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Want to buy Ayre C-5xeMP but...

I have had the Ayre in my system for 4 days and at first I found it to be better than my CDP but after extended listening I am to the point where I don't want to let it go.

My only concern is should I go with a DAC and a server instead?

I do not want to hear a hard drive or the fan of a computer and my display is a DLP and has an annoying fan also, so I never have them on while critical listening. Even the faint noise coming out of the DVR is too much.

I know that music servers are the future of audio but I don't mind changing the CD's. If I want convenience I just burn discs with the songs that I am listening to most of the time and when my mood changes I can throw that one out and burn a new one.

I have thousands of songs on my computer and shuffling through them is great but in my system I am all about sound not convenience.

Are CD's dead and upgrading my CDP a waist of money?

2 channel part of the system consists of..

Krell Evo 707
Krell Evo 400 mono's
B&W 800D's
Meridian G08
Ps Audio PPP
Shunyata Python CX pc's
relentless
herman
2,252 posts
 
Depends on what you mean by "extra conversion." I don't see where taking the data and turning it into a serial stream that is compatible with ethernet devices is fundamentally different than taking the same data and turning it into a stream compatible with USB devices. Both have to convert the data. In either case the data arrives intact so I don't see the concern.

Firewire will do 24/192 and USB 2.0 is capable of doing 24/192 although I'm pretty sure you need special drivers to do the latter. Too lazy to look that up and confirm the "pretty sure" at the moment.
relentless OP
36 posts
 
I have read this...."A traditional transport device must convert the stream to a different format to accommodate Toslink, SPDif, or USB, and then the DAC converts it back to I2S to send to the DAC chip".

Does this conversion happen in the CD Player anyway?
herman
2,252 posts
 
Yes

No matter how it is done at the end of the line is a digital to analog chip which almost always is designed to accept a serial protocol called I2S. Whether the transport is in the same box or we use an external transport or we use a computer at some point there is a receiver chip which takes whatever it is being fed and converts it to I2S for the DAC chip. That "whatever" could be ethernet, Toslink, SPDIF, USB, Firewire, etc.
sarcher30
596 posts
 
From what I've read the problem with synchronous usb is it has to reclock the signal from the computer. Asynchronous usb apparently solves this problem. As of now the Wavelength Audio usb dacs and the new Ayre usb dac are the only ones that use asynchronous usb. Also Herman is right that usb 2 does support 24/192 data but there are no dacs that take advantage of that yet. Wavelength is working on it and will probably have it soon.

Any time you use a outboard dac the signal must be converted and reclocked with the exception of the asynchonous usb and dacs that can accept a I2S connection. As for firewire I'm not sure if it needs to reclock or not. Firewire does support 24/192 though. The Linn DS players have the dac inside and take the data straight from a buffer and don't need to reclock the signal. This is similar to a one box CD player. I am not a expert but this is how I understand it from what I have read online.

IMO using your own ears to decide what sounds best to you is more important a factor than any one technology.

Cheers,
Sean
sarcher30
596 posts
 
I want to add that spidf, toslink, and synchronous usb conversion create more jitter than the other alternatives.
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