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Some thoughts: The best streaming music unit I know of at present is the SB+. Cliff has an SB+ into SCA2/ATC50s. Ask his view on the variable digital volume control in the SB+ vs the real unit in the SCA2. That would be one way to deal with things.
I'd think about trying MP3's, and making a direct sonic comparison. If you can't hear any difference (and I can't), you can save yourself a load of disk space. There's a tendancy to 'assume' lossless is a pre-requisite. I remember a chap from the north east (forgotten his nomenclature now).. he lived in chesterle street, posted here... anyway, he always used to say that he could hear no sonic difference. That's my opinion too. I wish more people would record a track in both MP3 and lossless and make the comparison themselves..
I had a TacT 2.x as pre-amp and DAC in to my active PMCs for an evening when a friend bought it over. It sounded superb, and prompted me to upgrade my stock Behringer DAC. By the way, I can also mod the analogue inputs on the Behringer kit in the same way I do the outputs so that might be another one to think of as an ADC/DAC/Room Correction.
I have. 320bps MP3 vs FLAC. No contest on a decent system, though in a mobile environment like a car, I would agree.
wow, completely different result. Well respect for trying. I can hear no difference, and listen to music almost exclusively through my squeezebox/DAC. So much so, I've deleted all FLAC/WAV other lossless files, after reducing them to MP3.
Hard drives cost nothing these days. £65 gets you 500Gb and that will store approx 1000 CD's when ripped to EAC or FLAC.
I'll do you a deal then.... I'll give you nothing, you give me £65. Seriously though, if you can't hear a difference, why pander to (what I now consider) common misconception?
For piece of mind, and future proofing your collection? What is the point of throwing data away when you don't have to?
Well you sir are what's known as a tight arse aka Scottsman. I can easily hear differences between even high bit rate mp3's such as 320kbps and the same track in FLAC. I find it baffling that others wouldn't come to the same conclusion given how noticeable it is. Perhaps the SB is junk and doesn't allow the differences to be heard anyway?
Four or five years ago I had a full Tact setup. After about nine months of tweaking it was pretty good in many ways. The AD is shit I'm afraid - we setup an Orbe/SME V/ Koetsu Onyx and it was simply disappointing. I got on well with Peter back then, and tried one again about two years go. I also listened to one at a studio in Munich earlier this year with Markus and Titian. The problem for me is that it sounds like really good hifi through a Tact processor. The Tact leaves a sonic footprint that is slightly synthetic most of the time and audible whatever you hook up to it. But hey, if I don't rate it that highly, then maybe you'll love it. It does work. It removes the room to a large degree. Listen to Pulse with the lights out and you really could convince yourself that you were in an outdoor arena. The phase accuracy results in spectacular imaging if it was on the recording. It's different. It puts you at the recording rather than bringing the musicians into your room. I spent over a year with mine and decided to sell as it really was a let down with vinyl. Of course YMMV. It does teach you an awful lot about acoustics and the effect of FR changes on perceived tonal balance though. Oh and you lose a large amount of level capability from your speakers so I'd recommend high efficency or plenty of headroom.
woo ok. I'm an 'each to their own' kinda guy, so ok I can't hear it, but maybe I'm deaf or my sytems shit - either way if I can't hear it, I'm in blissfull ignorance! (I could suggest a big scientific double blind test, but I'd lose the will to live very very quickly haha) Anyway, just wanted to add to this post - Julian(2002) uses an Audiosynthesis Dac with a built in volume control. He uses it with his squeezebox. It sounds very good, and the build quality is quite something. That type of dac though, you'd have to accept your vinyl reproduction is being turned to digital, and then back to analogue again... probably wouldn't bother me, but it's not very audiophile/purist. Perhaps there is a similar dac, but with an analogue ''throughput'' so to speak. NB - Another idea, how about the cheaper ATC pre, is it the CA2? Sounded pretty good to me.
There's some intereting general info on MP3's on this Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 There is considerable discussion on ''at what bit rate'' MP3 can be audibly different. That's not what I found most interesting though, it was this bit - In a 2004 public listening test at 32 kbit/s,[9] the LAME MP3 encoder scored only 1.79/5 — behind all modern encoders — with Nero Digital HE AAC scoring 3.30/5. This states that there is an audible difference depending on the software you use - for example Nero being audibly better than LAME. I wanted to share this - some people may store their audio as MP3's like me, others may store MP3's for portable music. Anyway, sorry to poach the thread Fox, you can have it back now!
With storage now so cheap, I really can't see the point of compressed music files. I bought 2 x 500GB external drives last week for the MacBook for £200. That will store around 1600 CD's uncompressed, uncompromised, and undisturbed.
Playing devils advocate - research indicated on the wikipedia site (can't be arsed to follow back to the source) suggests that at 192k there isn't an audible difference, with a good MP3 decoder. An arguementative type might say you're making the same assumptions of recording format that you're saying other people are making re: cables. I of course am not saying that, as I'd rather go out for a drink on a saturday night than talk about hifi got o go.
I'd tend to agree. Guilty as charged. But I still can't see the point of compressing to save a couple of quid. Have you got any in depth studies from something a little more reliable than Wiki?
Didn't know that about the WAV copying - wish I had ! - it would have been quicker! They're all on the PC now though, so the thought of doing it all again would marginally less preferable than getting teeth pulled at the dentist! Good thing about having them as MP3's though, makes drag & drop onto a portable music player a quick process. So I guess that's the plus side. Did not realize the CA2 was not balanced, and seems a sensible reason to change. NB Have you tried a DAC 64? It gets knocked by some, praised by others. It's still my favourite outboard DAC, and is definately worth a try if you haven't done so. I've seen them used for about a grand, which is a great price also.
Has anyone tried converting MP3's to WAV's? I found a rare track online at 128Mb/s which had originated from a cassette found in a studio (the only surviving record of this mix the band could get hold of). After much careful treatment it sounded very good (the brick wall at 15KHz giving its origins away). Very crudely, I opened the file in Nero Wave Editor and saved it as a lossless wav. After my old PC had done its maths and saved the track, I found the wav sounded slightly better to my ears. Audio Critic would have a field day with my lack of scientific setup, but I tried this with other low data rate downloads and thought I heard a small improvement. Usisng the digital radio analogy, if the source recording is spotlessly presented, then a good implemntation of MP3 should be more than adequate, if not inaudible on some material. If the source is dirty/distorted then the codec can't tell the difference between distortion and the musical signal apparently.
