Computer Audio Bake-Off

Youve not been to the Avi forum then! lol

 

Best to cut out the interface altogether if you can ,just use an async USB or async firewire dac.
Keith.

 

I think you will find there is complete consensus about Figlets box being preferred, it was just a question of degree.

 

Yes, even I heard it

 

1st unit upward firing 8 inch bass mid with front firing HF unit. 2nd unit upward firing 8 inch bass mid, the HF unit for it is mounted on the side of the 1st unit. The two units are Cubes, and are wired in parrallel, which are glued together with the base removed from the top cabinet so the two bass mids are coupled and work in what Linn call Isobaric but has been done before them.

I don't want to go too much into design but basically the speaker is semi omnidirectional, it drives the room acoustic which is why the scale and dynamic is so large, instead of fighting the room acoustic the way normal speakers do. The only other semi omni on the market that I know of is Shihanian.

 

Why did it sound so different/better do you think? was it an accumulation of the design ie everything working well together (including your system Richard), or the way the output stage was configured, ie, do you think it had some of its own sound which made it much different than the other Dacs, or is it just flat out better?

I'll have a look at the subjectivist thread later...

 

Reading Figlets posts on subjectivist, it seems he has kept the file storage on a NAS, accessed through a router to his Nexus machine. This helps keep anything that could give interference or noise away from the transport (Nexus). The DAC is inbuilt, so no interconnects and interfaces - it is passively cooled as well - also a lot of attention has been paid to power supply. I really struggle to understand a lot of this stuff, but his approach makes a lot of sense to me in a classic HiFi kind of way.

 

If we let people speak for themselves about their listening impressions, there will be no argument, and no room for autocratic, revisionist re-writing of history to suit anyone's agenda.

Here's what each member said, in their own words, about their preferred sound on the day.

RICHARD:
1/ Figlet [Jason's Nexus/Xonar PC]
2/ Hubsand A system [iPod + DAC1]
3/ Shuggie
4/ Rob
5/ Hubsand B system (could be better than I rated it as I got bored with waiting for it to work
6/ Uglymusic

ROB:
1 - Figlet
2 - All of the others in equal place as I found the differences to be small and it was swings and roundabouts.

SHUGGIE:
I'd agree with Richard's summary above.

DAVID:
1. Custom Bling Server [Item Audio DAT1] and Wyred for Sound DAC 2
2. Wadia and custom Benchmark DAC 1
3. Figlet Custom
The rest

FIGLET (Jason): [reviewing his own PC]
I thought Gwyneth, Newton, Benny and Wynton sounded very very good. Kate sounded compressed and muffled, Michael's voice didn't sound natural and Portico's oud eventually became excruciating - we had to turn it off. I was quite disappointed with Kate and Michael as they are my favourites right now and I listen to them all the time at home.

Maybe it's as Hubsand says and the DAC in the Nexus is bright and superficial and the KingRex needed much more listening to get used to. All I know is, on the day, the vanilla Nexus sounded good and the KingRex didn't. Connecting the KingRex to Dave's MacMini improved matters a little but not that much for my ears, and it was disappointing not to experience what Dave experiences when he's in his native habitat.

Mark's (Hubsand) ipod/wadia/DAC system sounded good, but as we discussed on the day it's not a serious contender for me simply due it's practical limitations. You are confined to the (small) amount of music you can store on an ipod, and you are limited to Red Book resolutions.

Mark's second system was what I was really interested in hearing, as in theory it is a very similar transport to the Nexus, but with an upgraded power supply and a much more expensive external DAC. On paper it should outclass the vanilla Nexus. Unfortunately there were problems with the power supply and we had to use my inferior one, and then for some strange reason it wouldn't play the tracks we had been using in the other systems, so we couldn't really do a sensible comparison. If it had worked I think it would have won the day.

Finally Hugo and Rob's offerings both sounded good (after some warming up in DacMagic's case). They reminded me of my days when I played directly off my laptop through an Airport Express.

I thought Richard's turntable sounded really really great - but not better than the best of the digital solutions.

MARK:
1. iPod + Benchmark DAC1 (all modded)
2. Wyred 4 Sound DAC 2 + Item DAT (for all of 20 seconds before falling over)
3. Jason's NVA/Nexus PC for dynamics and verve, but flawed midrange, shouty and not super-resolute.
4. KingRex UD-01 SE
5. Cambridge DAC Magic in all its guises
In other words, strictly in cost order: you get what you pay for. The performance of Jason's machine had much more to do with thorough engineering in audio IT terms than the quality of the DAC, which is where the problems were.

Any future attempts to spin a convenient tale about what 'everyone thought' can now be compared to the truth.

Two listeners followed Richard's opinion; the other half called it very differently. At least three of us didn't love the speakers. I struggled to hear tell-tale treble details amid all the loaded room reflections, which I think partly explains the diversity of opinion, and the low ranking of sweet + detailed converters in favour of the bold and shouty: everything we played sounded like the loudness button had been left on.

Not the amplifiers' fault: Richard has spent decades learning how to make amplifiers brilliantly, or at least following the KISS maxim, but it's early days for the Cubix: in a year's time, there will be a new improved version, touted as 'much more refined than the old ones'! In the right room, they will probably be fantastic.

It's clear in hindsight why we spent twice as long listening to Jason's PC while the other systems were rushed along disinterestedly! Kicking myself now for being so naive.

 

There was synergy within the elements that made up the unit and to a sympathetic synergy to the system. I am only interested in a subjective view on this, and any changes I contribute to the unit will be to highten that synergy.

 

But you do have a full blown PC sitting right in the middle of the audio system.
Sure it is modified to run on a linear PSU but PC motherboards are electrically noisy.
I wouldn't put one in my system if it could be avoided.

 

Have you ever thought about a change of job to politician, I have never seen so much spin. My only regret is that you were ever invited in the first place. Everyone and everything else has been trotting along normally apart from your need to find excuses why your dac made the system sound like a midi system.

EDIT :- you will note if you look at Subjectivist that the argument is only happening here, everything on Subjective is constructive and not trying make excuses for anything and anyone. The difference Hubsand is posting his crap here as I will remove it if he tries again to create conflict there.

 

Jason's machine has all the right specification to make an excellent transport: remotely locating (or removing) hard drives is terribly important: that's why, I think, the HD netbooks don't sound great, but the SSD versions do. His Nexus PC follows almost exactly the recipe here: http://www.itemaudio.co.uk/media_server_pc.html . . . the actual sound quality achieved depends on cabling and the DAC: when the soundcard D>A bottleneck is removed, any machine of that spec will outperform almost any Mac, for instance.

 

Figlet's system sounded a little more dynamic and projected than the rest IMO.

For that reason, were I looking to change my digital replay system I'd want it (or something similar) on my audition list.

But as ever with this trype of dem it comes with a number of qualifiers (for me if not others):

- The system I preferred was the very first one played.
- It got a longer play session than anything else and a more varied selection of music.
- All but Richard were hearing the NVA system and the room for the first time.
- Levels varied and we changed seats a few times.

So I say again, the day gave me a flavour and served as an indicator or what was worth investigating. I thought that nothing flunked-out but one system sounded slightly better subjectively in Richard's system.

The rest were all much of a muchness IMO - and I disagree fundametally with Mark (husband) when he says you get what you pay for. In audiophile land, high prices are often a sign that you are buying a flashy enclosure, a nice bit of persuasive marketing blurb and perhaps some benign modifications on what was a perfectly good circuit in the first place. And of course we have the dealer mark-up to consider.

The acid test for me when assessing differences - assuming I've reliably identified one - is to ask myself a question. If I were to leave the room and perhaps go and spend 10 minutes making some tea, on my return to the listening room are the differences I've just spent a good hour or so identifying still audible and more importantly, do they actually matter?

To put things into perspective, the difference I heard between with best and worst of these digital systems are nothing compared to the effect of moving one row back in the listening room. Or even the perception difference of a piece of music having heard it once compared with say ten plays.

In other words - don't get hung-up on trivia and small differences when there are still big problems to address.

 

Please remove anything I've contributed to your forum, Richard. It's not a credible place to appear.

The plain, unvarnished truth appears above in the listeners' own words: you can't snatch them back out of their mouths or bluster over it. It's there in black and white. You had (more than) your say: they now have theirs.

Readers will judge the (lack of) consensus for themselves.

For the last time, I don't make DACs. If you're referring to the inexpensive Taiwanese KingRex UD-01 in your midi slur, bear in mind its cost: £150. If you work with Jason, you'll learn that what made his system work so well was the transport, not the £125 soundcard which has its own, well documented, problems.

But best of luck with the £2K NVA Music Server: will you be advertising here often?

 

That's my wife's maxim, actually: I always disagree when she says it, too! But there is also the maxim of 'garbage in, garbage out'. A good power supply is an expensive thing: shortcuts will out. A discrete op-amp (if you go for such things) is much more expensive to produce than the mass-produced nasties. Actually, Richard's NVA range is a perfect example of 'getting what you pay for': the more expensive amplifiers are just better than the cheaper ones, for good reason.

Same with DACs and transports.

In some areas of audioland, high prices mean high quality parts, high quality design and high quality sound. Doing almost anything really well is expensive. Sure, some pricey gear is all about the enclosure (as if that didn't matter?!) and dealer markup, but it's unwise to tar everything with the same brush: inverse snobbery is equally undiscriminating.

 

Oh yes, but you need to establish what are real improvements and what are fake/spin. I'm ok paying a premium for the former but certainly not for the latter.
Play me a £200 dac against a £5k dac blind and if I'm hearing clear, repeatable benefits from one of them I'll likely buy it. That's the real proof of the pudding IMO.

Flip the lid on a dacmagic (or £130 MF V-DAC) and do the same on a Benchmark.
Then tell me why one costs 5x the price of the other.

You certainly won't find any clues in the quality of components or the circuit design.
In fact both cheaper designs are more cutting edge.

 

Indeed no - but I see your point

 

Have any of you boys played with one of the SD card wav only transports?

Leave much to be desired in terms of usability but a lot of what is coming up here is simply by-passed, ie no HD, minimal OS (oh, and cheap too).

 

Not having gone to Ricahrds event it does seem like some with gear to sell are trying to revise what actually happened.

But to be honest, what's the point when it wasn't exactly set up to remove potential sources of bias.

 

So what do you think of the QA550?