Continuing with CDs?

just bought one of these lovely little DACs (right before the price went up apparently) https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1
have been reticent to buy one, but this will allow me to run my tv, pc, and cd player into one input on my input-light vintage receiver.

i'm looking at R2R DACs as a result of this thread. so much distortion but apparently the warmth is out of this world!

ah, i see upper missipp has the same one
xp

The DAC of my dreams is a French R2R DAC. It’s only 4250 euros. I forget if that includes shipping.

But love tube amps so I would.

The other “wire with gain” Apple DAC is in the Airport Express later models (looks like a white AppleTV), of course one can stream to it losslessly at 44/16.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/airport-express-audio-quality-2014.htm

I've been wanting something for streaming audio that doesn't require me to turn on my TV. The most appealing thing I've seen is the Cambridge CXN, which has a little screen of its own and lists for $1099, or slightly less than the total cost of my whole system. I think it was Darko who said it was also a good DAC and so I said "hey, two in one!" (I don't really have any problem with my Onkyo receiver's DAC, except that there's a switch that clicks every time it recognizes a different source so that I always miss the first two seconds of audio from a CD.)

Those Airports work flawlessly with a good network connection. They also do optical out if you want to put it to a “better” DAC. Trapped in the iOS / macOS ecosystem but that’s true for me anyway.

I have two Cambridge Audio receiver/amps and been very happy (the only reason I've had two is because the first one got fried when my house got struck by lightning)

it's a shame that apple stopped providing optical outs with their products circa what, 2015, 2016?

I hung on to my older Apple TV for that reason.

when my house got struck by lightning

!!!

Typing that above inspired me to reinstate my Airport Express as an output for my music server Mac Mini, I had foolishly thought the Mini's output was comparable, but I was WRONG. Even without the expensive DAC the analogue output has a rock steady, deep bottom end which adds a whole level!

Thus Sang Freud at 5:48 15 Feb 22

when my house got struck by lightning

!!!


yeah was crazy! heard a huge crack then saw crazy sparks fly off the side of of the house, had hit a copper pipe going into the house so outside of some scorch marks there wasn't much damage, but had some dead electronics

I've got 8 CD orders on discogs this week so I'm pretty happy with the cd revival so far

I want rid of them all tbh. Totally happy with ripping to flac and scanning the booklets in case I ever want to read the liner notes

i tried to order a CD copy of 11:11 by come on discogs recently and 2 different sellers couldn't find it and refunded me. i am taking a break after all that action.

CAD, I might have a copy of 11:11. I can check for you this weekend.

oh wow, thanks! if you can track it down and are interested in moving it let's talk. my ilxmail should work.

Having said it's all going well some cunt has put a seller hasn't responded on me just now when my shipping clearly says I post on Saturdays. Pending fuck you

Can I just cancel it so I don't get a negative? I literally put I post on Saturdays in my shipping policies

Nyquist states that every waveform under 22050 Hz can be 100% fully and perfectly represented by samples taken at 44100 Hz. So if there is any quality whatsoever to some audio that cannot be represented by a CD, then it's over 22050 Hz. I've had my own hearing tested, and one ear gets to 20 khz, while the other is slightly lower, due to tinnitus. If you can hear over 22050 Hz, I really want to see a pic of the medically-administered hearing test you've taken. Or yr cat collar.

Glossing over dynamic range issues, of course, but no grateful dead records have 24 bits of dynamic range.

No recorded music has more than 13 bits of DR, moreover no one is pressing uncompressed music to any digital format because if they did people couldn't listen to it without risking hearing/equipment damage anyway
they used to put warnings on the cover of early CDs that came close to full recording DR, 80+ dB is a lot

16 bits is overkill but reasonably so, 24 bits is nonsense, it's wasting space storing noise

Haha if we didn't like wasting space storing noise we'd be on one of the streaming threads!

(NB this is just a cheap zing that made me smile, I've absolutely no idea about any of the science stuff and I assume you're all 100% right even when you disagree with each other. I don't have the hearing or the discernment to worry too much about the sound quality, never have had. I am continuing with CDs because I like physical formats and I like record shopping; record shopping for vinyl these days is boring and expensive, while record shopping for CDs is unpredictable and mostly cheap.)

I don't think anyone here is disputing sampling theory or dynamic range requirements for playback or limits of the human auditory system. (24-bit is sensible for mixing/mastering, and 32-bit floating point for DSP/EQ/FX/etc, but anything like that for playback is like filling your bookshelves with special expanded editions of novels with 200 blank pages at the back; plus you can easily get 100dB+ SNR for CD, from a hi-res source, in the areas where the ear is most sensitive, with dither/noise-shaping - that's been absolutely standard for years).

I think the argument some have been making is that the necessarily abrupt low-pass filtering required to retain 0-20k, but avoid any aliasing above the Nyquist limit, is *possibly* deleterious to sound quality. And maybe that's one of the reasons some people seem to have a strong subjective preference for SACD or hi-res PCM. I'm very sceptical, but there we are.

Tim OTM

the necessarily abrupt low-pass filtering required to retain 0-20k

this doesn't happen because ADC is done at higher sampling rates where the LPF isn't abrupt at all and DACs are oversampling

it's a non-issue, it's like climate change "sceptics" talking about sunspots or whatever, it doesn't matter how many times it's debunked, they'll keep on believing it or latch onto the next tripe

filling your bookshelves with special expanded editions of novels with 200 blank pages at the back

This could give Tim ideas.

record shopping for vinyl these days is boring and expensive, while record shopping for CDs is unpredictable and mostly cheap.

ding ding ding, give this man an OTM

I've been going to the library and checking out CDs lately, it's a fun way to check stuff out I wouldn't necessarily buy. but I feel like if I have the CD sitting up by my stereo I end up engaging with it more than if I just streamed something once then forgot about it forever

I'm kind of boggled that there are people commenting on this thread who can still hear up to 20 kHz. My understanding was always that even if you don't abuse your ears, your frequency sensitivity inevitably drops off after childhood. I *did* abuse my ears and I'm probably lucky I can still hear up to 13 kHz. But my wife, who didn't spend decades listening to headphones at high volume, or attend any Sonic Youth shows, is nevertheless down to 16 kHz. I guess there must be some kind of genetic "golden ears" bounty at play if your cochlear frequency range doesn't naturally decline in adulthood?

In my late 30s I went to see an audiologist because I was being troubled by these odd distortion artefacts in my left ear. They found no cause ("something to do with your wiring")... aside from a -4dB dip around 4-5kHz, I was pretty flat (vs normal profile) out to the high teens. The left-side distortion eventually went away, but now it manifests itself as a higher-pitched clipping in the right ear. Somewhat psychological... the more relaxed I am, the less likely it's triggered. Anyway, I'm 53 now and I can hear nothing above 13.5k.

I'm kind of boggled that there are people commenting on this thread who can still hear up to 20 kHz.

This is probably a wise and well-informed comment, but I'm equally boggled that there are people who know what kHz are and know how many they can hear.

Apart from the last poster above, I would be surprised if 2% of my acquaintances had a clue about it.

But it sounds like entire married couples are in the know on these matters!

I just generate test tones in Audacity and see if I can hear them. (There are also YouTube videos for this sort of thing, but the compression on YT probably knocks the top end out anyway).

Of course it could just be that I don’t own any headphones or speakers that can play these very high tones. My kids seem to be able to hear them fine though!

You should never marry anyone who has a different range of hearing than you

I do draw comfort from the knowledge that in any case, there is very little of interest (musically speaking) above 12 kHz.

My dog disagrees.

(I do not have a dog.)

I don't know why people are so obsessed with high-end frequency response, which as stated, there's not that much up there and much of it is rather unpleasant

especially when the bass response on proper speaker (or good bookshelfs and a high quality subwoofer) is like galaxies away from what's possible on a cheap setup or a bluetooth speaker or headphones

I'm listening to Swing Lo Magellan by Dirty Projectors (CD from library) and I remember listening to it a bit back then but the first song there are these HUGE sub bass hits and it's like a different song

also which I know is a bullshitty term but soundstage, it's like so wide and deep, i often hear new little overdubs or cool details on records/cds that I never heard before

obv it's a subjective thing that can't be measure but as stark as standard def vs hdtv

it's kinda strange there aren't actual measurements on soundstage, I'm not sure how subjective it is but it's funny the language used about it when reading about headphones. I dunno, I just know it's "wide" when i can't even tell if the sound is coming from what's on my head. Pretty confusing the first time.

yeah it's hard to quantify, but i have my CD player plugged straight in to my amp and then I have the digital out plugged into my DAC...point being I can put in a CD and A/B them and it's very odd - I wouldn't necessarily say one was better but when you flip the voices, instruments audible "shift" so they seem like they are coming from a different place. also sometime vocals will seem slightly louder or quieter in terms of where they sit in the mix....obv I can't prove this but it's audible and I've done it for my gf who could give a fuck about any of this stuff and she heard it. just like a guitar will be a little more centered or a little more left etc

no idea why a DAC should do that

try taking your speakers and putting them about 6-8 feet apart in the middle of an empty room with nothing in-between them or behind them, then seat yourself at the third point of the triangle where the speakers are the other two points, you can get amazing soundstage that way that for some reason vanishes when there's a shelf or whatever between them and they're closer to the wall.

xp different filters?

yeah maybe? I don't fully understand filters

xpost had that at my old place, was amazing, new place can't accommodate but I bought speakers (Dalis) that supposedly do pretty well with less than ideal placement

but I do miss that setup

I had speakers where the imaging was such that you could place vocals etc. with almost pinpoint accuracy, better than what my current setup does now... kinda eerie. think it was because I was using a "t-amp" (class D amplification) which was known for that effect. hard to quantify for sure!

Is this discussion about being able to hear ... high notes?

Like when people say "that's a dog-whistle", and the reference of the metaphor is ultimately to ... a whistle that is so high that a dog can hear it and a person cannot?

And the thing that the dog can hear is the "20 kHz" thing?

But then ... no music contains sounds that people can't hear, does it? I mean ... if I play the top note of a piano ... I can hear it. So ... I don't need a hifi that plays notes on ... an imaginary piano ... that plays ... notes so high that only a dog can hear them?

there are online freq generators as well. this does weird things to me around 4khz (which is the typical tinnitus notch, i'm told). can't really tell where it ends, certainly less than 10kHz.

https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

> I'm equally boggled that there are people who know what kHz are

440Hz mean nothing to you? the A above Middle C?

(that page also tells you which note the tone equates too, although it tops out at B8)