I have an older Luxman R-117 (160w) receiver in very nice working condition. Sounds nice with my B&W 685 speakers & powered sub. I have been using my Mac Mini headphone jack that splits into RCA cables - Analog.
Would I be correct in assuming that adding an external USB DAC from the Mac Mini would drastically improve the sound quality?
Question #2:
I also have a new Onkyo 8050 (80w) that has an optical input and the Mac Mini headphone jack also can serve as an optical output (just learned this). I have purchased the mini adapter and optical cable and the B&W 685 speakers sound nice on this receiver also. With this method, it say's "Digital/PCM" on the display.
I would like to narrow it down to just one receiver, so I don't know what to do ... continue to use the optical aspect of the Onkyo ... or purchase an external USB DAC for the Luxman?
Thanks for any advice ... hope the above makes sense
The rest of the electronics in a CD player isn't very much. There is usually an analog muting circuit, and a op amp buffer. While I've actually seen manufacturers and parts failures screw this up, it is far from the rocket science some would like you to believe.
The requirements on the op amp are very simple and easy. The signal voltages are modest but high enough so that absolutely the lowest noise is not necessary. It doesn't need to have much gain.
There are probably 1,000 or more different part numbers that could do the job, but for cost reasons probably less than 30 parts cover about 99% of all players currently in use. Probably 90% of all players use one of 5 different parts. The other circuit parameters are cook book.
The DAC vendors provide recommended circuits, and sometimes give the circuit board layout and land patterns.
Typically, the muting is done using a FET switch, often a discrete part costing pennies.
There are many reasons why you can easily buy a really good-sounding optical disc player for under $100. It's a very competitive business. Don't wait for Stereophile to publish a lab test on a good under-$100 player - it would be hard to tell the difference from bench tests, and running DBTs on CD players has always been as much fun as watching paint dry.
Then you just told me that you don't know what you are doing. I'd never try to match levels with a SPL meter unless I wanted to blow the test. Seriously.
I've posted the right way to do this here before. I've been doing this since 1983.
The tool to use is a good voltmeter hooked across the speaker terminals. Play a CD with test tones at 20, 50, 1,000, 5,000, 15,000 and 20,000 Hz. Switch back and forth between the two players under test and look for a reading that changes less than 1%.
If your voltmeter does not have flat response, its not a big problem as long as your meter shows 100 or more counts. Just go for numerical matching.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkHotchkiss /forum/post/21863886
I think the reason is that S/PDIF (both optical and coax) only supports lossless-formats for stereo (PCM), and supports multi-channel in lossy-formats (DD5.1, DTS). Why would you spend for a DAC in order to hear lossy audio?
Quote:
Originally Posted by arnyk /forum/post/21878538
The rest of the electronics in a CD player isn't very much. There is usually an analog muting circuit, and a op amp buffer. While I've actually seen manufacturers and parts failures screw this up, it is far from the rocket science some would like you to believe.
The requirements on the op amp are very simple and easy. The signal voltages are modest but high enough so that absolutely the lowest noise is not necessary. It doesn't need to have much gain.
There are probably 1,000 or more different part numbers that could do the job, but for cost reasons probably less than 30 parts cover about 99% of all players currently in use. Probably 90% of all players use one of 5 different parts. The other circuit parameters are cook book.
The DAC vendors provide recommended circuits, and sometimes give the circuit board layout and land patterns.
Typically, the muting is done using a FET switch, often a discrete part costing pennies.
There are many reasons why you can easily buy a really good-sounding optical disc player for under $100. It's a very competitive business. Don't wait for Stereophile to publish a lab test on a good under-$100 player - it would be hard to tell the difference from bench tests, and running DBTs on CD players has always been as much fun as watching paint dry.
Makes sense that the CD player market has now gotten to the point where they are almost all sonically equivalent to the ear. I can definitely understand how the current audiophile grade $500 and up CD players could be over-spec'd wastes of money. But how far back is this true historically?
By the late 80s or early 90s, audio magazines were doing blind tests that came up empty. That doesn't mean every single CD player was transparent (it still doesn't), but surely by then it was getting close. More telling, perhaps, is that nobody's ever shown the opposite (a few unconventional designs aside).
I actually don't even need to level match. So if I did it wrong, it doesn't matter. As I stated, louder isn't better and I know exactly which players were louder and which were quieter...Pretty easy when you're switching back and forth on the fly with the same material player simultaneously.
Some of the quieter players sounded better than the louder ones. The sound is so different on all my current players (except my JVC 311 and a 211 I also have, because they are the same) that I can tell within 2 minutes of listening to them.
Oh you can add another player to my list. A Sony BDP-S370. Here's another example of a player that I really wanted to like and keep in my AV rack, because it's nice a inexpensive. I heard great reviews of the CD sound quality. But it also does not sound better than my 311. It does sound better than my Oppo BDP-83.
I have reversed the inputs and interconnects on my gear, by the way, just in case there were other factors coloring the sound.
Quote:
Besides, your wife can hear it from the kitchen.
So, you're saying you're not human. What species are you? Because humans always have to level-match.
Quote:
As I stated, louder isn't better and I know exactly which players were louder and which were quieter...Pretty easy when you're switching back and forth on the fly with the same material player simultaneously.
Some of the quieter players sounded better than the louder ones. The sound is so different on all my current players (except my JVC 311 and a 211 I also have, because they are the same) that I can tell within 2 minutes of listening to them.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. The way you did these comparisons was positively laughable. The only thing funnier is the way you try to justify them.
AFAIK signing out of the human race is not possible. The facts of this matter are just that hard and fast. Either you are human and despirately need to do level matching to obtain a relevant result, or you not human.
Well now your post is tripping my BS detector doubly. I know what it takes to start 2 CD players in synch and keep them in synch.
I've tried to do CD player comparisons according to the method you are trying here. I was able to pick out the difference between any two players 100% of the time, even with two identical copies of the same CD player.
So, as a working methodology for telling whether CD players sound the same or different, your methodology just doesn't wash.
BTW are you a Hi Fi salesman or a writer for a high end magazine?m ;-)
That may be a plausible explanation but if not, I'm shocked to see such reply (quoted below) from someone who's been a member here for over 11 years and made 960 posts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Majestyk /forum/post/21879250
I actually don't even need to level match. So if I did it wrong, it doesn't matter. As I stated, louder isn't better and I know exactly which players were louder and which were quieter...Pretty easy when you're switching back and forth on the fly with the same material player simultaneously.
Some of the quieter players sounded better than the louder ones. The sound is so different on all my current players (except my JVC 311 and a 211 I also have, because they are the same) that I can tell within 2 minutes of listening to them.
Oh you can add another player to my list. A Sony BDP-S370. Here's another example of a player that I really wanted to like and keep in my AV rack, because it's nice a inexpensive. I heard great reviews of the CD sound quality. But it also does not sound better than my 311. It does sound better than my Oppo BDP-83.
I have reversed the inputs and interconnects on my gear, by the way, just in case there were other factors coloring the sound.
I'm sorry but this made me chuckle. Honestly I fail to see how that logically defends your position - "yeah I slammed my foot into a wall and broke my toes, my goal was just to walk across the room, but it doesn't matter - it's the same end result if you think about it!"
You really set up your "comparison" to fail because you didn't control for any external variables (which makes it not even a comparison at all), so you can't really say what you were comparing or what you found out with any confidence whatsoever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cel4145 /forum/post/21878989
Makes sense that the CD player market has now gotten to the point where they are almost all sonically equivalent to the ear. I can definitely understand how the current audiophile grade $500 and up CD players could be over-spec'd wastes of money. But how far back is this true historically?
Quote:
Originally Posted by arnyk /forum/post/21878538
The rest of the electronics in a CD player isn't very much. There is usually an analog muting circuit, and a op amp buffer. While I've actually seen manufacturers and parts failures screw this up, it is far from the rocket science some would like you to believe.
The requirements on the op amp are very simple and easy. The signal voltages are modest but high enough so that absolutely the lowest noise is not necessary. It doesn't need to have much gain.
There are probably 1,000 or more different part numbers that could do the job, but for cost reasons probably less than 30 parts cover about 99% of all players currently in use. Probably 90% of all players use one of 5 different parts. The other circuit parameters are cook book.
The DAC vendors provide recommended circuits, and sometimes give the circuit board layout and land patterns.
Typically, the muting is done using a FET switch, often a discrete part costing pennies.
There are many reasons why you can easily buy a really good-sounding optical disc player for under $100. It's a very competitive business. Don't wait for Stereophile to publish a lab test on a good under-$100 player - it would be hard to tell the difference from bench tests, and running DBTs on CD players has always been as much fun as watching paint dry.
Not that Arny needs it, but I'll +1 this response. I've designed and tested such outputs, and most of the time it's cookbook design - the DAC company gives you a reference design, layout, etc. Easy and cheap, but don't tell my manager that!
At least, that's my feeling/understanding on the subject. Once we get into DVD, Blu-ray, SACD, etc we've basically gotten to a point where CD is handled right and there's no point in spending $70,000 on a CD player.
Although, now that I've ripped pretty much everything I own to flac, I don't know why I need to know it (lol). For that matter, won't be long before we'll just be saying that, "Why are you worried about CD player quality? You should be ripping all your music"
The first generation players were the only good players that were audibly different in an ABX test, and then only with carefully selected recordings, e.g. choral. The second generation players pretty uniformly had digital filters and that was that. Such audible problems as existed were mostly tracable to analog brick wall filters - parts tolerance and all that.
Of course there have always been CD players that had defects - many of the portable CD players with electronic shock control based on buffer memory had audible flaws.
The first generation players were the only good players that were audibly different in an ABX test, and then only with carefully selected recordings, e.g. choral. The second generation players pretty uniformly had digital filters and that was that. Such audible problems as existed were mostly tracable to analog brick wall filters - parts tolerance and all that.
Of course there have always been CD players that had defects - many of the portable CD players with electronic shock control based on buffer memory had audible flaws.
You can hear differences in digital filters. Otherwise we won't see DACs where you can choose filter out of 5-10 available options. When someone says that he can hear differences in DACs, in most cases iteans difference in digital filters.
That general kind argument is easy to criticize. It's like saying that since there are six brands of white general purpose flour on my supermarket's shelf, they must all make different-tasting bread. In fact we know that white general purpose flour is a highly generalized commodity, and that there is a good possibility that two or more of the bags contain flour that was packed in the same factory from the same flour storage bin. There might even be bags marked as if they were different types of flour, that are in fact the same.
Quote:
When someone says that he can hear differences in DACs, in most cases iteans difference in digital filters.
One of my advantage on you is that I am aware of and have participated in listening tests involving relevant alternative kinds of digital filters. For example a digital filter can be:
1. Linear phase 'soft knee filter'
2. Minimum phase 'soft knee filter'
3. Linear phase Brickwall filter
4. Minimum phase apodizing filter
5. linear phase apodizing filter
and in a DBT they are all indistinguishable.
The reason is simple - in every case the artifacts related to the type of filter are at supersonic frequencies or frequencies that are above the range where the ear is sensitive to phase shift or transient response differences of the kind that are actually observed with these kinds of filters.
You can have scope traces that come from all sorts of different directions, and it can easily all sound the same.
A more likely explanation for the existence of DAC chips with different kinds of digital filters is that they were created to be more salable, regardless of their actual sonic properties which are all probably very good and therefore indistinguishable.
Consider this - why would someone risk building a DAC that would sound bad if some button were pushed by mistake?
It doesn't take a lot to make a chip that implements a number of different kinds of digital filters. There are now cookbook design tools for working out the actual circuit parameters. If manufacturers can get the "design-in" or the audio store product sale in this highly competitive market, its all gravy.
Thank you all so much for contributing to the thread, I have learned so much.
I feel bad for the OP as I feel like he didn't get much airtime on his question, although, he seems to have checked out since his original post so I'm not sure if that was out of a lack of interest or maybe he already did get his answer.
Sadly, despite all the information provided, I'm still curious about experiencing this subject first-hand, which is going to be a needlessly expensive lesson from what I gather. I'm going to keep arnyk's post in mind once I am in a position to do a comparison to make sure that I level match my Squeezebox Duet analog out with that of the external DAC's analog out (most likely the Emotiva one). But, by the time that happens this thread will be long gone so my findings will be irrelevant to anyone here now.
One thing I love about AVS, is that there is such knowledgeable and experienced people running about.
If there's any other articles / guides I should look up on level matching DAC's / outputs, please let me (us) know. Thanks again.
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