Better Sound for Mac Users- Pure Music Player

[bixby]

just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, I just played Jarrett's Koln 24/96 second segment with wifi and BT on and then off individually.  Each time I turned a radio off the background became quieter or more black, piano notes had more body, and his grunt or ramblings more clear and almost intelligible.  All this at about 76db through my speakers because my boy is not feeling well and I cannot turn it up.  Next came Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds CD with Glass House.  the decay on the flute was much longer, wind movement was easier to pick out and even the glass chimes were less crunchy.  Space was more apparent in the mix and dynamics a little bit better.  And this was with the async, timing correcting Halide Bridge feeding my dac.
 
If it were the Silflex Toslink, I doubt I could hear the changes as easily, but I have in the past.  WMMV and all that since my "audible changes" are another's "can't tell the difference". 
 
EDIT:  Could it be that what I and others are hearing is power supply related or processes related and not RF related?  Just a thought.  I do know that isolating the switching wall wart for my external hard drive with another power conditioner helped the sound as a reviewer of PM had suggested.  I know it is hard to believe it could but it did.  Also similar to the early discovery that an external hard drive sounded better with itunes than using an internal hard drive.

 

[warp08]

Quote:

thanks warp08.  I have a nano 4g that I throw in my pocket when hiking or biking.  I was just wondering if the 6g is a bit better via hp out.  I am using my lowly Westone UM3X for those activities.  Wish I could have some of Jerry's stuff but these do fine for my budget. 

I think it is much better, although I wouldn't trade my WhipMOD for it.  I couldn't tolerate the 4G without external amping like the Pico Slim or the RSA Shadow.  I actually rather like the UM3X and the other Westone Pro gear as well, and heard good things about the ES5.   Westone has probably the best fit especially with Comply tips for my ear canals among all the universals, and I had quite a few before jumping to customs.  Now with the JH-3A soon on the way, I have too many JHA customs to even think about investing in the ES5.  Even my insanity has to stop somewhere...I think.
 

 

[mrspeakers]

Quote:

just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, I just played Jarrett's Koln 24/96 second segment with wifi and BT on and then off individually.  Each time I turned a radio off the background became quieter or more black, piano notes had more body, and his grunt or ramblings more clear and almost intelligible.  All this at about 76db through my speakers because my boy is not feeling well and I cannot turn it up.  Next came Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds CD with Glass House.  the decay on the flute was much longer, wind movement was easier to pick out and even the glass chimes were less crunchy.  Space was more apparent in the mix and dynamics a little bit better.  And this was with the async, timing correcting Halide Bridge feeding my dac.
 
If it were the Silflex Toslink, I doubt I could hear the changes as easily, but I have in the past.  WMMV and all that since my "audible changes" are another's "can't tell the difference". 
 
EDIT:  Could it be that what I and others are hearing is power supply related or processes related and not RF related?  Just a thought.  I do know that isolating the switching wall wart for my external hard drive with another power conditioner helped the sound as a reviewer of PM had suggested.  I know it is hard to believe it could but it did.  Also similar to the early discovery that an external hard drive sounded better with itunes than using an internal hard drive.

I looked at your profile and can't figure out what your complete setup is.  Can you be more specific about the complete rig (software, interconnect type, DAC, amp)

 

[Pale Rider]

just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, I just played Jarrett's Koln 24/96 second segment with wifi and BT on and then off individually.  Each time I turned a radio off the background became quieter or more black, piano notes had more body, and his grunt or ramblings more clear and almost intelligible.  All this at about 76db through my speakers because my boy is not feeling well and I cannot turn it up.  Next came Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds CD with Glass House.  the decay on the flute was much longer, wind movement was easier to pick out and even the glass chimes were less crunchy.  Space was more apparent in the mix and dynamics a little bit better.  And this was with the async, timing correcting Halide Bridge feeding my dac.


 


If it were the Silflex Toslink, I doubt I could hear the changes as easily, but I have in the past.  WMMV and all that since my "audible changes" are another's "can't tell the difference". 


 


EDIT:  Could it be that what I and others are hearing is power supply related or processes related and not RF related?  Just a thought.  I do know that isolating the switching wall wart for my external hard drive with another power conditioner helped the sound as a reviewer of PM had suggested.  I know it is hard to believe it could but it did.  Also similar to the early discovery that an external hard drive sounded better with itunes than using an internal hard drive.

Interesting speculation about the power supply. At one level, that makes more sense to me, but as I noted before, I don't doubt what you are hearing, just trying to understand the cause.

Have you tried this experiment with your headphones? 
 

 

[vuntruong]

I'm not saying digital signal dont have errors.  Sure, u have clocks, and Jitters, and errors. U can't avoid errors.  I am Simply saying that Toslink cables, when transmitting light through short distances, are immune to interferences from radio frequency, cross talk, Wifi, etc....  The only prob one might run into with Toslink cable is that the signal get weaker through long distances bs the light doesn't get reflected properly due to the quality of the cable.  As for AC cable, Clean AC power, Clean DC power, Good conductor metal, great shielding, and good vibration dampening.  Sure, all those factors can help to reproduce some great music.  As for PM softwares playing music.  I had i hope for it, but I notice that it is just like purevinyl.  I tried it on my system, and i didn't really hear much of a difference.  Yeah, sure I might be able to train myself to hear the diff, but I was hoping i didn't have to try too hard to notice the improvements.  I think its a step in the right direction, it just needed more refinements.

 

[warp08]

Quote:

Quote:

just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, I just played Jarrett's Koln 24/96 second segment with wifi and BT on and then off individually.  Each time I turned a radio off the background became quieter or more black, piano notes had more body, and his grunt or ramblings more clear and almost intelligible.  All this at about 76db through my speakers because my boy is not feeling well and I cannot turn it up.  Next came Andreas Vollenweider's White Winds CD with Glass House.  the decay on the flute was much longer, wind movement was easier to pick out and even the glass chimes were less crunchy.  Space was more apparent in the mix and dynamics a little bit better.  And this was with the async, timing correcting Halide Bridge feeding my dac.
 
If it were the Silflex Toslink, I doubt I could hear the changes as easily, but I have in the past.  WMMV and all that since my "audible changes" are another's "can't tell the difference". 
 
EDIT:  Could it be that what I and others are hearing is power supply related or processes related and not RF related?  Just a thought.  I do know that isolating the switching wall wart for my external hard drive with another power conditioner helped the sound as a reviewer of PM had suggested.  I know it is hard to believe it could but it did.  Also similar to the early discovery that an external hard drive sounded better with itunes than using an internal hard drive.

I looked at your profile and can't figure out what your complete setup is.  Can you be more specific about the complete rig (software, interconnect type, DAC, amp)

 
Neither can I because it keeps changing.  As far as computer audio it should look like this in about a week (some of the components are still in transit or being manufactured like the new 192 Diverter):  MBP->Songbird (soon to be Amarra)->Locus Design Cynosure USB->192 Diverter->Locus Design Reference SPDIF cable sourced from Whiplash->Zodiac Gold/Voltikus Power Supply->XLR3 Balanced to TWag SR71B IC-->SR71B-->SR71B to XLR3 TWag balanced adapter->various TWag v1 and TWag v2 recabled cans like Edition 10, Qualia, HD600 or non-recabled phones such as bass-heavy XLR4 balanced R10 and AKG K1K (connected to the SR71B via a TWag XLR4 balanced adapter.
 
For power, I use a Power Plant Premier (for the Zodiac that will power the Voltikus PSU).
 

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I've tried both Amarra and PM in my systems and I didn't hear a difference. I think I know why: Bits are bits, but they aren't the whole story. The whole story is data, noise and timing (jitter). If you're running bit-perfect, data is taken care of. There won't be any difference between players on that front. Noise, I think, is the culprit -- a busy computer can make a lot of electrical noise that can ride along with your data to the analog part of your system. This might be why people seem to hear improvements when shutting down as much non-essential functionality as possible. And it is possible that players like PM and Amarra limit computer activity, enough to audibly reduce noise. So why don't I hear it? My system re-clocks and galvanically isolates between my Mac and my DACs, so I'm addressing the problem in hardware, arguably at the source, making all the hoop-jumping of optimization and minimization and special software a series of moot points. The fact that PM plays hi-res files without manually changing is helpful, but I hear no difference playing files in their native rates. So, IMO, this not a matter of "you won't hear a difference if your system is not good enough." Exactly the opposite. You won't hear a difference if your system addresses galvanic isolation and jitter adequately. MHO. YMMV.
 
P

 

[bixby]

@Plonk:  Good logical argument ......but it still does not answer why me and many others hear these differences.  Three fellow members of the Audio group here in CO hear these differences on 3 different systems.  As for jitter being addressed.  Perhaps these tweaks are addressing it.  As for reclocking, a well designed async device like the halide with its master clock should address it.  As for galvanic isolation, the transformers in the Halide are there specifically to address that source of noise.
 
YET, we still all hear differences in our 3 Mac based systems.
 
Audio is still a frontier for figuring out what causes audible differences and even when you thing you have it all figured out somethign comes along and upsets the logical way of looking at it.  I am glad you don't have a system that "needs"  these changes or tweaks.  But I accept that mine is variable and can be changed with them.  I don't really care about it though, since the result is very nice.
 
@Pale Rider- Headphones are next on my list.  I am testing another usb - spdif bridge that will be reviewed here soon and will let you know if I hear the same thing vis a vis tweaks on the mac.

 

[bixby]

@mrspeakers - Source is a Macbook with 4gb ram and external firewire 1 TB drive.  Pure Music is the player set to run in hog mode no upsampling.  Output from the Macbook is via Halide Bridge to the Blue Circle BC509 Dac, balanced out to Bel Canto EVO4 running in bridged stereo mode.  XLR cables are Element Cable Titans.Output from the amp is via 10 foot proprietary flat copper speaker cable not to dissimilar to Goertz M series.  Speakers are SP Technologies Timepiece 2.0 Monitors with Cardas jumpers.  Most of this ins in my gallery in my profiles if you care to look at the room.
 
Testing with headphones will add the Blue Circle Hat Peed Thingee headphone amp and VH audio Pulsar interconnects in single ended mode.  And headphones will be the Shure 840s.

 

[grawk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

[warp08]

Quote:

 You won't hear a difference if your system addresses galvanic isolation and jitter adequately. MHO. YMMV.
 
P

Speaking of galvanic isolation--and let me say that I have no financial or other interest to promote Locus cables except as a customer--I think quality ICs go a long way to enhance that.  The way the Cynosure cable is designed and being constructed, for example (and what's disclosed here is only part of the story) certainly make an interesting reading, at least for me:  http://locus-design.com/index.php/cynosure-usb-cable

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

@Plonk:  Good logical argument ......but it still does not answer why me and many others hear these differences.  Three fellow members of the Audio group here in CO hear these differences on 3 different systems.  As for jitter being addressed.  Perhaps these tweaks are addressing it.  As for reclocking, a well designed async device like the halide with its master clock should address it.  As for galvanic isolation, the transformers in the Halide are there specifically to address that source of noise.
 
YET, we still all hear differences in our 3 Mac based systems.
 
Audio is still a frontier for figuring out what causes audible differences and even when you thing you have it all figured out somethign comes along and upsets the logical way of looking at it.  I am glad you don't have a system that "needs"  these changes or tweaks.  But I accept that mine is variable and can be changed with them.  I don't really care about it though, since the result is very nice.
 
@Pale Rider- Headphones are next on my list.  I am testing another usb - spdif bridge that will be reviewed here soon and will let you know if I hear the same thing vis a vis tweaks on the mac.

I would agree that there is often no logical explanation for what audiophiles hear, and you're right that your halide should be addressing jitter and isolation adequately. I don't know what it is you're hearing. I only know that there is no reasonable explanation for it being a function of a media player, and neither Amarra nor Pure Audio make a difference in my system playing the same files at the same rates. I thought I heard something from both of them (this happens to me frequently when trying new things) but as soon as my wife started doing the shut downs and re-starts without me being able to see what was running, I was unable to identify which was which and couldn't really hear a difference I could put my finger on. I got it wrong as often (statistically speaking) as I got it right. It was an informal blind listening test, of course, and proves nothing but still, I call that "no difference," or close enough to spend the money on music. YMMV.
 
Whatever it is you hear, I'm happy you're enjoying it. Audio really is nowhere near its frontier, though. The analog part of your signal chain is extremely mature and hasn't seen any revolutionary developments in several decades. The advances have all been incremental and mostly in the transducers for a long time now. The digital section is newer, of course, but it is far from its frontier days. Middle aged. Settled in. To the point where the differences between top-flight studio converters and the DAC built into a decent AV receiver are lost on all but those who are critically listening for the differences. In other words, audiophiles and pros. The only thing I've done in years that has fundamentally changed my systems is a move to active speaker systems in a domestic environment. That made a very audible difference that got me much closer to the clarity I experience in headphone listening. Of course active technology has been around for years. It was a new discovery for me, not the world.
 
P

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Quote:

 You won't hear a difference if your system addresses galvanic isolation and jitter adequately. MHO. YMMV.
 
P

Speaking of galvanic isolation--and let me say that I have no financial or other interest to promote Locus cables except as a customer--I think quality ICs go a long way to enhance that.  The way the Cynosure cable is designed and being constructed, for example (and what's disclosed here is only part of the story) certainly make an interesting reading, at least for me:  http://locus-design.com/index.php/cynosure-usb-cable

Galvanic isolation and shielding are not the same thing. Shielding keeps interference out of a specific cable. Isolation, as were talking about it here, endeavors to remove the electronic noise of the digital signal chain by breaking the chain completely before it enters the analog stage. The simplest examples would be an optical or wifi connection between computer and DAC. A well-shielded usb cable is not a bad thing, but the noise we're talking about is already in there.
 
P

 

[warp08]

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

 You won't hear a difference if your system addresses galvanic isolation and jitter adequately. MHO. YMMV.
 
P

Speaking of galvanic isolation--and let me say that I have no financial or other interest to promote Locus cables except as a customer--I think quality ICs go a long way to enhance that.  The way the Cynosure cable is designed and being constructed, for example (and what's disclosed here is only part of the story) certainly make an interesting reading, at least for me:  http://locus-design.com/index.php/cynosure-usb-cable

Galvanic isolation and shielding are not the same thing. Shielding keeps interference out of a specific cable. Isolation, as were talking about it here, endeavors to remove the electronic noise of the digital signal chain by breaking the chain completely before it enters the analog stage. The simplest examples would be an optical or wifi connection between computer and DAC. A well-shielded usb cable is not a bad thing, but the noise we're talking about is already in there.
 
P

Your point is well taken, but I would point out that it isn't just shielding, but the combination of multi-layer shielding and dampening, something that's equally as important in both analog and digital cables.  I was skeptical a first about the digital cables, but after some critical listening sessions, not any more.
 
Speaking of pure galvanic isolation, I would also believe--based on its design and build quality--that the Sonic Diverter does a better job at it than the HiFace, although at a significant price premium.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

 You won't hear a difference if your system addresses galvanic isolation and jitter adequately. MHO. YMMV.
 
P

Speaking of galvanic isolation--and let me say that I have no financial or other interest to promote Locus cables except as a customer--I think quality ICs go a long way to enhance that.  The way the Cynosure cable is designed and being constructed, for example (and what's disclosed here is only part of the story) certainly make an interesting reading, at least for me:  http://locus-design.com/index.php/cynosure-usb-cable

Galvanic isolation and shielding are not the same thing. Shielding keeps interference out of a specific cable. Isolation, as were talking about it here, endeavors to remove the electronic noise of the digital signal chain by breaking the chain completely before it enters the analog stage. The simplest examples would be an optical or wifi connection between computer and DAC. A well-shielded usb cable is not a bad thing, but the noise we're talking about is already in there.
 
P

Your point is well taken, but I would point out that it isn't just shielding, but the combination of multi-layer shielding and dampening, something that's equally as important in both analog and digital cables.  I was skeptical a first about the digital cables, but after some critical listening sessions, not any more.
 
Speaking of pure galvanic isolation, I would also believe--based on its design and build quality--that the Sonic Diverter does a better job at it than the HiFace, although at a significant price premium.

Not sure I get what you mean by "damping" in a digital cable.
 
P