MP3 player through my system

Yashu

I think the WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA guys are just pissed that us PC audio guys can get all the music we own on CD on a PC, uncompressed, and accessable with the touch of a button... they are still buying into the "if the CD player holds more than one CD than it is not 'audiophile' enough"... I am not going to knock vinyl, but there is no denying that the music selection on CD is magnitudes greater than in vinyl.

What those people do not understand is you are after a bit-perfect digital output... that is what a digital source is... whether that source only holds one CD or your entire collection. You can take that bit-perfect signal and turn it into an audiophile system without any problem. Mp3s just offer a little convenience... sometimes you can't find an album on CD to buy... Encoded right, you can still enjoy that music. The nay-sayers would just have to go without that music at all... kindof sad in a way.

I am all for the comeback of vinyl and the purity of audiophile playback, but seriously... the future is uncompressed digital stored on digital media like hard-drives and flash memory. The future is having your entire collection at your fingertips. How could I ever go back to single disk CD players when I have 50,000 songs, most of which are full quality, that I can instantly access in any order. The bits coming from my USB s/pdif adapter are the same bits that would come from a single disc player.

So WAAAAAAAAA off. It is definately possible to build a PC audio system that can sound just as good as the best stand alone CDPs.

As far as portable mp3 players... as I understand it, the super expensive speaker manufactuerers love to load an ipod full of uncompressed audio and use it for demos at the audiophile targeted conventions... there have been many articles in stereophile about this. If the manufacturers of $50,000 speakers and $20,000 amps trust a freaking ipod to demo their wares, then it can't be *that* bad.

Also, yes there are lossless files beginning to show up on the p2p networks, and there are online sellers of lossless albums. Go to Audioasylum and enter the PC audio forums... there is lots of talk about this... and just start ripping your CDs to a hard drive using Exact Audio Copy... it is free, BTW, and can also use the LAME codec if you want HQ mp3s.

reeltrouble1

evil pure evil Max.....

RT1

madmax

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

waaaaaaaaaa...........damm I am going to pee myself......Well if its only the Midrange, the Voices, the Depth and the Detail, I mean who needs that junk........:rolleyes:

Max, stop teasing, I know you are sitting there LYAO.......I am too.;)

RT1

I'm quite serious. I guess I could say the "tone" (individual sounds made by the instruments) was not that great either. Other than that it really is pretty good. I didn't have a very good interconnect and that might be part of it. I'm pretty sure it uses a 2.3 cent output transistor which could possibly cause a little concern. Overall I'm pretty happy though. I bought a video adaptor for it and DIVX versions of Married With Children look and sound as good as a disc copied from the internet on my 50" plasma.
madmax

BottomFeeder

This is the reason why I NEVER call myself an audiophile. Most have thier noses so high in the air, they need a space shuttle to go up & retrieve it!:rolleyes:[/QUOTE]


Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

That's classic!

reeltrouble1

please my staff are asking questions now about the look on my face.......

your crackin me up.:D

madmax

I do actually call myself an audiophile. I'm one of those willing to pay the extra 10,000 percent to achieve a 1% improvement. At the same time though, I don't mind a 10% loss of quality so long as I don't have to listen to it because I know it still has 90% of what makes up the sound.

sucks2beme

It's not that full digital can't sound good. It's the fact that the real world makes it
so damn hard to do. DACs are not easy to demo. USB DACS are an internet item only.
Finding one that's good can be a mess.
Reviews of DACS are all over the board. Who do you trust? Yeah, this one sounds good.
Then you see the reviewer's equipment list is a pile of crap.
MP3 with a crappy amp and Bose. That's why Blakeh's rig got my attention.
Full digital done right.
Right now, you have to buy the cd's to make the flac files to get good sound.
Then find a decent DAC. This is what's got me hung up is locating
a reasonable DAC that won't cost me an arm and a leg.

Face

I'll be doing A/B testing between a Integra SACD/CD/DVD player and my MP3(lossless) server. Just need to save up for some nice interconnects. :rolleyes:

reeltrouble1

madmax wrote: »

I do actually call myself an audiophile. I'm one of those willing to pay the extra 10,000 percent to achieve a 1% improvement. At the same time though, I don't mind a 10% loss of quality so long as I don't have to listen to it because I know it still has 90% of what makes up the sound.

well, I would say I am close to one but not quite, I still care more about the music than the gear I just want it to sound the best, no doubt I have spent alot of time finding gear that was high quality for low dollar along with some pieces which are just plain high dollar and high quality. I have also wasted my share of dough on so called giant killers and had disappointments with so-called hi-end products, but, I am pretty happy with my gear now, so I am turning my attention towards quality media.

oh yea and Max took his FOS pill today/ 1% + 10,000%= 90%+10% but I dont listen to the 10%, man are your taxes this ingenious:D

RT1

madmax

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

oh yea and Max took his FOS pill today/ 1% + 10,000%= 90%+10% but I dont listen to the 10%, man are your taxes this ingenious:D

RT1

Hey, that made perfect sense.

Yashu

sucks2beme:

Check out two brands, MHDT (I am biased here, I own their Dialogue II non-os DAC), and Scot Nixon... both companies make a good tubed or non tubed USB DAC... I would consider the MHDT as I feel they make the "giant killer" of the two (paradisea+). going up in price you have the Benchmark DAC1 USB, and down the scale there is the USB EMU 0404 that I hear has a good DAC for quite the good value... (but it comes with all sorts of other audio recording features too). There are many at a range of price points... Stello, and Empirical Audio also to name a few, maybe even TVC makes one.

It is a growth sector right now, because A: Good quiet PCs are easy to build, and B: Hard Drive space is cheaper than ever. There are also a bunch of audiophile USB s/pdif and I2S adapters by Trends, Haggerman, Emperical, ect.

THEN on top of all of that, you have things like the Squeezebox that let you put the PC in the other room... and the many (many) mods to this device to improve it's already good analog output, or you can just hook up a quality DAC and get bit perfect from your PC anywhere in the house.

I am not sure why this is the last audiophile forum to embrace this type of thing. Even f'ing AudioAsylum has a very active PC audio following, and Audiocircle can't get enough of the Squeezebox.

Waaaaaa all you want but this type of thing is here to stay. You can argue a lot against this type of setup, but it is getting harder and harder to argue against it on the basis of potential sound quality.

If even a quarter of my collection was available on vinyl, that would be a miracle. I call myself an audiophile, but you have to love music to be one, I think. It's not the mp3's fault that certain artist didn't release their music on heavy grade vinyl or SACD (and sometimes even on CD)... I might be pissed as hell at their choice to publish in a lossy format, but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the music as best as I can. As far as the CD goes... there are so many artists out there producing CDs that to really listen to them all without going insane, you need more than just a single tray "audiophile" player.

sucks2beme

We're just a bunch of old knuckle draggers.
We spend all our time tweaking vinyl and playing with tubes!

reeltrouble1

Hey Chuck you better call EveAnna and tell her she's screwed, skip all that crap she plans on talking about at Rocky Mountain. You know if it were not for Rocky Mountain she was actually going to send a Manley Rep to the Fest...he was in Atlanta the Thursday before and thought I was near there, he had to go to the RM thing and just could not work out the logistics, he sent me a bottle of excellent Scotch today along with some Manley Swag goodies, but I will miss hearing 300b's and the Steelhead he was going to demo, anyway, he asked that we invite him some other time to our Fests, pretty cool.

Hope you had a good chuckle today with this Chuckles, I did.

waaaaaaaaaaaa, What next up your sleeve??? How you going to hook somehe Advanteguards to the puter and bypass that POS Steelhead........I am sure our resident Dirk Digler can figure a way for this as well.

You Keep biting I'll keep Reeling.

RT1

Yashu

Haha... Reel, you crack me up.

You keep flippin' and I'll keep listnin'.

heiney9

Lasareath wrote: »

I download torrents all the time but nobody has full ripped lossless CD's. they just don't exist. Las

Subscribe to a News Server and you can get all the lossless DL's you want. So yes, they do exsist, depends on your moral view if you want to get them for free.

H9

heiney9

sucks2beme wrote: »

That's why Blakeh's rig got my attention.
Full digital done right.

I can confirm how good it does sound. Indistiguishable from the "real" thing. It comes at a price and you need a good working knowledge of how to get things ripped and streamed correctly. He now has almost all his cd's ripped to FLAC, but he's still keeping the cd's as well. Extreme quality control from beginning to end, and an excellent outboard DAC.

I listen to some mp3's in my office rig and they sond good for what that rig is. Ripping with EAC and then using a high quality encoder at 320kbps gets a good result. I still avoid listening to them on my main rig because there is a noticeable difference as Madmax has stated. Timbre, voice, depth, soundstage, etc.

H9

reeltrouble1

Yashu wrote: »

Haha... Reel, you crack me up.

All in good fun........all in good fun......

Our basic paradigm's are all changing and audio is just one needle of this haystack, the CD is dying as the mass audio media to think otherwise would be rather foolish in the face of so many trends.

Still Ole RT1 is going to hang with Analog which everyone must still get to in the end and I am going to do it with companies who design machines specifically for these tasks. While in the Woodshed one disc at a time works just fine for me and I certainly have not had anybody who visited complain. Why care about having 10000 tunes on a disc, in that place in that moment, the one tune, the one tone, the sound of a perfect fifth resolving back to its first is the nirvana I find.

I just do not use music as wallpaper, I have no reason to use an inferior sounding format, when I get that strange craving for something different my Polk Tuner takes care of this and has many of the same faults I have seen described by ripping. However, for those who seek to improve this media, by refining it's virtue's march on, but in the mean time..........



waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


RT1

madmax

Yashu wrote: »

You can argue a lot against this type of setup, but it is getting harder and harder to argue against it on the basis of potential sound quality.

So why did you choose to insert the word "potential"? I think that gives you a good idea on why this forum hasn't fully embraced this type of setup. We require the real deal that performs today.

madmax

cfrizz

Are you retired Ted? Otherwise, how much time do you get to have dedicated listening in the WS?

For the most part life is simply too hectic & we have too much to accomplish. Most just don't have the time to just sit still & listen to tunes.

But I would never think to deny myself the joy of music in any form just because it wasn't "pure" for lack of a better term.

So my system gets used every single day. Most times with cd's playing & sometimes through my mp3 player. And its ALL good because I have music in my life that I can enjoy in multiple formats.

madmax

I love all sources. Each is good for something. I even tried to gather an 8 track source and some material but that ended as a total waste (tapes wouldn't stay together and the player quit). To me its fun. This is one reason I'm into the little AV player. I couldn't give a rats a$$ on convienence. I find myself amused while playing the device through the high end audio gear and displaying on the plasma. I would also take a top end turntable and plug it into a boombox to see what comes out. If I had PA speakers I would probably try them with my system. I've even listened to my guitar amp on my SDA's. This is all stuff people would never consider but I find it educational and amusing. So what is the next step with this digital stuff? I'm thinking a nice car system with the player, a video screen and some old tube amplification complete with high eff fostex speakers. Why? Because I can.
madmax

reeltrouble1

No Cat, still fighting the Bad Guys. A little over three years to go, thanks for asking though. I suppose the one-three hours a day I spend in the shed is my own little personal respite from all the bad I see, have seen, and know I will see.

Just me and the music during that little time, its really important to take time for yourself, I had to consiously work at it, music is the art which speaks to my soul, to cleanse and relax,otherwise?? well the average lifespan for folks like me is about 58. yikes...............

RT1

wingnut4772

So the Squeezebox can go through my Benchmark DAC1 as well as my transport....?Hmmmm....I wonder how it would sound...

wingnut4772

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

No Cat, still fighting the Bad Guys. A little over three years to go, thanks for asking though. I suppose the one-three hours a day I spend in the shed is my own little personal respite from all the bad I see, have seen, and know I will see.

Just me and the music during that little time, its really important to take time for yourself, I had to consiously work at it, music is the art which speaks to my soul, to cleanse and relax,otherwise?? well the average lifespan for folks like me is about 58. yikes...............

RT1

Boy do I know what you mean! We have to take care of ourselves so we can live to be a ripe old age. I have 16 years to go and I will retire at 55..in the meantime , I will listen to Norah.

fatchowmein

Things I have tried.

Xbox360 to Media Center PC Server but I didn't like the remote or how the 360 navigated.

Buffalo Link Theatre to Media Center PC Server but the box mistakenly lists lossless formats and their website shows the "correction" so no lossless format.

PS3 to Media Center PC Server. This wasn't a serious attempt because I mostly bought the PS3 for BR playback. I didn't like how the PS3 navigated music.

30GB Video Ipod connected to Yamaha receiver. No remote and I didn't feel like buying one since there's no video output to the tv to navigate playlists, pick songs, etc.

Squeezebox to Media Center PC. Perfect. Love it. This fulfilled a childhood dream back when I was dubbing cassette tapes. I now have my entire (almost, ripping=time consuming=sux) library at my fingertips as well as Internet Radio. Navigation is simple but more importantly the SB will play .m4a which is important since both the MRS and I have iPods and the SB links perfectly to all my iTune playlists. Next, I just need to pick up a good DAC to feed the SB to but I have other stuff to pay for at the moment.

In the end, for whatever inexplicable reason, I still enjoy spinning cd's on my Sony SACD player. Nostalgia?

As for a record player, I haven't gone done that road just yet.

I guess for me, owning the different formats is like owning dogs. They all have personalities that I love, some are smarter or better than others, but ultimately I love them all because they're dogs.

Except cassette tapes. I hate cassette tapes.

Yashu

MADMAX:

I said potential because, just like with vinyl, there are many ways to screw up.

You can't just plug your reference rig into the analog out of your PC's built in soundcard and expect reference sound with some **** you download off itunes. It takes a little work to get what you want out of PC audio in the same way as it takes work to get good sound out of any other medium.

You can't just throw some good vinyl on some crappy built-in record player from the 70's with a half worn needle and expect reference sound either.

I am saying that, with anything, it takes some work to get the full potential there. Having the potential to sound just as good as reference players costing thousands shows that PC audio is mature enough to satisfy the most demanding audiophile... but it just takes some work, as with anything else in this hobby... there is no plug n' play.

Yashu

Sona:

Files are stored in such a way that data integrity is verified every time you access or copy. There is built in errror correction and parity to ensure that you get a bit-perfect copy every time. Unless something REALLY goes wrong... and I mean like bad sectors on your hard drive that cannot be read at all, when you copy from one place to another, that data is an exact copy. If you setup something like a RAID 5 volume, you then have parity across 3 or more hard drives, giving you yet another level of protection, so even if something actually does become unreadable on one drive, the data remains intact.

That is one advantage of EAC with ripping... it can sit there and work for hours on a CD to make sure to use the full redbook error correction, getting you a copy that is sometimes more accurate than any stand alone CDP can do in realtime. When you play back from the PC, you can set your player to store the entire song in memory before playing begins, also ensuring that you are getting clean data.

Yashu

3 posts in a row...

Ok, I was thinking about what ReelTrouble said, and it brings up an interesting point, the generation gap. I am young, beginning to grow in my career, nowhere near retirement. My efforts are to get the best sound I possibly can, that I can also have access to as much of my music as I can. I crave music every day, but there is only so much time... so I want to fit in as much as I can, and in a way that keeps up with my evolving tastes.

Now, if I were older... and if I had more time, where my tastes have settled, I might be able to better savor the purity of vinyl or single disc players. With a music library somewhere on the order of 50,000 songs, it would be very hard to listen to what I want in a timely manor... if I could not listen by the album, I would have to dub to tape... Open reel would be nice, but again, I would have to sit there and record the songs one by one, to make a mix... something I used to love doing when I had time... but it is hard to go back to a mix of 10 songs, when I can have a playlist of hundreds, always updating to suit my changing tastes and new music aquirements.

There are other ways to improve the sound of digital audio, from NON-OS DACs to tubed components, novel speaker designs, and really, the positives begin to outweigh the negatives, for me anyway.

Sorry for the OT musing... was thinking about this while on a quick break at work.

cfrizz

This has been a very informative & interesting thread. Thanks Chuck & nice work everyone. Keep it coming.

cfrizz

I hear you Ted! Do whatever it takes to keep you happy & healthy!:)

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

No Cat, still fighting the Bad Guys. A little over three years to go, thanks for asking though. I suppose the one-three hours a day I spend in the shed is my own little personal respite from all the bad I see, have seen, and know I will see.

Just me and the music during that little time, its really important to take time for yourself, I had to consiously work at it, music is the art which speaks to my soul, to cleanse and relax,otherwise?? well the average lifespan for folks like me is about 58. yikes...............

RT1

Face

Yashu wrote: »

That is one advantage of EAC with ripping... it can sit there and work for hours on a CD to make sure to use the full redbook error correction, getting you a copy that is sometimes more accurate than any stand alone CDP can do in realtime. When you play back from the PC, you can set your player to store the entire song in memory before playing begins, also ensuring that you are getting clean data.

Just downloaded EAC. It's not letting me finish the setup due to it not recognizing WMP11, it's looking for 9. :rolleyes: