progo
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2007
- Posts
- 1,592
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- 14
As we speak. If I get lucky, an eBay auction ends to my favor soon. I'm replacing my Juli@ for Audiophile 192 because the linux ALSA drivers (ICE1724) for ESI are bad. M-Audio offerings, on the other hand, seem to be on ICE1712 and 'Envy24' drivers are said to be very good and stable. These drivers with Juli@... want a hardlock? Just open an audio editor while playing flacs. Or try your midi keyboard. One note and crash. It's always whole computer since the drivers are in direct contact with kernel.
Like Juli@, the Audiophile series are said to be bitperfect and that's the major reason to buy. I don't have many albums beyond the traditional 16/44.1 but the ones that are, are very dear to me and thus an USB dac or some gadget like that is out of the question. What USB dacs we might have that support higher samplerates won't work on Linux too easily because they need to be implemented by special drivers. The standard USB sound card model is cool but limited. Cool in that way you only need one standard driver and any USB dac will work with them. Ideally.
My finances being what they are, I cannot buy a DAC immediately so the analog side of the 192 will be used for a while. Depends on what kind of FS threads I happen to spot.
I explored some (not so) interesting threads, comparisons between Juli@ and the 192. Juli@ seems to be preferred and it's no wonder: the analog side of Juli@ is indeed very good. I like its hint of warmness and separation that's quite great. With the HD650 and Arietta it really extracted the detail out of recordings. Staxes aren't so bad with these but at the moment I feel Juli@ being the bottleneck big time. SQ-wise, I wouldn't 'upgrade' too soon but the driver issues drive me to it. I've had Juli@ for a year and the issues have been there all the time. Why didn't I return this while I had the possibility, who knows.
I'd like to hear some thoughts about the 192 (and possibly the 2496 because it seems to be little more popular around) in transport use. One reason I wanted to have a 192 is that it doesn't need the breakout cable when doing SPDIF only. 2496 needs.
Like Juli@, the Audiophile series are said to be bitperfect and that's the major reason to buy. I don't have many albums beyond the traditional 16/44.1 but the ones that are, are very dear to me and thus an USB dac or some gadget like that is out of the question. What USB dacs we might have that support higher samplerates won't work on Linux too easily because they need to be implemented by special drivers. The standard USB sound card model is cool but limited. Cool in that way you only need one standard driver and any USB dac will work with them. Ideally.
My finances being what they are, I cannot buy a DAC immediately so the analog side of the 192 will be used for a while. Depends on what kind of FS threads I happen to spot.
I explored some (not so) interesting threads, comparisons between Juli@ and the 192. Juli@ seems to be preferred and it's no wonder: the analog side of Juli@ is indeed very good. I like its hint of warmness and separation that's quite great. With the HD650 and Arietta it really extracted the detail out of recordings. Staxes aren't so bad with these but at the moment I feel Juli@ being the bottleneck big time. SQ-wise, I wouldn't 'upgrade' too soon but the driver issues drive me to it. I've had Juli@ for a year and the issues have been there all the time. Why didn't I return this while I had the possibility, who knows.
I'd like to hear some thoughts about the 192 (and possibly the 2496 because it seems to be little more popular around) in transport use. One reason I wanted to have a 192 is that it doesn't need the breakout cable when doing SPDIF only. 2496 needs.