Media players with acceptable 2 channel audio quality?

[nighthawk]

Hello, wondering if anyone here has found acceptable audio quality with any standalone media player (non-network device)......like the Western Digital Live series HD media players etc. I know some of the squeezeboxes are known to be acceptable , and also wondering if any standalone are know to be atleast in the same realm of audio quality, as some do flac.


I wonder why nobody (afaik) has made and marketed a noiseless high-end standalone flash-based audio player ?

The performance level I seek would be around what a reasonably good sounding low to mid level DAC from the 90s would do........arcam, proceed PDP, PS audio etc

 

[SoNic_real_one]

They have SPDIF (and HDMI) audio outputs, so you can use whatever DAC you want. I have the WDTV Live and the audio digital out is hooked to my digital receiver.
Nobody is gonna put a 500-1000$ analog section in a box that sells at 100$ price point.

 

[63781]

Word has it that the Logitech Touch is quite good, and it can be used stand-alone with an external USB disk-drive.

 

[johnYks]

'In pass through mode, the multichannel format is of course preserved'

This does pretty much does everything you could wish for
in a media player,as to how good the Realtek chip is.....?

Prime candidate for mods!

http://[URL="http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=90&Itemid=1"]
www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=90&Itemid=1[/URL]

http://[URL="http://www.playonhd.com/en/"]www.playonhd.com/en/[/URL]


CODECs and Formats

The Playon! series supports most common audio and video format and CODECs including Digital Theater Sound (DTS) and its spawns. DTS was originally introduced with Jurassic Park and at the time was one of the main attractions of the movie (aside from the actual contents). Another high-end audio format supported is Free Lossless Audio Codec, an open source AC specifically developed for the compression of audio contents with a compression ratio of typically 50-60% of the original audio files while maintaining the capability of decompressing to an identical copy of the original.

Bear in mind that, even though these formats (up to 7.1) are supported, the native audio output only supports Stereo after down-mixing. In pass through mode, the multichannel format is of course preserved.

For an overview, we have a complete listing of all audio, video and (still) image formats below.

Video Formats Supported: AVI / MKV / TS / TP / TRP / M2TS / MPG / MP4 / MOV / M4V / VOB / ISO / IFO / DAT / WMV / ASF / RM / RMVB / FLV resolution up to 720p / 1080i / 1080p / BD-ISO
Video Codecs Supported: MPEG-1 / MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 SP/ASP/AVC (H.264 | x264) / XviD / DivX / WMV9 (VC-1) / RealVideo 8/9/10 (up to 720P)
Video Output Supported: PAL / NTSC / 480p / 576p / 720p / 1080i 50Hz / 1080i 60Hz / 1080p 50Hz / 1080p 60Hz / 1080p 24FPS
Audio Formats Supported: MP3 / MP2 / WMA / AAC / FLAC / WAV / OGG Vorbis / PCM / LPCM / MS-ADPCM / LC-AAC / HE-AAC / COOK / RA-Lossless
# Audio Output Supported: Stereo
# Dolby Digital AC3 5.1

* (passthrough & downmix to stereo)

# Dolby Digital Plus

* (passthrough)

# DTS

* (passthrough & downmix to stereo)

# DTS-HD Master Audio

* (passthrough core stream & downmix to stereo)

# DTS-HD High Resolution Audio

* (passthrough core stream & downmix to stereo)

# FLAC 7.1

* (passthrough & downmix to stereo)

Image Formats Supported: JPEG, HD JPEG / BMP / GIF / TIF / PNG
Subtitle Formats Supported: SRT, SMI, SSA, IDX/SUB, SUB
Character Sets Supported
(needed for text subtitles): Unicode (UTF8), BIG5 (Traditional Chinese), Western, Turkish, Central European, Greek, Cyrillic, SE European, Hebrew

 

[johnYks]

[URL="http://www.playonhd.com/en/"]

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=90&Itemid=1[/URL]


Maybe I might get third time lucky in the near future......
clueless about how to send proper links and attachments...

 

[SoNic_real_one]

None of them (Realtek or Sigma based) have dedicated DAC's, the outputs are coming out straight from the multimedica chip.

 

[guido]

Teac WAP series maybe?

WAP2200 is without network, needs usb HDD. codec is wolfson (not a high end dac). elco's in analog out. Remote with display.

Somebody looked at the inside of a 4500, tried to mod clocks. Failed and killed it... Somebody else replaced elco's, successfully. Google/search here might find those cases.

As for me, i still plan to make an external dac for my 4500. Someday....
Doesn't sound bad in stock form though imho.

Gapless flac support.