[Jasper994]

I don't know about you guys, but I love how versitile a computer source is. I have my HT reciever hooked up to it as well as my headphone setup and it has wonderful redbook playback and also sounds very good with DVD. I can setup playlists of my 60GB music library with ease and manage it on the fly while I surf the net and do other things. For what it's worth, I can also output to my TV or Monitor. Try that out of a stand alone without spending an arm, leg, foot and an eye. And Ed is right, who the hell wants to get up all the time to switch disks.

BTW, I'm not saying stand alone players suck, just that they are terribly in convienient.

Also, I can lay in bed or recline in my full back executive chair which is quite comfortable while using my computer source.

 

[shard]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman where do you live? you don't necessarily order from US.. I heard some German company ships to the whole world, prices are not that bad..

I live in Singapore, do you have the link to the vendor? Thanks.

 

[Glassman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shard I live in Singapore, do you have the link to the vendor? Thanks.

it was this one:
Quote:

Originally Posted by halcyon EMU 1820m, 499e at Thomann.de http://www.netzmarkt.de/thomann/thoi...el-167351.html regards, halcyon

but if you're in Singapore, there must be some easier way to get E-MU cards.. all that stuff is being made in Asia, you should have a good access to it or not?

 

[TimSchirmer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer I don't get you. You show interest in something, then want to bash it at the same time. Is it impossible for you to understand the convenience of PC audio to those of us that use it? Not everyone forces themselves to sit in an uncomfortable chair at their computer, I know I sure as hell don't. I don't think people are going to be very receptive to answering your questions if you continue treating us like some brand of second-class heretics. Why do you even have a sound card if you think they are so terrible? Haven't you found a way to build a turntable into your computer yet?

Okay... i was simply asking about driver support. I have nothing against soundcards. I use one myself. I run lossless out of foobar2k out of my 2496, which is connected, to a vintage receiver and my Avids. Its quite nice. I do understand the convenience of PC audio. Its just that when I listen, I focus only on the music. I think you are taking this too personally. The reasons I consider soundcard-sourced setups to be inferior have mostly to do with the following:

spineless power supplies
lackluster parts
noise interference
ergonomic issues

The reasons I prefer dedicated cd players to sound cards are:

high quality power supply
dedicated well built transport
precision clocking
high end d/a section
high end analog output stage

Despite popular opinion here, these things combined actually make things sound better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood Heh.. glad i never bought into all of that High End CD Player hype. I'm somewhat tired of having to muck with changing Discs in my Harman Kardon CD Player every time i switch to a new album. Would be nice to have music built into playlist like most sound cards have. No way in hell would this ever be my main source (since CD Players suck after all) However, I might grab one of these if the support is there. If not, i'll just stick with what i have now. I'll never understand why people bother using headphones at the CD Player. Its an ergonomic disaster. I have to keep getting up all the time and swap discs to do any serious listening. -Ed

Actually. I find ripping CD's much more irritating and time consuming. If you download your music, more power to ya. You guys should still all sit down and listen to a wadia and maybe a high-end turntable. I'm not talking out of my ass here.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sduibek EDIT: Might be too personal.. but I just gotta say this. How could someone have such a rash opinion and also have so many posts on HeadFi? (Well, ignoring those Team Useless Post-ers, heh) Most people I know with that many posts (Wodgy, Ed, Peter, Sean) are pretty open-minded and great people to talk to. I'd never hear one of them make a "X sucks" type of statement like "soundcards suck." Or if they did it would be laden with YMMV's and IME's. It saddens/angers me when I see posts like that; I think of the populace of HeadFi as being generally above this sort of thing, and every post like that makes it more like every other forum.

Post count means squat. Any idiot can post 15 times a day for a few months. The sad part is that many of these people are considered “experts” by newcomers and often give misinformed advice. Whenever I take advice from anyone, they will have a balance of experience and similar listening tastes. I prefer a transparent, organic, non-fatiguing, sound with an overall neutral presentation. I'm also one of those god-forsaken people who believe that audio gear should extract as much information from the source material as possible without adding its own "euphonic" colorations. I do consider myself open minded. To be honest, the only reason i didn't bother listening to the RME at the SoCal meet was because I didn't want to mess with their foobar playlists.

 

[yeeyy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimSchirmer The reasons I prefer dedicated cd players to sound cards are: high quality power supply dedicated well built transport precision clocking high end d/a section high end analog output stage

First, no all CD players come with high quality power supply, dedicated well built transport, precision clocking, high end D/A section or high end analog output stage.

Second, I believe all you mentioned above will directly related to the performance of a player. So how to measure the performance of a CD player? Dynamic Range, THD+N, Crosstalk, ....etc right?!

So now you tell me, what is your player measurement?


[Edited] Typo....

 

[10068]

Quote:

spineless power supplies

I'm using the PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 Deluxe (whew, long name) currently and it's not spineless at all. They have basically made the best possible power supply they can with the restraints of being a PC PSU (i.e. available space, heating, etc).

Quote:

lackluster parts

Ummm... eh?

I grant you that the highest-end CDP has better parts than my E-MU, possibly even better parts than a Lynx, but who cares? I never wanted my PC source to rival MULTI THOUSAND DOLLAR CDP. The E-MU sounds damn good. It's by far "good enough", so who cares if each individual part doesn't cost 300 dollars? I'm sure your 2496 has ****ty parts, but i'm not talking about that, i'm talking about good cards

(that's a joke, btw)

Besides, i'm sure people can back me up that the RME (and most definitely the E-MU once it gets around more) can and do rival standalone CDPs and DACs.

Quote:

noise interference

This is a non-issue with audiophile-level PC soundcards. On my E-MU I heard NO noise whatsoever. On the RME I only hear the slightest amount of noise. Even with my MUCH louder computer (just upgraded some stuff and haven't invested the time into controlling my fans yet) I only hear the fans when the music stops.

It seems like you're basing your opinion of PC Audiophile audio from your experience with mainstream computer components.

My statements in my original post(s?) still heartily apply, FWIW.

OH! Forgot to mention. If you went with the Lynx L22, it has everything you said you look for in a quality CDP. .....but PC cards suck, right?

Quote:

The sad part is that many of these people are considered “experts” by newcomers and often give misinformed advice.

Are you trying to tell me that i'm wrong in considering Wodgy and Peter and Sean to be knowledgable?

Yeah, they don't know everything. Nobody does. But they sure are one hell of a great source of help. They'll inform as best they can, and if they don't know the answer they'll tell me so. Sure, everybody's got their own personal viewpoint, but that's why I usually ask most of the people on my Buddy List the same thing.. because they're all such good sources of info, and I wanna get lots of different opinions. In any case, I hope you weren't at all trying to suggest those I mentioned as "misinformed" or useless posters. If anyone here is misinformed, it's you my friend, as you've shown by your lack of informed-ness in regards to pc audio

Quote:

Actually. I find ripping CD's much more irritating and time consuming.

Well, I consider the ripping time a necessary evil. Oh, and just FYI, with my current drive I can EAC CDs at 17-32x

Anyways, once you rip it.. you're done. From then on it's instantly at your fingertips, whereas with a CDP I would ALWAYS be shuffling CDs and jewel cases.. not my cup of tea. Also with a PC you've got a playlist, which to my computer-raised self is more intuitive than a CD-changer setup.

Quote:

You guys should still all sit down and listen to a wadia and maybe a high-end turntable.

I heard the Orpheus+KGSS+Meridian at the Seattle Meet. This was an eargasm, no doubt. But last time I checked, I didn't have that kind of cash to drop on my audio system. Since I love the convenience of PC audio so much, all I can do is grab the best PC source possible and have good downstream components. Fair enough to my ears so far

 

[Glassman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimSchirmer The reasons I consider soundcard-sourced setups to be inferior have mostly to do with the following: spineless power supplies lackluster parts noise interference ergonomic issues The reasons I prefer dedicated cd players to sound cards are: high quality power supply dedicated well built transport precision clocking high end d/a section high end analog output stage Actually. I find ripping CD's much more irritating and time consuming. If you download your music, more power to ya.

spineless power supplies - yes, computer power supplies are inferior, but if you do yourself a favor and buy one of the better pieces, they're quite okay, it's mostly the sound card's business to deal with power conditioning although I think they can do better than they're doing now..

dedicated well built transport - I think we can agree that any decent computer CD drive paired with EAC in secure mode is better than any dedicated transport.. what do you think Meridian G08 has as a transport? yes, computer CD drive ripping the CD a few times and doing simillar error corection as EAC, but in this case it's done on-the-fly in contrast with rip-once, listen-forever in case of EAC

precision clocking - I think we can again agree that studio mastering cards do have some great clock generators, for example E-MU shows even better jitter specs (listenable) than already great RME Digi96/8 cards.. I think you're not gonna find that good oscillators in sub multi-$$$ players..

ergonomic issues - up to everyone I think, personally I feel very comfortable

high end d/a section - well I don't know what more do you want? current Crystal's flagship CS4398 is not enought for you? well..

high end analog output stage - yes this is also a problem with soundcards, the manufacturers are using rather cheap opamp circuits because they focus on measuring, not listening, but it's not a disaster anyway.. you can always mod or get your card modded for better results..

Actually. I find ripping CD's much more irritating and time consuming. If you download your music, more power to ya - I don't trust downloading, I want the best quality possible, eg. bit perfect copy of original CD, nothing less.. I find ripping very convinient and it's also a good think to know you have extracted the CD without ANY read error, regardless of how many times you'll replay..

 

[TimSchirmer]

I won't argue about this anymore. It doesn't have the potential to go anywhere. All I can say is listen for yourselves.

edit: anyways, thanks for answering my questions about linux support.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimSchirmer I won't argue about this anymore. It doesn't have the potential to go anywhere. All I can say is listen for yourselves.

Everyone else disporved your points already as I would have, so all I will say is next meet, get off your butt and listen for YOURself. I will make you your own doggone playlist if that is such an issue. The highly modded EMU I will have by then will disprove evey aspect that you claim about why soundcards are supposedly no good.

 

[TimSchirmer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sduibek Are you trying to tell me that i'm wrong in considering Wodgy and Peter and Sean to be knowledgable?

No. I don't know them.

 

[TimSchirmer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer Everyone else disporved your points already as I would have, so all I will say is next meet, get off your butt and listen for YOURself. I will make you your own doggone playlist if that is such an issue. The highly modded EMU I will have by then will disprove evey aspect that you claim about why soundcards are supposedly no good.

Sure thing. I'll give it a listen next to the micromega. Just be warned that my main goal in going is to listen to the stax setups and PS-1's, and maybe the L3000's.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimSchirmer Just be warned that my main goal in going is to listen to the stax setups and PS-1's, and maybe the L3000's.

As mine will be, those are some sick cans! It shouldn' take too long for you to realize that a soundcard can be better than you give them credit for.

 

[Edwood]

Since the tube gear is not going to be powered on and off, and moved around; and Peter's computer mid tower O power is not going to be moved around either, I am in the process of building a small "mini me" computer with two PCI slots. Hopfully I can have it built and working in time for the meet. That way the computer can be moved TO the amps, and not vice versa, as we found at the last meet, does not work.

BTW, anyone know where I can get a regulated 19V power supply that outputs at least 60watts?
I am building a dedicated music computer with (hopefully) zero fans in it. The DC to DC converter also could be adding noise. I am building it based on this.

-Ed

 

[halcyon]

Trying to find some common ground here, while probably being sorely off-topic...

There are techincal valid reasons to be cautious about computer sound cards as high end audio sources, IMHO.

Some examples:

1) jitter measured in nano- rather than picoseconds (good cd players hover around 100-200 ps RMS, EMU in 1000 ps, audibility ranges range depending on author from 120ps all the way up to 3500ns, just to give some simplified RMS levels for jitter)

2) op-amps, I/V conversions, analog output stage couplings. We already know that the usually very cheap parts must be used for $100-$200 retail price products. Not only that, perfectly valid engineering compromises must be made in regards to output impedance, output voltage levels, price of components and actual sound quality. Iron_Dreamer's and other's modding experiments also point to this direction. It's not as easy to make a high quality cd-player (say Audio Aero Capitole Mk II) better by tinkering with caps exhanges, imho.

3) switched mode limited voltage power sources. Most analog audio designers will tell you why switched mode PSUs are difficult or very problematic to control. Sound cards are not different in this respect. The voltage regulation and power source cleaning on a small PCI card from a noisy PCI-channel from a noisy switched mode PSU (regardless of it's high quality in terms of computer components, like Emacs/Zippy) source is quite difficult. At least compared to the extent that power supply control can be carried out on a high quality cd player that has absolutely separate (dedicated) power feeds for both digital and audio parts with excellent voltage capacity and superior filtering.

Of course, the issues may not be limited to these, real designers could add other issues.

Additionally, this doesn't mean automatically that a sound card cannot be a high quality sound source in subjective terms. In fact, I do believe based on what I've read from you guys that EMU 1212m could well be a very high quality source, especially after some modding.

However, superior sound quality (<> signal quality) cannot be proven with RMAA measurements (we already know that basic THD, IMD, channel separation, amplitude response and noise/dynamic range measurements do not fully explain the audible differences in sound sources, for example).

The superiority must be proven with listening, just like Iron Dreamer and others are doing (IMHO).

However, the doubt remains for some people and I think this doubt can be based on possible real issues.

The best thing is, as recommended by others, to sit down and listen. If you like it, consider the potential savings and be happy. If not, move on and try again after a few new generations.

best regards,
halcyon

 

[Jasper994]

I just want to make the point that there are a couple major things to consider here... 1) THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS 2) If one of us computer nuts were to spend the money it takes to buy one of those $$$$$ players, I'm quite sure our computer source would hold it's own. That said, find me a non computer source that can stack up to the E-Mu for $200 or even my Audiophile USB for $150. You won't find one. Especially not one with all of the convienience factors that all of us hold so dear. Sure the total spent if you include the PC itself is quite a bit but most of us would have the same pc regaurdless (this would definately leave out Edwood

).