[Elephas]

This thread was an interesting and great read.

I'm impressed with the convenience, flexibility, and speed of using a computer-as-source.

Instant library access, multi-room playback, remote access, wireless, playlists, automation, integration with other components, synchronization with portable/car audio, etc. are all features that, while possible with 'traditional' components, are less expensive with a computer in the picture.

 

[markl]

Quote:

The vast majority of audiophile CDP's and DAC's, even the $$$ ones, have their own distinct colorations (on purpose?) to please the audiophile market/tastes.

With all due respect, I'm sorry, to me that is just one of the most ridiculous statements that sometimes get perpetuated around here. (I am ridiculing the statement, not the person who made it, BTW)-- let's just *think* about this statement for a bit...

Like there's some special "audiophile-distortion" that only "audiophiles" like. Is this a double-super-secret magic formula that only high-end audio companies share and keep secret among themselves, keeping it hidden from the mass-market manufacturers? Do they test their gear and make sure it measures to conform with this distortion to trick those oh-so-dumb "audiophiles" everyone around here seems to loathe and mock (even though everyone on this site is an audiophile!

)?

Do people believe that mass-market gear does not have *any* colorations or a sound of its own, that all the parts and components magically disappear and all you get is "straight wire with gain"? Every component in every piece of gear imparts its own character on the signal, it doesn't matter if its a $20 sound card or a $5000 CDP.

It's those dreaded *audiophiles* who know what good sound is, and who demand that gear perform to a higher standard. It's the mass-market that's attracted to that speaker with the biggest woofers that produce the biggest bass on the wall of speakers at the local Best Buy, that install 5 subwoofers in the trunk of their car to make it go BOOOM! It's for general consumers that TV manufacturers design their TV sets to ship with a standard image setting that is brighter, sharper, and color-enhanced to shift toward blue to appeal to the numb-nuts comparing the picture to all the others on the wall of TVs. Never leave your TV on the factory settings, you have to turn down all the brightness, sharpness, and color buttons when you get it home so it looks normal. Use one of the test DVDs out there and marvel at how far off from ideal the typical factory settings are on your TV. They do that *on purpose* so it sticks out in the showroom from the other sets on the wall of TVs. Ooooooooh, look at that picture!!!

I would argue its the mass-market gear that is more likely to be deliberately colored (in a BAD way) to stand out from the crowd in the showroom. Oooooh, those speakers are brighter and more forward, and LOUDER, they must be *better*. After all, that speaker has to stick out from a stack of a dozen others during the customers 10-second "demo" before he switches to the next model. It will be voiced to "jump out". Now you have a wall of speakers all competing against each other to "stand out". Now take the "winners" home and watch yourself get fatigued after 10 minutes of listening to the thing. If anything mass-market manufacturers have to tailor the sound of their products for people with no clue...

You can't fool trained ears, though. There is no "special distortion" high-end builders add to their products, just superior quality (in the main) and performance (measurable and audible). Are there anomolies in high-end gear? Are there colorations? Of course, there's a range of sounds, every design is different, every cricuit is different, and uses different components, so they will obviously have a different sound. If there was only one way to design a speaker, there would be only one speaker for the whole world. But when you raise the asking price, you can raise build quality to continue to add performance. That doesn't mean all designers are equally good at it, obviously, or that there aren't high-priced duds out there and low-priced units that perform at an insane level...

But, I mean, it's just innaccurate (and ignorant) to say the only difference between a *good* high-end piece and a *good* mass-market blue-light special is that the mass-market version is PERFECT, NEUTRAL, and DISTORTION-FREE while the high priced one is DISTORTED deliberately to appeal to these slobbering idgit audio-fools with special voodoo distortion. That's just wishful thinking... Absurd!

Rant Off...

 

[Scrith]

Actually, there is one category of high-end audio gear that really, really should not sound any different than a similar piece of gear that is inexpensive: the CD transport.

If you have a transport that sounds different than another transport, there is a problem with one (or both) of them. By the way, the ideal way to test external transports is to hook them up to the computer and record the output, then compare it to the bit-perfect data you read off the CD using EAC (someone here wrote a thread on this and found that one of his transports was not reading or transmitting the data on the CD correctly).

And this is where the computer-as-source argument comes in: no transport, no matter how expensive it is, can ever read a CD more perfectly than the $75 DVD drive in my computer.

And if I can then transmit the perfect music data that is stored on my hard drive to an external DAC the answer to your question becomes very clear: a computer can sound as good as any high-end CD-based transport. And it will be infinitely more convenient to use. And it can play World of Warcraft too.

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by markl With all due respect, I'm sorry, to me that is just one of the most ridiculous statements that sometimes get perpetuated around here. (I am ridiculing the statement, not the person who made it, BTW)-- let's just *think* about this statement for a bit... Like there's some special "audiophile-distortion" that only "audiophiles" like. Is this a double-super-secret magic formula that only high-end audio companies share and keep secret among themselves, keeping it hidden from the mass-market manufacturers? Do they test their gear and make sure it measures to conform with this distortion to trick those oh-so-dumb "audiophiles" everyone around here seems to loathe and mock (even though everyone on this site is an audiophile! )? Do people believe that mass-market gear does not have *any* colorations or a sound of its own, that all the parts and components magically disappear and all you get is "straight wire with gain"? Every component in every piece of gear imparts its own character on the signal, it doesn't matter if its a $20 sound card or a $5000 CDP. It's those dreaded *audiophiles* who know what good sound is, and who demand that gear perform to a higher standard. It's the mass-market that's attracted to that speaker with the biggest woofers that produce the biggest bass on the wall of speakers at the local Best Buy, that install 5 subwoofers in the trunk of their car to make it go BOOOM! It's for general consumers that TV manufacturers design their TV sets to ship with a standard image setting that is brighter, sharper, and color-enhanced to shift toward blue to appeal to the numb-nuts comparing the picture to all the others on the wall of TVs. Never leave your TV on the factory settings, you have to turn down all the brightness, sharpness, and color buttons when you get it home so it looks normal. Use one of the test DVDs out there and marvel at how far off from ideal the typical factory settings are on your TV. They do that *on purpose* so it sticks out in the showroom from the other sets on the wall of TVs. Ooooooooh, look at that picture!!! I would argue its the mass-market gear that is more likely to be deliberately colored (in a BAD way) to stand out from the crowd in the showroom. Oooooh, those speakers are brighter and more forward, and LOUDER, they must be *better*. After all, that speaker has to stick out from a stack of a dozen others during the customers 10-second "demo" before he switches to the next model. It will be voiced to "jump out". Now you have a wall of speakers all competing against each other to "stand out". Now take the "winners" home and watch yourself get fatigued after 10 minutes of listening to the thing. If anything mass-market manufacturers have to tailor the sound of their products for people with no clue... You can't fool trained ears, though. There is no "special distortion" high-end builders add to their products, just superior quality (in the main) and performance (measurable and audible). Are there anomolies in high-end gear? Are there colorations? Of course, there's a range of sounds, every design is different, every cricuit is different, and uses different components, so they will obviously have a different sound. If there was only one way to design a speaker, there would be only one speaker for the whole world. But when you raise the asking price, you can raise build quality to continue to add performance. That doesn't mean all designers are equally good at it, obviously, or that there aren't high-priced duds out there and low-priced units that perform at an insane level... But, I mean, it's just innaccurate (and ignorant) to say the only difference between a *good* high-end piece and a *good* mass-market blue-light special is that the mass-market version is PERFECT, NEUTRAL, and DISTORTION-FREE while the high priced one is DISTORTED deliberately to appeal to these slobbering idgit audio-fools with special voodoo distortion. That's just wishful thinking... Absurd! Rant Off...

Mark, read my post again. Why are you quoting statements I never made? I said, "own distinct colorations," not "special distortions" like you said I stated. Colorations are not the same as distortions.

Colorations are deviations from what the perfect neutral ideal should be. I have not heard a single CDP or DAC or soundcard that is perfectly uncolored, so what I said means "vast majority" of audiophile DACs' have colorations (true) that seems to trend toward the liquid and smooth.

Every talented designer of audio gear has a sound in his head he's trying to achieve, which is different from designer to designer. Even though they are all using the latest technology, chips, high quality parts, one's own idea of what a DAC should sound like influences parts selection/design choice to achieve this goal. A designer who doesn't do that wouldn't be worth a damn IMO! The mass market blue-light special CDP's do not go through this thoughtful process, which is why most of them suck. A few get lucky.

So where did I say soundcards and blue-light specials do not have colorations. And why did you say, "it's just innaccurate (and ignorant) to say the only difference between a *good* high-end piece and a *good* mass-market blue-light special is that the mass-market version is PERFECT, NEUTRAL, and DISTORTION-FREE" when I NEVER said anything close to this?

I admire your enthusiasm, but please do not misquote me and fill in your own interpretations as my own words. I really hate that...

 

[IstariAsuka]

I was reading over this thread, and I noticed one of the primary problems cited with computer-based systems is the lack of support for high resolution formats. Well, as I'm sure you all know, now DVD-A can be ripped and played back in full resolution--even digitally to the DAC of your choice (previously impossible, even with standalones (except expensive, modded-for-this-purpose ones)).

While still not capable of SACD, since that has not been licensed for computer use, I do think that this is an important point in favor of computer-as-source. Even if only used as a transport.

 

[SunByrne]

Fascinating thread.

markl, normally you seem like a reasonable guy, but I have to side against you on parts (parts, mind you) of this one. As Jon L pointed out, you grossly put words in his mouth.

Regardless, you seem to be of the opinion that people who spend a lot of money have better hearing, which I think is poppycock--but that's kind of tertiary. Furthermore, the notion that all that extra expense in high-end audiophile gear intrinsically makes the products better is nonsense. There are probably very few markets in the world where there is more markup for nothing and where snake oil is more a way of life than in the audiophile world. Now, I'm not saying there aren't expensive products which are better than cheap ones, but just because it's built by Krell or Linn or whoever you like and costs a lot of money does NOT automatically guarantee that is is by any objective standard "better." On the other hand, you can be sure that there will be some of these magic "audiophiles" who will claim it is until their dying day. There's a lot of really expensive stuff out there which claims to be "better" when what it really is is "different." Wait, never mind all that, it's kind of secondary to the real point I want to make.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that I think in the future--probably not even the terribly distant future--it will be virtually impossible to even clearly separate the CDP and the computer. As has been pointed out a number of times, players like the Meridian (and the Wadia, I believe) are in an important sense essentially giant computer soundcards anyway. They read data off the disc with essentially a CD-ROM transport, buffer it like crazy, process the crap out of it, and spit it out as analog. How is this not a computer? Because it doesn't have a keyboard? Probably because it doesn't do anything else. Bizarre definition. They're single-function computers, maybe, but still basically computers.

I do think what is quite likely is that the future will be things like the Squeezebox, at least in this sense: They'll be clients, and the music will be served digitally. That is, they'll be outboard DACs, fed data off a hard disk or a network connection (probably wireless). Maybe you'll be able to put CDs in them, too, but what they'd do is just rip them to disk anyway. Since they'll always be reading data from a local buffer, the only jitter will be in the local clock and and the high-end people will build in really good clocks, like they do now.

And who will make these things? Almost everyone, from Apex to Sony to companies like Wadia. Maybe not Wadia, but someone like that. There will be big audiophile ones with great big transformers and completely discrete output stages (surely even tubes), and horrible $50 everything-on-one-chip models with 60-cent power supplies. They'll probably do video, too (though maybe not the audiophile ones). You'll be able to control it via your computer if you want to, or by simple IR or RF remote if you don't. You'll be able to have EQ if you want to, and the "true audiophiles" will continue to eschew it and talk about clean signal paths, and that'll be fine.

Why do I think this is the (not-too-distant) future? Because there's a kernel of truth out there in both sides of this argument. The convenience of managing you music this way is too powerful to be ignored. iPods and other DAPs haven't taken the world by storm for no good reason. Regardless of SQ, even "true" audiophiles are, at least occasionally, a little bit sensitive to convenience.

But the audiophiles are partly right, too. The best sound reproduction does require expensive parts and, at the moment, big power supplies. (That's the part I have to agree with markl about--computer power supplies generally aren't very clean and you generally get the best results with separate power rails for analog and digital sections. I'm not saying the E-MUs don't sound good--I've never heard them so that would be inapprorpiate--but I have a hard time believing that they could, in principle, reach the same point.) Various people have mentioned that the right way to do computer audio NOW is with outboard DACs anyway--I don't think the requirement that the discussion be limited to "in the same box as the CPU" is particularly helpful. I guess maybe in ten years the argument could be "in the box analog stage" to "outside the box analog stage" but I think that'll be silly, most people will have outside the box analog stages so they can feed them other ways and have the thing in their living room.

There's no reason not to have the best of both worlds. Obviously, there will always be some audiophiles who will refuse this and will stick to vinyl, but anyone who's got a CD player now has to realize that ultimately they're still playing back bits, and that there will always be a market to audiophile-ize that playback; there will just be multiple paths for bit delivery, rather than just spinning pieces of plastic-coated tin foil. If your Mark Levinson audio player in your living room is getting bits from your desktop computer hard drive, is that a computer source? Does it really matter?

 

[markl]

Quote:

Mark, read my post again. Why are you quoting statements I never made?

I interpreted what I read. I wasn't necessarily replying strictly to your post, BTW, but to this myth that many seem to subscribe to around here that the only thing that distinguishes a good high-end piece from a good mass-market piece is the special "colorations" of the high-end stuff that is apparently missing from the more neutral, truthful (and by implication) less *distorted* cheapie sound cards some champion. I just disagree. You *did* imply that it was only the high-end stuff that was "colored" which you were contrasting against lower-cost sound cards, which (although unsaid) must therefore be "coloration-free". You also said this: Quote:

I understand if someone prefers these types of "smoothness, liquidity, ease, soundstaging, etc, etc" but my Lynx 2B card, when fed properly, sounds incredible even though it's obviously not going to be everyone's cup of audiophile sound.

"Smoothness" results from having a clean, grain and grit-free signal, that's not a "coloration". Music is not supposed to sound etched, hashy, outlined, or abrasive. All of those nasties are what is being *added* to the signal by the inferior piece of gear, it's the good one that's stripping it away. Soundtaging capability is also not a "coloration", either. Again, it's the superior performer that is able to reveal the soundstaging inherent in the original recording, a noisy piece of gear collapses the soundstage into a 2-D plane, and removes the "air" around instruments. "Liquidity" could refer to the speed with which the superior component is able to relay the signal, again the result of beter design.

Some people might not like the audiophile jargon, might not be fully aware of their meanings, but these are well-understood concepts. You have to be able to use language to describe sound, limited as that is ("writing about music is like dancing about architecture") and to a newb it may all sound like self-deluding audiophile gobbeldy-gook, but once the terminology is understood, its not so strange.

Quote:

Colorations are deviations from what the perfect neutral ideal should be.

Exactly, and any deviation from neutrality, which is almost always assessed through scientific measurement, could be construed as "distortion". If a component is "colored" that means it should measureably deviate from perfection and neutrality. If it's measureable, then it must be "distortion". It's semantics and we obviously disagree about what is implied by the word "coloration".

Quote:

Regardless, you seem to be of the opinion that people who spend a lot of money have better hearing,

SunByrne, heh, now I know how Jon L felt about being mis-interpreted.

Never said that, either. In fact I'm always spouting off the exact opposite around here. I do believe that "audiophiles" (and by my definition this has nothing to do with amount of money spent, but with amount of love for audio), which every member of this forum is, whether they embrace that word or not, are in a much better position to judge a component's worth than some guy off the street. Why? because they hang out at places like this, research research, research, and LISTEN to more gear in a year than the average guy does in his life. If all you've ever drank is Coke, you'll have no idea how Pepsi tastes. Let alone what water, whiskey, or wine tastes like either. You may *think* your sound card is KING of the world, but in comparison to what? What is your point of reference? Its the dreaded "audiophile" who has compared it against all manner of higher-priced, higher-quality gear, he has built a frame of reference, and so can now put his original sound card in perspective. It's the audiophile who has surveyed the market, and has some sense of what can or can't be done with that type of component.

Having "golden ears" is part biology, but a much larger part, *experience*. Virtually anyone (unless they have hearing loss) can develop golden ears simply by buying and trying dozens of different components, it's a skill that can be developed over time. The guy off the street can't be bothered but the audiophile *lives* for that stuff.

Quote:

Furthermore, the notion that all that extra expense in high-end audiophile gear intrinsically makes the products better is nonsense.

God, if I had a nickel for every time I had to refute that one...

Did you read where I wrote this:
Quote:

Are there anomolies in high-end gear? Are there colorations? Of course, there's a range of sounds, every design is different, every cricuit is different, and uses different components, so they will obviously have a different sound. If there was only one way to design a speaker, there would be only one speaker for the whole world. But when you raise the asking price, you can raise build quality to continue to add performance. That doesn't mean all designers are equally good at it, obviously, or that there aren't high-priced duds out there and low-priced units that perform at an insane level...

So, what I always say when these types of arguments errupt is this-- having tried so many different components so far in my "audiophile career", what I have observed is this: if you were to plot the performance level of all the audio gear in the world on the X-axis of a chart, and correlated that to the price of that gear, you would observe a *general* trend-line with the more expensive gear performing better than the less. There would be all kinds of dots above and below this general trend line cluster.

I'm always on the lookout for those anomolies (as are most people here on this site) so I can get insane performance for low dollars, and my system reflects exactly that. While my gear may be *a little* on the exotic side to some on this site (but *hardly* the most elaborate or expensive set-up around AT ALL), in terms of the real "high-end" market, what I have would look barely "hi-fi" to many people.

Heh, so it seems we are all wasting words attacking straw men arguments none of us made.

Later.

 

[SunByrne]

There, that's the markl that I know.

I will admit I was intentionally baiting you a little to try to get you to come back to center a smidge, which seems to have worked. I do this when I teach all the time, sorry...

 

[Elephas]

Wait, does this mean after all these posts everyone agrees and this interesting thread/discussion is going to end?

Come back!

Well, I'm off to compile a list of external DACs to buy.

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elephas Wait, does this mean after all these posts everyone agrees and this interesting thread/discussion is going to end? Come back! Well, I'm off to compile a list of external DACs to buy.

LOL. It's all good. This discussion about hard drive audio is interesting b/c the technology is here, available, and reasonably priced. Just to clarify myself a little, let me state a few observations I've heard.

My Lynx 2B is a great card, but at $1000 MSRP, it obviously has limitations if compared against $7K-10K dedicated DAC's. The Lynx definitely has colorations of its own also, but that doesn't mean it can't make great music, just like other DAC's. It definitely belongs to the analytical school, and with a little system mismatch, will sound more sterile and etched to many people, especially if you're used to a very smooth, warm DAC (which everyone has the right to prefer). My tastes run more toward Lynx sound signature b/c I can't stand overly smoothed-out, warmed-up type of sound, but that's just my own tastes.

With a little system matching/synergy, attention given to power conditioning, etc, it does make incredible music in my system, though.

However, I will take a Meitner DCC2 DAC or a Dodson 218 or even Empirical modded Turbo P3A ANY DAY over my Lynx card!! These are DAC's I consider to have less colorations than majority of others I've heard, including my Lynx card.

With Flac files playing in Foobar->USB-spdif converter (like Empirical Audio Transit) or good spdif->Meitner/Dodson, etc, you truly get awe-inspiring sound. Carefully done, this "computer audio" is fully competitive with any conventional transport systems out there.

And let's not forget that one has to open the jewel case and insert one CD at a time even for those super $20K transports. With PC audio, I just sit at my couch and have instant access to thousands of songs.

 

[Kurt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L With Flac files playing in Foobar->USB-spdif converter (like Empirical Audio Transit) or good spdif->Meitner/Dodson, etc, you truly get awe-inspiring sound. Carefully done, this "computer audio" is fully competitive with any conventional transport systems out there.

Seconded. =o)

 

[Edwood]

LOL, sometimes I post in an older thread not realizing that I already did before.

-Ed

 

[newmanoc]

An excellent thread. Thank you to those who have participated.

 

[AsuAmo76]

Let's state it this way:

there are two groups of electronic designers asking to develop the thing which can play music out of cd. Specs follow:

group 1:
use single pcb;
use pci interface for digital communication with existent transport;
use existent extremaly noisy +5v, +12v power supply, which also powers cpu, mother board, hard drive and cd/dvd combo;


group 2:
design custom digital and analog power supplies;
no weight/space/power restrictions;
use custom made transport;
use special power cords and whatever else if needed.

And you expect me to believe that the sound would be identical???

On the other hand, let's assume both groups have similar budget $300 for example. If you spend your money on metal box, power supply and transport and lcd-s and bells and wistles, you will have very little for dac, filters and amps. That's why good audio cards are very competitive on a "value for a money" basis.

In the order of preference for rb cds from my experience:

59-avi dvd player - from different league, totally the best
yamaha s2500 - accurate, but cold and lifeless
carddeluxe - same as yamaha, just worse
ns-755v - all money were spent for sacd playback in this case

 

[regal]

I don't understand the argument for an internal DAC(soundcard), no way that can compete. However the digitalout from computer to external DAC has merit.

The question I have is how much jitter is introduced going from harddrive to digital out of the computer?