DeBilbao
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 20, 2003
- Posts
- 149
- Likes
- 187
I would like to express my gratitude to all the folks in this forum that have influenced me to go for my new hi-fi setup. In the beginning I was concerned about spending too much in it, but at the end, I convinced myself to go for the best-you-can-buy in one easy and fortunately successful step.
And I was rewarded. Here's the story.
[size=medium]A brief introduction [/size]
I don't have a dedicated room for listening to music with a traditional hi-fi equipment so I'm forced into headphones listening. Maybe is this is the situation of many people around here. Maybe not, maybe is pure headphone vice isn't it?
I had started a few years ago into headphone listening, and thanks to the expert advice founded in this forum – once again – I bought a pair of Grado SR-80. They have a really nice sound, aren’t difficult to drive although they are not so comfortable, but have provided me with many hours of enjoyment.
To get you more focused, my musical tastes are varied, but to be honest Jazz is my main preference. Classical is winning interest and pop, rock and folk has their moments too. Music is marvellous in so many ways... But let's continue with the setup.
As you can guess by my nickname, I'm located in Bilbao, Spain and this is definitely a drawback. I don't have access to all of the equipment that you can reach in the USA. And If you find a vendor that ships to Spain, the shipping charges make silly to buy many things in most cases.
[size=medium]In the beginning: It was the music[/size]
First of all, let's talk about the music. I have all my music ripped from my own CD's - or downloaded in APE or FLAC - and encoded in MP3 format using the Über Standards. Basically everything is VBR 224 LAME alt preset extreme. I think it's good quality, almost undistinguishable from the original CD. My opinion is that many times if a recording sounds bad is more a matter of the recording itself than the encoding process. If you use correctly EAC and LAME you're going to get good results. Maybe I should go for APE and FLAC, but I've found this kind of compression the most convenient, because I use two different kinds of sources: my computer and my iPod.
All my music is correctly tagged, classified by genre, with cover art, and really well organized in my iTunes Library. I iTunes is a great tool for organizing and browsing your music, though It’s not the best player around. But this can be fixed. Refer to the section where I discuss the player down below.
[size=medium]Source #1: My PC[/size]
I use a Windows XP based PC everyday, and if I look into myself, the more complicated thing is to have time, time to enjoy your music, so that's why I decided to put my PC into the setup and consider it as a valid source. I think of my PC as a highly configurable source. If you find the correct setup, you can really get very good sound. It's also easier to mess things up, because you still use the PC for many other things, installing new programs, but I think I've found the correct combination of elements. Sounds kind’ a magic but it's the reality.
[size=medium]Source #1: The Audio Card[/size]
I wanted to put the soundcard out of the box, first of all to get rid of the nasty sounds that many electronic components have and also because if it's detachable, it's easy to move it from one PC to another. Until now I was using a Terratec Sixpack 5.1+ and it sounded good, but it was affected by this kind of sounds. I decided to go for the Edirol UA-1EX by Roland. It has every feature I was looking for. Analogue input and output, optical input and output, a headphone output with volume control and a microphone input. It's also ASIO 2.0 compatible, and it's capable to operate in 24 bit/ 96 KHz. The driver installs without problems, and it's really easy to switch back and forth between soundcards using the control panel.
The card operates completely silent. No audible hisses, it’s just there waiting to receive a digital signal to convert it to the best analogue output it’s capable to produce.
[size=medium]Source #1: The player [/size]
IMHO foobar200 is the best player around. No discussion. But I think is arguable that it cannot compete with iTunes in terms of ease of use and richness of features right out of the box. How to combine the best of both? You get Multi Plug-In v2.3.2 and you’re done. You use iTunes and the sound reproduction is passed through foobar2000, were you can select every tweak available. I currently have selected in the DSP Manager the crosfeed filter, the Gap killer and the Resampler (PPHS) to upsample the signal to 48 KHz in Ultra mode.
The result is best of those worlds. Every record in your collection is right at your fingertips, just a click away. Reproduction is flawless, smooth and clean, just as you wanted it to be.
[size=medium]Source #2: The iPod [/size]
As an alternate source, I’ve considered my 5th generation iPod video. This is 30 GB of portable music that goes always with me. If I drive – and I make a thousand kilometres a week – my iPod is plugged into my car setup using the Paser interface (more on this another day if you like). And when I move to my house at the beach for a weekend or on summer, I can carry easily the whole setup, except the PC, so the iPod counts.
I have the Universal Dock and the remote control. They are really cool devices but aren’t thought in terms of sound quality. The analogue line-out provided by the universal dock is passed through a kind of pre-amplifier so you can regulate the volume with the remote. It’s useful but it really affects the quality of sound.
That’s why I decided to connect the iPod with the Sendstation PocketDock Line Out USB. It’s a tiny device that just does the job. It provides an ‘unaltered’ analogue line-out and also a USB or Firewire connection so you can connect your iPod to any regular USB or Firewire cable. It’s really a must.
[size=medium]Before the amp: Cable interconnects [/size]
The only thing you need before getting into the amplifier is a cable. I’m not a believer in cable magic, so I use a pair of Profigold 2x RCA cable for the audio card and an I-don’t-know-the-brand-but-apparently-good 3.5mm jack to 2x RCA cable for the iPod. Maybe I should try a small investment in cabling.
[size=medium]The amplifier: Musical Fidelity X-CAN v3 [/size]
I could try this before actually buying it. My first contact with the valve technology, and coming from the Grado sound, was disconcerting. I translated the smoothness of the sound into lack o brightness. Now I know that I was wrong. I will go on this later when I discuss the sound of the setup, but I’m sure of this.
The X-CAN v3 is very well built; the only drawback I’ve found is the absence of an on-off switch. In the search of the best path of the electrical signal MF has eliminated this and it’s really an inconvenience to have to unplug the unit to turn it off.
[size=medium]The cans: Sennheiser HD-650 [/size]
I think they are the jewel of the crown in my setup. Everything is responsible of the sound achieved, but these are definitely the element that has most influence in the result. They produce a beautiful sound and they are incredibly comfortable. You can get them on for hours and don’t even notice that they are still over your head.
[size=medium]The result: I’m in Music Heaven [/size]
Maybe you think that I’m overexcited with my new setup. Maybe I’m. But the fact is that what I listen when I press the play button really the music really thrills me. I’m – like many of you – the kind of guy that feels the music and get into the musical experience that the author, the band, the composer, or whoever is responsible of the magic I’m listening to intended to do.
The absolute silence that you can get when nothing is sounding is also remarkable. From the no hiss of the soundcard, to the dead quiet amplifier, to the absolutely comfortable closeness of the headphones, everything is in its right place to make you feel the music. Get a good recording and you’re in heaven.
The sound is very detailed, the highs are crystal clear and the mids, what can I say when I listen to a voice? perfect. And the bass is there - it wasn't in the Grados, i must admit it - and now I can feel how the bassist pinch the string. Extension? I didn't know the meaning until now. I think it's the ability to mantain a note. Try this with the subtle notes from a piano and you will discard many headphones.
No more on the adjectives. I describe myself more as a music lover than as an audiophile. That's why I'm not going to use more of the usual terms you use for describing the performance of the system. But I'm sure that I will find the meaning of them now that I have this nice setup.
Another curiosity is the fact that since I’ve started using it I have re-discovered classical music. This is the most difficult genre to reproduce and having the right gear let you enjoy the brutal dynamic range of this music. From now on, I’m going to invest in classical music for sure.
Of course, feel free to make any suggestion you could think it would improve the overall quality of the setup.
For my listening tests I use a bunch of CD’s that are ‘reference’ for me not only in terms of the beautiful music, but also for being impeccable in quality of the recording itself. Here you have a brief selection of them:
To feel the Jazz masters as if you were there with them:
Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington - The Great Summit: The Master Takes (Blue Note 1961)
To feel the beautifulness of the Bach cantatas
Johann Sebastian Bach: Actus Tragicus by Konrad Junghanel (Harmonia Mundi)
To feel the emotion of a great voice
Eva Cassidy - Songbird (Blix Street 1998)
To feel the sound of the acoustic guitar playing classical pieces:
Filomena Moretti – Bach, Dowland, Mudarra, Rodrigo, et al (Transart Live 2005)
To feel like if you were transported to the Himalayas
Jan Garbarek – Ragas & Sagas (ECM 1992)
And I was rewarded. Here's the story.
[size=medium]A brief introduction [/size]
I don't have a dedicated room for listening to music with a traditional hi-fi equipment so I'm forced into headphones listening. Maybe is this is the situation of many people around here. Maybe not, maybe is pure headphone vice isn't it?
I had started a few years ago into headphone listening, and thanks to the expert advice founded in this forum – once again – I bought a pair of Grado SR-80. They have a really nice sound, aren’t difficult to drive although they are not so comfortable, but have provided me with many hours of enjoyment.
To get you more focused, my musical tastes are varied, but to be honest Jazz is my main preference. Classical is winning interest and pop, rock and folk has their moments too. Music is marvellous in so many ways... But let's continue with the setup.
As you can guess by my nickname, I'm located in Bilbao, Spain and this is definitely a drawback. I don't have access to all of the equipment that you can reach in the USA. And If you find a vendor that ships to Spain, the shipping charges make silly to buy many things in most cases.
[size=medium]In the beginning: It was the music[/size]
First of all, let's talk about the music. I have all my music ripped from my own CD's - or downloaded in APE or FLAC - and encoded in MP3 format using the Über Standards. Basically everything is VBR 224 LAME alt preset extreme. I think it's good quality, almost undistinguishable from the original CD. My opinion is that many times if a recording sounds bad is more a matter of the recording itself than the encoding process. If you use correctly EAC and LAME you're going to get good results. Maybe I should go for APE and FLAC, but I've found this kind of compression the most convenient, because I use two different kinds of sources: my computer and my iPod.
All my music is correctly tagged, classified by genre, with cover art, and really well organized in my iTunes Library. I iTunes is a great tool for organizing and browsing your music, though It’s not the best player around. But this can be fixed. Refer to the section where I discuss the player down below.
[size=medium]Source #1: My PC[/size]
I use a Windows XP based PC everyday, and if I look into myself, the more complicated thing is to have time, time to enjoy your music, so that's why I decided to put my PC into the setup and consider it as a valid source. I think of my PC as a highly configurable source. If you find the correct setup, you can really get very good sound. It's also easier to mess things up, because you still use the PC for many other things, installing new programs, but I think I've found the correct combination of elements. Sounds kind’ a magic but it's the reality.
[size=medium]Source #1: The Audio Card[/size]
I wanted to put the soundcard out of the box, first of all to get rid of the nasty sounds that many electronic components have and also because if it's detachable, it's easy to move it from one PC to another. Until now I was using a Terratec Sixpack 5.1+ and it sounded good, but it was affected by this kind of sounds. I decided to go for the Edirol UA-1EX by Roland. It has every feature I was looking for. Analogue input and output, optical input and output, a headphone output with volume control and a microphone input. It's also ASIO 2.0 compatible, and it's capable to operate in 24 bit/ 96 KHz. The driver installs without problems, and it's really easy to switch back and forth between soundcards using the control panel.
The card operates completely silent. No audible hisses, it’s just there waiting to receive a digital signal to convert it to the best analogue output it’s capable to produce.
[size=medium]Source #1: The player [/size]
IMHO foobar200 is the best player around. No discussion. But I think is arguable that it cannot compete with iTunes in terms of ease of use and richness of features right out of the box. How to combine the best of both? You get Multi Plug-In v2.3.2 and you’re done. You use iTunes and the sound reproduction is passed through foobar2000, were you can select every tweak available. I currently have selected in the DSP Manager the crosfeed filter, the Gap killer and the Resampler (PPHS) to upsample the signal to 48 KHz in Ultra mode.
The result is best of those worlds. Every record in your collection is right at your fingertips, just a click away. Reproduction is flawless, smooth and clean, just as you wanted it to be.
[size=medium]Source #2: The iPod [/size]
As an alternate source, I’ve considered my 5th generation iPod video. This is 30 GB of portable music that goes always with me. If I drive – and I make a thousand kilometres a week – my iPod is plugged into my car setup using the Paser interface (more on this another day if you like). And when I move to my house at the beach for a weekend or on summer, I can carry easily the whole setup, except the PC, so the iPod counts.
I have the Universal Dock and the remote control. They are really cool devices but aren’t thought in terms of sound quality. The analogue line-out provided by the universal dock is passed through a kind of pre-amplifier so you can regulate the volume with the remote. It’s useful but it really affects the quality of sound.
That’s why I decided to connect the iPod with the Sendstation PocketDock Line Out USB. It’s a tiny device that just does the job. It provides an ‘unaltered’ analogue line-out and also a USB or Firewire connection so you can connect your iPod to any regular USB or Firewire cable. It’s really a must.
[size=medium]Before the amp: Cable interconnects [/size]
The only thing you need before getting into the amplifier is a cable. I’m not a believer in cable magic, so I use a pair of Profigold 2x RCA cable for the audio card and an I-don’t-know-the-brand-but-apparently-good 3.5mm jack to 2x RCA cable for the iPod. Maybe I should try a small investment in cabling.
[size=medium]The amplifier: Musical Fidelity X-CAN v3 [/size]
I could try this before actually buying it. My first contact with the valve technology, and coming from the Grado sound, was disconcerting. I translated the smoothness of the sound into lack o brightness. Now I know that I was wrong. I will go on this later when I discuss the sound of the setup, but I’m sure of this.
The X-CAN v3 is very well built; the only drawback I’ve found is the absence of an on-off switch. In the search of the best path of the electrical signal MF has eliminated this and it’s really an inconvenience to have to unplug the unit to turn it off.
[size=medium]The cans: Sennheiser HD-650 [/size]
I think they are the jewel of the crown in my setup. Everything is responsible of the sound achieved, but these are definitely the element that has most influence in the result. They produce a beautiful sound and they are incredibly comfortable. You can get them on for hours and don’t even notice that they are still over your head.
[size=medium]The result: I’m in Music Heaven [/size]
Maybe you think that I’m overexcited with my new setup. Maybe I’m. But the fact is that what I listen when I press the play button really the music really thrills me. I’m – like many of you – the kind of guy that feels the music and get into the musical experience that the author, the band, the composer, or whoever is responsible of the magic I’m listening to intended to do.
The absolute silence that you can get when nothing is sounding is also remarkable. From the no hiss of the soundcard, to the dead quiet amplifier, to the absolutely comfortable closeness of the headphones, everything is in its right place to make you feel the music. Get a good recording and you’re in heaven.
The sound is very detailed, the highs are crystal clear and the mids, what can I say when I listen to a voice? perfect. And the bass is there - it wasn't in the Grados, i must admit it - and now I can feel how the bassist pinch the string. Extension? I didn't know the meaning until now. I think it's the ability to mantain a note. Try this with the subtle notes from a piano and you will discard many headphones.
No more on the adjectives. I describe myself more as a music lover than as an audiophile. That's why I'm not going to use more of the usual terms you use for describing the performance of the system. But I'm sure that I will find the meaning of them now that I have this nice setup.
Another curiosity is the fact that since I’ve started using it I have re-discovered classical music. This is the most difficult genre to reproduce and having the right gear let you enjoy the brutal dynamic range of this music. From now on, I’m going to invest in classical music for sure.
Of course, feel free to make any suggestion you could think it would improve the overall quality of the setup.
For my listening tests I use a bunch of CD’s that are ‘reference’ for me not only in terms of the beautiful music, but also for being impeccable in quality of the recording itself. Here you have a brief selection of them:
To feel the Jazz masters as if you were there with them:
Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington - The Great Summit: The Master Takes (Blue Note 1961)
To feel the beautifulness of the Bach cantatas
Johann Sebastian Bach: Actus Tragicus by Konrad Junghanel (Harmonia Mundi)
To feel the emotion of a great voice
Eva Cassidy - Songbird (Blix Street 1998)
To feel the sound of the acoustic guitar playing classical pieces:
Filomena Moretti – Bach, Dowland, Mudarra, Rodrigo, et al (Transart Live 2005)
To feel like if you were transported to the Himalayas
Jan Garbarek – Ragas & Sagas (ECM 1992)
