[amphead]

Great article by Ted Nugent!
Looks like a high sample rate source + premium sound card + high grade dac + high grade cableing and power supply + audiophile phones = rich listening experience.

 

[slwiser]

Quote:

Originally Posted by amphead /img/forum/go_quote.gif Great article by Ted Nugent! Looks like a high sample rate source + premium sound card + high grade dac + high grade cableing and power supply + audiophile phones = rich listening experience.

Ted is not Steve Nugent....

This is Steve Nugent of Audioengr fame., right?

 

[itsborken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccotenj /img/forum/go_quote.gif . i'm willing to say that using eac in secure mode will produce a far more "accurate" (as accurate as something can be from an interpolated result) read/rip than a standalone cdp would...

I think the point I'm driving at and nobody is answering is what is the error rate on a 1x CD with a undamaged CD. If one oversamples to exactly the same data everytime vs the 1x player, you arrive at the same endpoint.

 

[Ahriman4891]

Quote:

Originally Posted by itsborken /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think the point I'm driving at and nobody is answering is what is the error rate on a 1x CD with a undamaged CD. If one oversamples to exactly the same data everytime vs the 1x player, you arrive at the same endpoint.

Random factors come into play when you read data from a CD in realtime. A truck driving past your house creating vibrations, etc. So while a very good CDP should produce a perfect read, it's not guaranteed since you cannot have repeatable ideal conditions. EAC rips are far more secure.

 

[Redo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sejarzo /img/forum/go_quote.gif If S/PDIF is truly a major disadvantage, then why do so many audiophiles claim that separate transports and DACs, connected via S/PDIF, are superior to one-box solutions? Granted, some of the higher end transport/DAC combinations use a proprietary data link, but most of them operate via S/PDIF, or AES/EBU in the professional field.......and believe me, virtually all of what you listen to on CD has passed through multiple AES/EBU connections in the process of going from the live performance to the consumer CD.

High end transports are on thing, sound card based transports are another.


Plus, no matter how you toss it, KMixer finds its way into your life one way or another! Even when you nail true bit perfect output down, for sporadic reasons it doesn't output bit perfect all the time. Then you have to deal with PC noise, crashes, reboots, all that fun stuff that can drive somebody insane.

I love that I can reboot my PC and my music keeps on playing through my CDP. There's no interference. Or if I load up a few too many apps and my computer chugs for a second, guess what, music perfectly ok via the CDP!

 

[diego]

I don't know exact stats but I would guess that most of the time a cdp will get an accurate read with an undamaged cd. However, a secure ripper that doesn't have the need to read it in real time but can take it's time to read it right, will have a greater chance to read it accurately. Once the data is on a hard drive I also think that there is a greater chance that the data is read and streamed accurately because the hard drive is a higher precision device.
Some people in this thread stated that accurate data doesn't matter if you're going to pass it to a sound card inside the computer and I think that's right, but that would be a bad way to use a computer as an audiophile system. I said earlier that a computer can perform as an audiophile transport but I don't think it can perform as an audiophile DAC. To me, the way to have great SQ from a computer is with an external dac where the analog part of the conversion can be done best.

Regards,
Diego

 

[diego]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redo /img/forum/go_quote.gif High end transports are on thing, sound card based transports are another. Plus, no matter how you toss it, KMixer finds its way into your life one way or another! Even when you nail true bit perfect output down, for sporadic reasons it doesn't output bit perfect all the time. Then you have to deal with PC noise, crashes, reboots, all that fun stuff that can drive somebody insane. I love that I can reboot my PC and my music keeps on playing through my CDP. There's no interference. Or if I load up a few too many apps and my computer chugs for a second, guess what, music perfectly ok via the CDP!

With Asio or kernel streaming it really is bit perfect all the time, I don't find variations in sound quality over time in my system.

You can use a dedicated laptop instead of a transport and it will give you a very good data feed for much less than a mid level transport. For instance, a $800 dedicated laptop + a $780 Stello DA100 would be a very good source for only $1580 which is cheap for audiophile standards.

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Plus, no matter how you toss it, KMixer finds its way into your life one way or another! Even when you nail true bit perfect output down, for sporadic reasons it doesn't output bit perfect all the time. Then you have to deal with PC noise, crashes, reboots, all that fun stuff that can drive somebody insane.

Huh?????

kmixer, "no matter how you toss it"? Please explain how kmixer is in the picture at all if you use a card with native ASIO drivers?

What sporadic reasons cause non-bit-perfect transfer?

Those of us who are not gamers, and tend to use only mainstream software apps usually don't have problems with crashes and reboots with XP.

 

[audioengr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by appletree /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is this true ?

Sure, it's true.

Steve N.

 

[audioengr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redo /img/forum/go_quote.gif High end transports are on thing, sound card based transports are another. Plus, no matter how you toss it, KMixer finds its way into your life one way or another! Even when you nail true bit perfect output down, for sporadic reasons it doesn't output bit perfect all the time. Then you have to deal with PC noise, crashes, reboots, all that fun stuff that can drive somebody insane. I love that I can reboot my PC and my music keeps on playing through my CDP. There's no interference. Or if I load up a few too many apps and my computer chugs for a second, guess what, music perfectly ok via the CDP!

With the advent of the new so called USB "driverless firmware" used in the new Benchmark DAC-1 USB and Empirical Audio gear, most of these PC irritations are a thing of the past. No driver to load, no selection of sample-rate, no ASIO to load, no ticks and pops and best of all, its always bit-perfect. Plug-and-play. It turns out there are ways around KMIXER and it's annoyances.

Steve N.

 

[Petyot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audioengr /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sure, it's true. Steve N.

Steve,

Excellent article. Very informative and well written.


Pierre

 

[ccotenj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sejarzo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Huh????? kmixer, "no matter how you toss it"? Please explain how kmixer is in the picture at all if you use a card with native ASIO drivers? What sporadic reasons cause non-bit-perfect transfer? Those of us who are not gamers, and tend to use only mainstream software apps usually don't have problems with crashes and reboots with XP.

yea, i'm curious about "sporadic reasons" too... dunno about his machine, but mine doesn't drop bits "sporadically"... that WOULD cause a crash...

as far as "crashes and reboots"... the only time my xp machine reboots is if i HAVE to for a software install... it generally is up for months... and i can't remember the last time it "crashed"...

 

[ccotenj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by itsborken /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think the point I'm driving at and nobody is answering is what is the error rate on a 1x CD with a undamaged CD. If one oversamples to exactly the same data everytime vs the 1x player, you arrive at the same endpoint.

technically speaking, on a perfect disk in a perfect world, a 1x read would be the same as a 1000x read... that being said, we don't live in a perfect world, and the old adage "measure twice, cut once" comes to mind...

i won't try and argue the position that a hard drive based system is "better" than a dedicated cdp (even though i believe personally it could be but i think that everyone is already entrenched in their position on that one)... but that wasn't the original question... the question was "can it be a decent audiophile source"... imo, when using the computer to stream to a good external dac, it can be more than "decent"...

 

[Redo]

I have the privilege of having my computer setup to the digital input of my receiver. So I can run 2 channel PCM DD/DTS tests at will. More often than not, it's not bit perfect until I fiddle with some of the internal settings. Then it goes back to bit perfect.

ASIO isn't a magic bullet, it's still quirky.

 

[vcoheda]

Quote:

Originally Posted by whistler /img/forum/go_quote.gif My guess is that the standalone CD player has a better DAC than the DAC your PC is using to convert the data stream into a audio stream.

same source for pc (using flac files) and cd player, my apogee mini dac.