Bit Perfect audio

SteveR_100Milers

Taken me a while, but done it - sold my 5 star award winning CD player and replaced it with a PC and separate DAC. Forget streaming low bitrate stuff off spotify (which I do use) playing lossless files through a well configured media player trounces it for sound quality.

attica

"Lossless" is a bit of a moot point really as you'll not be getting anything over about 20kHz (IIRC) - beyond the range of human hearing but not beyond the range of human sensation.

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

jairaj

attica wrote:

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

errmm haven't they already done that with SACD?

SteveR_100Milers what software setup are you using and where are you getting your tunes from?

attica

jairaj wrote:

attica wrote:

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

errmm haven't they already done that with SACD?

SteveR_100Milers what software setup are you using and where are you getting your tunes from?

Yeah but the uptake has been pretty poor, rebadge it as CD HD and relaunch it in a blaze of publicity and it might take off.

daviesee

Attica wrote:

"Lossless" is a bit of a moot point really as you'll not be getting anything over about 20kHz (IIRC) - beyond the range of human hearing but not beyond the range of human sensation.

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

Already here - https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file ... hile_96khz

nicklouse

Attica wrote:

jairaj wrote:

attica wrote:

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

errmm haven't they already done that with SACD?

SteveR_100Milers what software setup are you using and where are you getting your tunes from?

Yeah but the uptake has been pretty poor, rebadge it as HD CD and relaunch it in a blaze of publicity and it might take off.

but it did not.

Steve enjoy.

SteveR_100Milers

jairaj wrote:

attica wrote:

One day they'll bring out a "HD" music format and we'll all be buying our record collection over again!

errmm haven't they already done that with SACD?

SteveR_100Milers what software setup are you using and where are you getting your tunes from?

Yes, but my PC system won't have any problem playing at higher bit rates, so anyone stuck wioth a conentional 44.1KHz CD player will be...

Jairaj - I am using J Rivers Media Centre 15. Its flexible, complicated at first, but there is an excellent support forum, running it in W7 x64. The key things to set up in Windows is to direct couple the software to the output driver in your PC (referred to as ASIO, WASAPI setting etc) as these remove any interference from Windows in the signal processing between the player output and the soundcard / optical driver.

I get my tunes from ripping CDs intpo FLAC (lossless) and have some wma lossless files in there too. The ripping softare is key, make sure it uses error correction otherwise you miss out on the advantage over using a cd player.

I am now getting an incredibly detailed sound from my PC, and I am only using a Cambrdge Audio DAC magic - hardly state of the art, but the SQ is much better than the Cyrus CD6SE that I was using, and that was hardly shoddy. Rest of the system is a Kandy K2 amp and Spendor S6e speakers.

One big advantage with this system is that I can modify the EQ in the digital signal processing, since this is done in the 64 bit environment fo windows its akin to altering a TIFF file, whereas tone controls in the analogue circuit are akin to altering the image of a JPG file (and no one uses them any more in analogue amplification). The spendors aren't exactly renowned for their get up and go in the upper an presence bands, but a subtle 0.5 - 1.0 dB lift has fixed that in my room. I really can't endore J River enough - its way better than WMP, and itunes in Windows, though itunes on a Mac is a different proposition, controls the output device in much the same way, but in true apple style doesn't tell you, let alone give you the choice....