OK, thanks for the clarification here.
Performance as in SNR (of course a flash-based player can do better than 16bit audio), sample rate (ditto 96 or 192kHz) or dare I ask, sound quality?
I live in a house full of apple cinema displays and come from a family of phtographic imagers and designers, with personally 15 years in the industry(primarily pre-press and yes I had a mac plus) before moving into audio related fields, but I find that the black is not black and the yellow is a bit off for offset 4 colour printing. of course you can adjust to this, but while I still have 2 x 21" trinitrons that I find more usable for this purpose, I will continue to use them. the resolution is also superior.
I do however use cinema displays for every day computing as they are easier on the eye
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I don't want to get into an argument with the people who are building their own DACs, but with the proviso that I mean chip DACs, sound quality.
Come to that, if you want to drive ANY external DAC, a flash-based data delivery system and clock can be built to meet or exceed the performance and versatility of any CD based system and undercut its price. If you build it with prog logic throughout, and there's no reason not to, you can get a microprocessor IP core that will fit in a corner of an FPGA, you'll be able to upgrade it ad lib.
Since there are no moving parts, no laser, a card reader requires a fraction of the materials that a disk drive does, occupies perhaps a 50th. of the space and the capacity of a single card, currently at 128G, is 200 times that of a CD and you can get one for $45 and the whole shebang will run for hours off a battery, it's kind of no contest.
@qusp
Yeah, well, I don't just expect you to cave in and agree with me.
w
My CDP is a Micromega Stage 2 - as reviewed here: Article | Micromega Stage 2 | Page128 - July1994 - Gramophone Archive
I recorded from the analogue outputs of the CDP into a Macbook Pro's input socket via my pre-amps tape dubbing output, and likewise for the iPod - using the dock connector output rather than the headphone output.
In my case the resultant hybrid file was played back from the Macbook through my main system and using headphones. I have no way of knowing how other people who downloaded the file played it back.
You have caught me out, I confess, there's no fooling some people; I will admit all - yes, I am in possession of the only Macbook Pro to ever be equipped with the top secret AI controlled A/D converter with adaptive filtration capabilities. When you try something like I did, the AI senses the users intent, and being mischievous, it analyses the first recording and then manipulates and applies the adaptive filtration capabilities to the second recording so as to cancel out any differences between the two recordings so that when they are played back they sound identical.
I think it must also possess telepathic mind control capabilities as well, because when I play back Level matched, time synced tracks on the CDP and iPod live, via my main system, switching between the sources using the remote, I am still unable to discern a difference between the sources.
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So what in your estimation are the important ingredients in such a player designed to give maximum sound quality? Seems like you might be saying that running off batteries is going to be better for sound for example.
And look! There's the price argument once again, the one you said I misconstrued last time. Undercutting $15 I would definitely like to see but I'm not going to hold my breath for that.
So should I take it that its no contest on sound quality because of those factors? Or are there other factors which you consider important?
And THAT is what "leveled" the experience. That crappy AD input is no way capable of showing the full capability of an audio signal, it is there just for convenience, voice... stuff that is non-critical. What do you have there, a SigmaTel ADC? With 70-75db SNR and 16kHz maximum bandwidth?
So you started with garbage. Normal that compressed or not latter, it is still garbage.
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It certainly isn't going to hurt
I'm saying that regardless of how much money you spend building a CD player, you will always be able to build a silicon-based system of equal or better performance for less money. I can buy an FM transmitter that takes SD cards for $4.80 shipped off dealextreme.
FM Transmitter, Car FM Transmitter, MP3 FM Transmitter for Sale - DealExtreme
You should take it that it's no contest on sound quality for any given price. It may ultimately be possible to build a CD based system which equals a flash-based system in sound quality, but it's always going to cost more, it will never be as versatile and it will be more prone to failure.
A CD player has a disk carrier, motor drive system, motor speed control, eject system, laser, laser advance and tracking system and laser demodulator and error correction, all of which a flash player can do without at the cost of replacing them with a card socket. The radio in my car has an SD card socket. I have 2 spare car CD players and the best thing I can think of to do with them is generate 50Hz sine waves to drive a turntable that I'd only build as a pastime. You can write data to or strip data out of a flash card fast enough to satisfy a professional HDTV camcorder and that includes the audio. 24/192 stereo is still < 10 megabits/sec.
I'm not saying anything controversial. You may not be able to buy such a device right now, but you will be able to in short order, and you can build one for yourself right now if you care enough. That is to say, I can, but I'd rather play the penny whistle or listen to the system that nobody ever complains about when they come round to visit.
It's possible to take sound quality too seriously. Not sound quality in a Stradivarius IMO, but sound quality in a reproducer definitely.
w
There are products like that on the market, but they also cost a lot of money.
You can build one yourself, that's true. If you use quality parts and do everything right, it will sound better than many "highest end" players (just for completeness, those costing 10000 EUR and above).
It won't be a PC though. A true embedded system with linear power supplies is ideal. Add a good DAC, decent clocking and use I2S or whichever serial format the DAC understands, a proper analog stage and it can really sound exceptional.
I have an ARM based system working with my DAC over I2S running embedded Linux, playing music from the NAS. No switching power supplies, the processor board consumes something between 1 and 2W, so the power can be spent where it's most needed for sound quality (clock, DAC and analog stages). It can do any of the open formats (FLAC, OGG Vorbis, WAV, Wavpack) with amazing results.
But i'd rather not discuss the total cost of the material that goes into such a device. It will be well over wakibaki's prescribed 'less than 1000$'.
The playback path: from system RAM on the embedded device as described above. The serial interface fetches the data from system RAM using DMA and outputs the I2S. The system software takes care of filling the buffers. It can play from USB (disks, sticks, ....) and from the network (but no wireless!). No hiccups, no glitches.
And yes, it's "just" 44100/16 bit. Compares very favorably with SACD playback from devices from the above mentioned price category
You can build one yourself, that's true. If you use quality parts and do everything right, it will sound better than many "highest end" players (just for completeness, those costing 10000 EUR and above).
It won't be a PC though. A true embedded system with linear power supplies is ideal. Add a good DAC, decent clocking and use I2S or whichever serial format the DAC understands, a proper analog stage and it can really sound exceptional.
I have an ARM based system working with my DAC over I2S running embedded Linux, playing music from the NAS. No switching power supplies, the processor board consumes something between 1 and 2W, so the power can be spent where it's most needed for sound quality (clock, DAC and analog stages). It can do any of the open formats (FLAC, OGG Vorbis, WAV, Wavpack) with amazing results.
But i'd rather not discuss the total cost of the material that goes into such a device. It will be well over wakibaki's prescribed 'less than 1000$'.
The playback path: from system RAM on the embedded device as described above. The serial interface fetches the data from system RAM using DMA and outputs the I2S. The system software takes care of filling the buffers. It can play from USB (disks, sticks, ....) and from the network (but no wireless!). No hiccups, no glitches.
And yes, it's "just" 44100/16 bit. Compares very favorably with SACD playback from devices from the above mentioned price category
Who builds CD players these days? I mean from the component parts? I don't know of anyone. So I think this is a little irrelevant, though true. If CD player building (from scratch - laser, optics, motors & servos) were practically possible, it would certainly be more expensive than building an SD player.
Its not lossless so it doesn't count. Plenty of dirt-cheap MP3 stuff around because that's where the volume is.
And when the given price is $15, there's a no-show for the SD lossless solution. So this statement is just as false as your earlier claims.
Yeah, and building a lossless SD card player is fun, I agree. But let's not pretend its anywhere near as cheap a solution as buying a DVD player. You really think the sales volume is there for a lossless SD card player with half decent sound quality under $15? If so, why hasn't it been done yet? The technology to do it has been available for ages - it requires considerably less CPU horsepower than MP3.
That's about as crass a comment I've heard since I left the playground.
I'm talking about the advisability of buying a high-end CD player.
If you want to spend $3000 for the privilege of being able to make the dubious claim 'my sound system is better than yours' for the next few months, feel free.
If you're the kind of person who gets their kicks from dangling the price tag in front of your next acquaintance, oblivious to the fact that all that is running through his head while he makes vaguely approving but essentially non-committal little sounds is, 'How can I get away from this guy?', go ahead.
If you want to listen to music delivered conveniently and to all intents and purposes flawlessly from the point of view of anybody other than a sufferer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, then build a computer-based system or wait for a standalone dedicated jukebox.
w
Do please explain what makes it crass, as I can't see it. From my pov, its just a simple observation of fact.
Well I'm with you 100% if you're saying don't spend a heap of money on a high-end CD player. I'd say buy a cheap DVD to use as a transport and engineer your own DAC if you want good sound at an extremely cost-effective price.
I can think of far better things to do with $3000, so no, no thanks.
Thanks for the advice - I'm not that kind, so its kinda irrelevant.
Have done so, still find a cheap DVD player with outboard ultra-tweaked DAC suits me the best and its the most transparent system I've ever had. YMMV.
To continue the OT, I agree that CRTs are better for PRO use. (I'm in the image biz, too and have done a lot of calibration). But for home? Ha! They were always junk. I have my mother-in-law's old console Maganvox here. Awful. None of the consumer sets ever used the good phosphor sets and they were completely whacked coming from the factory. A Sony XBR was about as close as you could get to "Pro."
I'm no fan of LCD displays, but own a few. Plasma and DLP are the best looking, still. But a decent LCD HCTV is a big step up for the average consumer. /OT
I'm no fan of LCD displays, but own a few. Plasma and DLP are the best looking, still. But a decent LCD HCTV is a big step up for the average consumer. /OT
A few weeks ago a friend came by with an audio/media pc. We listened to it and compared it to my Hifidelio. The HF was better by a good margin. This also was the case with an external CS4397 DAC that was connected to both devices.
We listened to various class T and tube amps. In the end I took one of my last Philips cdplayers that only just had new electrolytic caps. A 22 year old cdplayer... it was also better than the high end mediaplayer pc by a good margin. The HF just was a tad better.
So I think I will continue with the Hifidelio + external DAC. For me it is the best of both worlds. It already has a low jitter clock but it is not connected yet. With the low jitter clock things can only get better.
It does not need virus protection or yearly reinstallations too. All the possibilities the pc offers I do not really need and I don't want a computer screen to be able to play music in my living room.
From what I heard a Squeezebox Duet/Touch is a good choice too when one likes quality in audio playback (without a pc).
We listened to various class T and tube amps. In the end I took one of my last Philips cdplayers that only just had new electrolytic caps. A 22 year old cdplayer... it was also better than the high end mediaplayer pc by a good margin. The HF just was a tad better.
So I think I will continue with the Hifidelio + external DAC. For me it is the best of both worlds. It already has a low jitter clock but it is not connected yet. With the low jitter clock things can only get better.
It does not need virus protection or yearly reinstallations too. All the possibilities the pc offers I do not really need and I don't want a computer screen to be able to play music in my living room.
From what I heard a Squeezebox Duet/Touch is a good choice too when one likes quality in audio playback (without a pc).
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Much as I enjoy arguing with you abraxilito, you're not the only person I'm addressing here. I don't want this to turn into a metaphorical game of ping-pong, popular though I understand the referent to be in China.
I'm starting a new and wide-ranging thread not entirely unrelated to this subject shortly which I hope will contain numerous points with which you can take issue, and where I'm sure your egocentricity will not outshine that of many respondents. If I don't manage to infuriate everybody beyond the point of rejoinder, that is...
w
I'm starting a new and wide-ranging thread not entirely unrelated to this subject shortly which I hope will contain numerous points with which you can take issue, and where I'm sure your egocentricity will not outshine that of many respondents. If I don't manage to infuriate everybody beyond the point of rejoinder, that is...
w
I have no idea of the A/D converter my Macbook has inbuilt. I couldn't find the info either.
However, the Internal audio/MIDI setup App allows for 16, 20 and 24bit samples of the input port I used. It also allows for 44.1, 48 and 96khz sampling rates.
Audacity reports that the files I recorded were 44.1khz 16 bit.
Of course maybe Apple are lying or the actual hardware is flawed in actual use. I used an app I have that measures frequency response and exported the swept wave signal it generates as an Aiff file - equivalent to WAV - and put that file on my iPod. I then connected the iPods headphone jack - not the best I know, but I wanted to be able to control the volume - to the analogue input of the Macbook. I then played the swept wave file on the ipod and had the app measure the response of the system (D/A converter + headphone amp + cable + A/D converter.)
The resulting graph looks like this:
Maybe I am missing something but I think that shows that the A/D converter is probably good enough for the purpose I used it for and is not subject to the limitations you mentioned.
Frequency response doesn't give any idea about SNR, dynamic range and such. Google it for your Mac Pro audio card and what I find is a low-end integrated one, like the ones on any PC motherboard. No dedicated ADC...
Sure I might be wrong since I don't know which Mac Pro you have.
Sure I might be wrong since I don't know which Mac Pro you have.
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As far as I can determine, the onboard audio is provided by a "Intel® High Definition Audio" chipset. Looking it up on the Intel website I get:
While I have no doubt that there are better A/D converters available, the one I used appears to have the requisite bit depth and sampling rate to more than adequately handle the job I used it for. I just made a test recording, using Audacity, at 96khz, 32bit floating.
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