrus was also cheaper which helped

Given that the Cyrus was supposed to have a slightly lean sound I decided on the HD650 as my phones of choice and the Solo amp because it was supposed to sound great with senn's and from what I read about it it sounded like a good one. I feel I did this the right way and I am very happy with the system but how many people decide not to do it this way or are unable to. I believe in specialist tools for specialist jobs and a computer is not a specialist tool for playing music. Its just something it can do, sometimes very well I might add, but it is never going to be a proper hi-fi device.

I hope my comments help you and if you want anymore information please feel free to ask.

 

[dreamwhisper]

you could start out with a hybrid amp thats in a lower price bracket,
if i were you I would inestigate the head-direct ef1... its on sale right now too

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nigeljames /img/forum/go_quote.gif Your phones are definately being held back by the Pico which in turn is being held back by your source, Macbook or iPod. I don't think any computer sourced audio is capable of bettering any good, say £300 or more CD player, assuming the player in question matches your tastes.

I'm sorry, but this is misinformation.

To make things clear here, the Pico is serving two roles in his setup - amp, and source. His source is not his Macbook, as you've stated. The Macbook is his transport.

Lets look at things from a CD player perspective. You insert a disk, which has digital information on it. A laser mechanism reads the disk. This part of the CD player is the transport.

That data then gets sent on to the DAC - digital to analogue converter - which converts the 1's and 0's into analogue waveforms. The analogue signal then gets amplified to a 2V line level by an output stage, and sent to the analogue outputs of the player. This part of the CD player is the source.

When looked at like this, you can see that the only role that the transport serves is getting the digital data off the disk bit-perfectly to pass on to the DAC - aka, without losing any bits. A computer is perfectly capable of doing this just as well as any expensive optical drive used in high end CD players. For USB dacs like the Pico, all the connected computer is doing is passing in a digital signal. The critical part is how well the digital to analogue conversion goes, and to a lesser degree, the quality of the output stage following it.

To summarise, yes he is being held back by the AMP section in the Pico. But no, he is not being held back by his source - not to any significant degree anyway.

 

[West726]

Nigeljames: I want to be clear, too; there was no sarcasm in my question and I never felt under attack. I was asking a straight question and you gave me a straight answer that makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you very much.

Covenant: Wow, your answer makes sense too. This civil discussion is REALLY helpful to me.

Now, which of you is right?

 

[s_nyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Covenant /img/forum/go_quote.gif Lets look at things from a CD player perspective. You insert a disk, which has digital information on it. A laser mechanism reads the disk. This part of the CD player is the transport. That data then gets sent on to the DAC - digital to analogue converter - which converts the 1's and 0's into analogue waveforms. The analogue signal then gets amplified to a 2V line level by an output stage, and sent to the analogue outputs of the player. This part of the CD player is the source.

Great, great post. I have a slightly out of topic question for you: if you had, say, $500 to spend on a transport+source, would you generally have better results with a $100 cd player and a $400 external DAC or with a $500 cd player for which you would use the built-in DAC?

 

[limpidglitch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by West726 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nigeljames: I want to be clear, too; there was no sarcasm in my question and I never felt under attack. I was asking a straight question and you gave me a straight answer that makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you very much. Covenant: Wow, your answer makes sense too. This civil discussion is REALLY helpful to me. Now, which of you is right?

I'd say both are right. I've compared the optical output of three different transports, using the same DAC, amp and headphones for all. The three were an old Sony DVD player (DVP-S525D), my Marantz SA7001 and my MacBook Pro. The Marantz and the Mac performed close to identically, nothing I could distinguish any way, but the DVD player sounded significantly worse. This indicates, not surprisingly really, that the laser drive quality matters.
When using a computer as transport you also have to consider the quality of the rip. When I was comparing the Marantz and Mac I ripped one of my CDs (Tori Amos – Under The Pink) and compared the rip on the Mac with the original on the Marantz, the rip was clearly inferior. I then downloaded a rip made by somebody else and compared it to the CD, that was when I could not distinguish any difference.

 

[Covenant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by s_nyc /img/forum/go_quote.gif Great, great post. I have a slightly out of topic question for you: if you had, say, $500 to spend on a transport+source, would you generally have better results with a $100 cd player and a $400 external DAC or with a $500 cd player for which you would use the built-in DAC?

Quote:

Originally Posted by limpidglitch When using a computer as transport you also have to consider the quality of the rip. When I was comparing the Marantz and Mac I ripped one of my CDs (Tori Amos – Under The Pink) and compared the rip on the Mac with the original on the Marantz, the rip was clearly inferior. I then downloaded a rip made by somebody else and compared it to the CD, that was when I could not distinguish any difference.

To answer both of the above, this is where the artistry starts factoring in. The thing we need to realise is that the only purpose of a transport is to extract a bit-perfect signal from the recording, and carry that signal to the DAC.

In a cd player, its often hard to tell if we are in fact getting a bit-perfect signal off the cd. Manufacturers won't tend to include any information on this in their marketing material, and certainly won't test their optical drives for bit-perfect output. If a cheap laser mechanism is used, and some bits are lost every now and then between the transport and the cd player's DAC, then quality immediately suffers. And there's no real way to telling if this is happening or not beyond the subjective listening test.

Wheras in a computer, you can test to make sure that what you're getting is bit-perfect output. I have EAC as my ripping software, configured properly to give an accurate rip, and the benefit of EAC is that it reports any errors that occur in the read of the disk, exactly which track the error occured on, and at what time during the track. So that you can go and re-rip any individual tracks that had read errors, until you get a perfect rip. What this means is that when using computer as transport, you don't need an expensive, exotic, overbuilt optical drive like they use in high-end cd players, because you can ensure that every rip is done perfectly.

RE: s_nyc's question about using external DACs to cd players, that starts to become a tricky question to answer, because you have to know if firstly, the external DAC's in that pricerange are better than those built into the cd players, and secondly, that the cd player you're thinking of using as a transport has a good optical drive. If you knew of a $100 cd player with a fantastic optical drive but a crappy DAC, then pairing it with an external DAC makes perfect sense. But how do you find out what makes a good optical drive and what doesn't - and more to the point, which drive any given cd player is using anyway? Its to eliminate this sort of guesswork that I went with computer as source myself.