[thegunner100]

Well the ZDAC isn't a vintage dac and perhaps you would have been better getting something like the Geek Out or Modi 2. No idea really, as I've only heard the GO but it's really damn good for the size/price.
 
Thanks for the offer on the ride but I'll be driving there myself from Long Island. I'll be bringing my Parasound d/ac-1100 and Sonic Frontiers Transdac.

 

[mikek200]

  Well the ZDAC isn't a vintage dac and perhaps you would have been better getting something like the Geek Out or Modi 2. No idea really, as I've only heard the GO but it's really damn good for the size/price.
 
Thanks for the offer on the ride but I'll be driving there myself from Long Island. I'll be bringing my Parasound d/ac-1100 and Sonic Frontiers Transdac.

I have another setup--Vali/Modi ,which I use with my HD600's.
 
I sold my Yulong DA-8 dac/amp,because I was under the impression the Yiggy would be out by now--guess I was wrong
Sorry I didn't link up with you  earlier...you might have been able to help me out with a vintage dac,I was very disappointed about the loosing the Theta.
 
I'll do my best to make it to the meet,so I can hear the Frontier,and your Parasound

 

[auvgeek]

  I did some brief research online and I think a Pi2 is in my future as well.  Does anyone know if there's a Pi-Fi thread yet?  If not, maybe we should start one as this conversation is pretty OT for this thread...

I probably wasn't the best person to do it, but I started a Raspberry Pi2 thread in the Computer Audio section since took the initiative and I was curious. I'm really curious about it, so hopefully the people who own one will chime in there.

 

[Currawong]

I owned a Parasound DAC1600HD, which has 4x PCM63K. It was a lovely-sounding DAC. I only sold it because there was no way to make it accept greater than 48k input. The traces on the boards were far too long for 96k to work. I went through the schematic for hours to try and figure out a way to bypass some of the electronics but gave up in the end.

 

[thegunner100]

Based on how the 1100 sounds, I would love to hear a 1600. But I'm afraid that the price for a 1600 would be much more expensive than what I paid for the 1100.

 

[snip3r77]

I owned a Parasound DAC1600HD, which has 4x PCM63K. It was a lovely-sounding DAC. I only sold it because there was no way to make it accept greater than 48k input. The traces on the boards were far too long for 96k to work. I went through the schematic for hours to try and figure out a way to bypass some of the electronics but gave up in the end.

For rbcd, how is the sound Sig BTW 63 and 1704 ?

 

[estreeter]

  I owned a Parasound DAC1600HD, which has 4x PCM63K. It was a lovely-sounding DAC. I only sold it because there was no way to make it accept greater than 48k input. The traces on the boards were far too long for 96k to work. I went through the schematic for hours to try and figure out a way to bypass some of the electronics but gave up in the end.

 
Without wanting to take this of on another tangent, I was initially underwhelmed when I realised I needed to downsample the 24/96 downloads in my iTunes library to 24/48 for my iPod Classic but I sheepishly admit that I'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart via any of my DACs in a blind test using the Lightning USB adapter for the Classic. Possible factors at work here:
 
- as purrin pointed out earlier, if a d-s DAC can resolve even 18 of those 24 bits, you're doing well
- at 56, I may not have the golden ears possessed by nwavguy or purrin not to mention the frequently quoted '24-bit audio is a myth' gap between the theoretical frequencies achievable with 24-bit files and the limits of human hearing
- I've listened to the albums in question so many times from a variety of sources - including the remastered CDs in the case of the Springsteen albums - that I'm more interested in the emotional content than whether I can hear Danny Federici's keyboards through the mix. For others, not being able to hear those keyboards would be a showstopper - caveat emptor. 
 
In short, for me personally, if I could get everything in my collection at 24/48 I would be more than happy to have a DAC that did an excellent job at 48kHz. Even playing back concert DVDs on my Oppo, I'm frequently blown away by just how good DVD audio can sound if it's done right. Stereophile's John Atkinson is reportedly a big fan of Blu-Ray audio, but that would be one very expensive addiction  

 

[Currawong]

I had much the same thought, but I decided in the end I'd rather have the DAC be able to natively process whatever music I have without having to re-configure my software. It also makes more sense after I had been playing around with the Aurender Flow, which is a nice DAC if you've never heard anything that good, but sounds flat and boring if you've heard better. I switched to using iZotope to up-sample to 352.8 or 384 kHz and there was a remarkable improvement. I can't help wondering what might be possible to achieve if I could feel a PCM63K the maximum sample rate it can accept using software up-sampling to get the best results.

 

[bmichels]

OK BIG changes are needed in my strategy ! 
 
Indeed, I just bought from a friend of mine who is an audiophile/opera fanatic a lot of 2500 rare classical CD  

.  This was  unexpected but now... I have a loooong ripping job to do 

 
Anyway, this change my focus from HighRes to redbook.  Indeed, now I need to find a system that can really provide it's BEST SQ out of 16/44 rather than a DAC that need super high resolution or DSD to be at it's best !
 
I have the HUGO and I am testing now the DP-777SE, and I am looking for other suggestion for a 16/44 champion ?    I heard about the Berkeley reference serie as a 16/44 champ, but it is not imported in Europe due to lack of RoHS certification.   Does the NAGRA HD DAC be a 16/44 champ or rather a DSD champ ?   other suggestions ???
 
(same thing apply to the Music server: I do not want to mess with NAS, so I was investigating ARIES or AURENDER (with USB HD), but now I look instead toward Antipode DX & the Baetis Server rather than ARIES or Aurender because of their built-in ripping possibility.  Any other suggestion for  Music Server PLUS ripper  )

 

[EraserXIV]

  OK BIG changes are needed in my strategy ! 
 
Indeed, I just bought from a friend of mine who is an audiophile/opera fanatic a lot of 2500 rare classical CD  

.  This was  unexpected but now... I have a loooong ripping job to do 

 
Anyway, this change my focus from HighRes to redbook.  Indeed, now I need to find a system that can really provide it's BEST SQ out of 16/44 rather than a DAC that need super high resolution or DSD to be at it's best !
 
I have the HUGO and I am testing now the DP-777SE, and I am looking for other suggestion for a 16/44 champion ?    I heard about the Berkeley reference serie as a 16/44 champ, but it is not imported in Europe due to lack of RoHS certification.   Does the NAGRA HD DAC be a 16/44 champ or rather a DSD champ ?   other suggestions ???
 
(same thing apply to the Music server: I do not want to mess with NAS, so I was investigating ARIES or AURENDER (with USB HD), but now I look instead toward Antipode DX & the Baetis Server rather than ARIES or Aurender because of their built-in ripping possibility.  Any other suggestion for  Music Server PLUS ripper  )
 

 
The rediscovery of "vintage" r2r DACs such as Theta and its upcoming Schiit successor seems to have quieted the shift towards high-res and DSD.

 

[bmichels]

   
The rediscovery of "vintage" r2r DACs such as Theta and its upcoming Schiit successor seems to have quieted the shift towards high-res and DSD.

you mean the Yggdrasil may be the solution for  16/44  ??

 

[Argo Duck]

purrin and others stated Yggdrasil brought things they had not previously heard with 16/44 IIRC

 

[mulder01]

Just read something interesting from Fried from Violectric who have just released their new dac, also without DSD support:
 
A lot of you probably already knew this but I didn't...
 

The biggest disadvantage of DSD (there are many more) is: it can´t be edited.
So, if there is a real DSD recording it is converted to PCM before it enters the mixing console or the editing suite.
After the necessary steps are made it is back converted into DSD.
Does this really make sense ??
And to make a DSD file out of a PCM file is as senseful as upsampling a CD because of the sound ...
 

 
Seems as though the only reason DSD files might sound better is because there was more effort put into making the recording sound good and has nothing to do with the format.  Especially if they've all just been converted to DSD from PCM.

 

[Sorrodje]

I Hope that one day, all audiophiles will wake up and realize that HD or DSD are pure BS and that 16/44 is all what we need. 16 vs 24 is debatable though. 

 

[XVampireX]

  I Hope that one day, all audiophiles will wake up and realize that HD or DSD are pure BS and that 16/44 is all what we need. 16 vs 24 is debatable though. 

 
 
Well what are you doing here then? Why are you posting in a forum clearly biased on Hi-Res and DSD? Why do you have the equipment that you do?
DBT or it didn't happen!
 
Mastering is definitely one thing that improves music, but there are things like DACs/Amps/Headphones/Speakers that reproduce it with more detail, and your measurements won't help because you can drool on your measurements as much as you want, at the end of the day, you're listening to music with your ears and not with your eyes.
 
Also where's the damn proof that DSD/Hi-Res are sounding better just because of better mastering? Were you the one who did the mastering and you have both the Original and Hi-Res copy? Of course, if you turn PCM to DSD, it will have pretty much as much detail as the PCM. However, with certain DACs, there seems to be a difference. And if It's only subjective, I'm happy about it, because that's the way it's supposed to be.