57gold

Didn't craft a story nor quote your review or imagine anything. Also not sure what I'm missing about how a server works with a DAC?

More of a a level of incredulity that a state of the art server and DAC need another piece of equipment to fully perform their functions. The DAC maker in this case has no financial constraints in making this unit fully functional at the highest level with the ability to accept, convert and output digital files at the highest levels from a purpose built music server with high quality design and parts. Guess it seems like overkill.

Easy question. Why would a $4K computer designed and optimized to deliver digital audio files in a pristine manner to a $32K worth of digital file receiving and processing hardware and software somehow fall short of their tasks, so much so as they need a $5k box of computer parts and software to remedy their design shortcomings? Between the two units of $36K of specialized gear, who dropped the ball.

I guess I'll qualify for a broken record award here. But it seems odd that a $4K+ server feeding files to a $32K DAC needs help from a $5K box (which I believe is just another computer) to sound its best???

Tried BlackHole again with HQP and nugs.net music/concert files...Goose on June 12th 2024 with Julian Lage sitting in on two tunes (awesome boundary-crossing guitarist) and success on second attempt. As always, HQP filters remove unnatural raspiness and focus imaging on streamed media. Thanks Jussi.

Anyone figure out how to stream nugs.net through HQP? With help from Jussi, downloaded BlackHole 2 Channel and stream Amazon HD form great results. Thanks.

Would like to try an amp based upon this class D module to drive my old faithful 10Ts: https://purifi-audio.com/shop/1et9040ba01-1et9040ba-amplifier-module-2004 Same guy behind the well-regarded Mola-Mola products and other stuff.

Yikes, I didn't read what I typed, meant, "unlike folks here". Something like 10% of music is "consumed" through acquire media like CD, Vinyl and digital files purchased and 64% over streaming/internet and that is delivered mostly low def/mp3 stuff for cellphones, biggest services are Spotify, Apple and Amazon. 4% of music consumption is at live performances, so need listeners familiar with how instruments sound in real life to evaluate music reproduction equipment not folks who listen to compressed, low def files on earbuds from their phone.

Yup, a couple of "trusted ears" like the "professional" reviewers I mentioned. Yes, double blind, scientific listening session by a large sample would be cool. But, like come here, most folks don't give a crap beyond the most basic version of sonic reproduction, those who listen to iPods on mp3 players, for example.

Given the "all over the place" discussion above, still curious, how much sonic improvement is available with a multi box assault on the SOTA DAC system like the dCS deliver versus a supremely clean measuring (low jitter, low noise, low distortion) low price DAC like the one I posted? My electronic instrument experience says, like one of my favorite CA members quoted "everything matters" in music gear...power supplies, cables, tubes... it's true with guitar amps. How much do these things, plus more processing like clocks, independent DACs per channel...matter in a DAC for stereo systems?

Agree, iIt is pretty awesome when folks visit my music room and I put on some of their favorite music or one of my own and they are shocked by "feeling the music in a way they haven't before" or say "it seems like the musicians are 10 ft or more behind the speakers and the wall behind them" or "it sounds like the piano is in this room". Here it happens with a Mac mini USBed to a DAC directly feeding and amp that powers accurate and dynamic speakers, quality cables and I guess my only "audiophile tweaks" are HQPlayer and an LPS powering the DAC versus the switcher that came in the box, so I guess I have a 2 box DAC.

From prior post of another member: "Any dope at my house can hear the difference between my Yggy and an excellent measuring DAC at 1/10 the price, in well under 1 minute."

This dope doesn't understand what machinations need to be accomplished to take a CD file or stream of data to convert it to an analog signal that once amplified and delivered to a speaker will sound like "musicians in the room" music or best reflect the producers' intent at a mixing board that would require 5 boxes of electronics to get right. Also have seen testing on $10K area DACs from highly touted makers from UK, Switzerland and France with basic measurements, like jitter and noise, that fall short of sub $1K DACs, sometime considerably? Like wise, some of the class D amp implementations by Purifi and Hypex, utilizing new technology, that deliver high power with extraordinary clarity for a lot less than huge and expensive traditional high end amplification gear. So this dope, who also read that one of the commercial reviewers who contributes great stuff here reviewed a $1,500 DAC from Central Europe that compared favorably with ones in fancier hardware, with known "audiophile brand credentials" that cost 8 to 10X more. Similarly, an Absolute Sound guy favorably reviewed $1K area Chinese DACs with similar relative value conclusions. Know I'm a dope in matters of EE, digital anything (this Mac Book I'm typing with is a black box to me)...but if a Czech company can make an distribute an assembly of parts for $1500, based upon my knowledge of economics and manufacturing (my neighbor's business has 20,000 workers in China building iPhones, iPads, and other consumer electronic devices), I'm pretty confident that the same or similar parts can be assembled and packaged for less than half the EU cost of production. So, I question the relationship between retail costs of gear and musical performance given we are talking about D to A conversion and a clean output stage, not rocket science. But, I am a dope in the details of these maters.

Me too. Replaced the CD player with a USB DAC, a Mytek DSD 192 (started a huge thread on this early high def USB DAC here) that hooked up to a dedicated Mac Mini and used Audirvana as a player.

"Any dope at my house can hear the difference between my Yggy and an excellent measuring DAC at 1/10 the price, in well under 1 minute." Is that because the Yggy version you have is one of the early noisy ones with high distortion artifacts? Had a Theta Gen V back in the day, believe your DAC is made by some of the same guys. It sounded decent but broke down twice with parts failures and had to get sold. Replaced it with a Wadia player that sounded much more like music.