Can Mac/PC compete with High End CDT??


Dear All,

I want to believe (do you?) that the Mac or PC approach can work, at least be good enough. Being that my prime source is analog digital music is secondary but at the same time compulsory for recent and actual recordings.

Reading reviews and opinions floating around online I was curious to hear for myself in a high end system, a sort of A/B singular test was needed; away from commercial pressures and inexperienced ears.

Full of great expectation I head to a fellow audiophile's den, both of us motivated to get to the bottom of this question ourselves.

So we got ourselves organized and ended up with a promising menu: Esoteric P0, Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter, Mac with Amara/iTunes then Kondo Dac with the Esoteric P0 and then Weiss Dac 2 D/A converter using fire wire interface from Mac/Amara/itunes via the Kondo DAC.

All the “virtual music” was obviously uncompressed format.

Preamp Absolare, amp New Audio Frontiers Ref 845 and Acapella Triolon Excalibur and some very good cables.

Being used to the sound of Kondo electronics and Goto horns that furnish my listening room, fed by micro seiki SX8000, CEC TL0x Cd transport at 1st I must say that I was disappointed with the sound that the P0 was delivering via the Weiss Dac.

I will not be long-winded here: this was not good. The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one-dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The resolution of the electronics and speakers told the cruel truth in this 70m² dedicated listening room. No fine-tuning I have ever encountered could solve this even with the widest stretch of imagination.

So the Mac/Amara/iTunes? Okay no gain no pain! Here it was no pain all gain, I mean, it sounded the same including the flaws but with the added advantage of mac based music selection as opposed to cd loading. This seemed promising, made me jump to the conclusion that the culprit was the Weiss DAC, not the fire wire interface.

So in goes the Kondo DAC driven by the P0, okay! I will lack vocabulary here it is truly amazing. My host and I within the 1st seconds looked at each other, not even in the listening seats, we agreed with each other without saying a word! Then we let the CDs play on, simple as that!

We kind of played around here knowing deep down that the next step was the “juge de paix” (for those who don’t master French that is “peace judgment”).

So we wired the Weiss Firewire/spdif interface to the Kondo Dac using the Mac/Almara/iTunes.

As it stands I had spoken to Daniel Weiss (owner/designer of Weiss Audio) a few days before and he explained to me that CD transport and Mac/PC was fundamentally the same thing; delivering 0 and 1 and the interface was just passing those 0s and 1s to the DAC.

So? I may have to repeat myself here : The sound seemed broken, out of pace, lousy trebles, one dimensional bass and very nasal voices.

The Kondo DAC was telling us all about the sources. I walk way from this with knowing that Mac/PC is not ready to replace a CD transport in high end system dedicated to experiencing music and all the emotional treasures that it has in store for us to enjoy.

So what does this mean? I think that in certain preamp/amp speaker combinations the hard disk be it mac or PC may work and certain reviewers will confirm this. However, if that system resolution comes to change, that its goes up the ladder, then the flaws in this approach will become apparent.

It would be advisable to ascertain your future with music and the associated audio equipment before marching towards the immaterial virtual music world.

Well a good friend of mine who hides in the shadows of the Bavarian landscape warned that no hard disk system could compete with the better CD transports, he is perfectly correct!

Tim
soundlistening
Mapman - it was the lead post in this thread that unnerved me a bit given that I just invested a bing chunk of change in the set-up described and also sold my high dollar CD/SACD player...........
Madman?

Freudian slip?

That moniker may fit me better...I might have to change. After all I've dropped a few bucks on this stuff over the last few years.

Oh well, at least I THINK what I hear sounds good......

There was a very active thread here recently where agoner PEttyOfficer vented about how complex modern digital was with all the interfaces, formats, etc. it is hard to deal with. What specs can you trust or even matter? I fear for most layman it can be very hit or miss. I jokingly said Petty should hire a consultant but I was only half joking. Technical knowledge is required to cut to the chase with this stuff. It can be quite hit or miss (and unnessesarily expensive otherwise.
Being always a bit curious when the industry started a new approach ("music servers are better then red book CDs" - reminded me of "Mini-Discs are better than CDs") I compared a Sooloos server in my dCS-System. We feed the Sooloos with nicely cleaned CDs, demagnetisized and ionized by Acoustic Revive units. I have to admit it was one of the first units, they have done some improvement when Sooloos was incorporated by Meridian I heard.

Well it did not sound bad, I wouldn`t say so. From this day on I knew where I had to go. I am using a music server in my living room, for the family and for entertainment but not in my listening room. It depends what usuage one has. Starting from cratch a music server provides lots of nice features and advantages and makes sense. I do not believe anymore the fairy tale that even one of the best CD drives may bring down the quality of music in comparison to a hard disc drive. From my experience it is just the opposite. greetings from Bavaria