Which personal confuser for ultra high end audio, MAC, PC, notebook, tablet or desktop?

Dlcockrum > There is so much snarkiness and ridicule on this forum by the eternally cognitively cynical

Blindjim > U R welcome.
It took a while for me to overlook ‘drive by posting’, and or barbs thrown on the web that contain no real consideration of others.

Thread posts, blogs, emails, texts, etc., seldom intimate everything intentioned unless it is plainly negative. I will ask for clarity or I will simply refuse to acknowledge them as they are not deserving of a thoughtful reply. Usually.

We only have the capacity for how we will receive what others and for that matter, life hands us. Nothing more. React, respond, or ignore it. Nothing here is life or death.

Dlcockrum > posters that exceed reasonable limits of tolerance regarding misinformation, dishonesty, or stupidity

Blindjim > well…. Ignorance and dishonesty can be fixed. But you just can’t fix stupid. So, why try?


marktomaras
> ….back to audio obsessions...

Blindjim > … and the voice of reason beckons us.


Jond > the Lightning DS setup process takes you through that and is available for both IOS and Android

Blindjim > Check. Kind of figured that one out too. Cool. THX!!


Almarg > good to see you back here lately. Your posts are always witty and enjoyable.

Blindjim > Thanks! tell all your friends.;-((

Yeah. Been pretty ill. About out of the woods now hopefully. Life as well delivered some quite deleterious and definitely unexpected adverse things which demanded my immediate and undivided attention on several fronts.

Al on the flip side, if the approach here is for learning and we remain little fish in a big pond, mostly, all will be well and all of our systems will benefit from this effort and from the experiences of others as they may pertain to something of use to ourselves, and our various audio concerns.

I feel I’m on the right wavelength with your inferences. Thanks for the thread links. They’re a big help. I’ll read ‘em asap.

One last note on shielding per se, having been a former gear head racer kind of guy, there are split hoses in varying colors, for the more fashion minded, which can slip onto and over different wires like OEM power cords for CATV boxes, CAT cables, USB, etc. in autoland, their application is for the electrical system where heat could damage wires insulation or where one wishes to add them like on spark plug wires.

The wire slip covers are cheap. easy to trim. Easy enough to apply. And if one wants, another ‘coat’ of sorts can usually be affixed to the wire being inserted into one of these ‘conduit’s.

I’ve been affixing these plastic fantastics onto all the aforementioned as often as possible. Even onto ICs which obviously have no shielding in place.

Although I’ve not spent time or employed any scientific theorem I’m not picking up any local TV or radio stations. Nothing whines in my listening room but me being desirous of all the things made up of too much ‘unobtainium’ or ‘‘can’taffordium’, I’d love to own. Or think I would love to own.

Or the stuff I did own and did not like.

Gee. I feel all warm and fuzzy now. A lil’ AC DC ought to fix that!

certainly there is the Schiit Audio Yggdrasil DAC if one only needs PCM support.

is there a DAC that supports all of the current popular audio formats without conversion that could be an option here that excells in SQ too?

I have used a high-end Dell laptop running Windows10 Pro for streaming Tidal, recording my CDs to AIFF files with iTunes and to run Roon.

The key things with a computer are 1) the quality of the USB port and 2) having more memory, the speed of the processor is not as important as the amount of RAM.

Windows requires that you install a USB driver from the DAC manufacturer and Windows does not support DSD, only PCM and only up to 192kHz/24 bit.  I believe that most modern versions of the MacOS support USB, so no manufacturer supplied drivers are needed.

I have never had personal experience using a Mac to do my digital audio, so I can't say for sure if the USB port is of good quality, I suspect it is, as Mac's seem to be well engineered and not cheap to purchase.

If your USB port isn't the best, you can purchase an outboard device (like the Schitt Wyrd device) to isolate the USB ground and reduce the noise.

ejr1953 > If your USB port isn't the best

blindjim > sorry for the late reply. many thanks for the input.
Like yourself, I’m a Personal confuser only to this point user. I use DB Power amp to rip discs with. Another app for high def disc rips.

Every box gets a shot of added RAM right after it lands here.

My Win 7 box oddly is not my ‘go to’ PC. I use and strongly rely on my XP machine as my daily driver. The issue is XP.. is dead. Now even its apps are being dropped from support across the digital landscape from many if not all third party app makers. Crap.

A new machine is needed and this time at least, I will be getting an Apple something or other. Ibook or imac. Not sure which way to go there.

Online resources say the Retna’ versions have a lot of noise from its display refresh. rates Super.

Everybody has something bad I guess. Like politics we pick from the lesser of the evils.

If very good gear is used, very good results will occur.

I ran a few DACs via USB using very cheap USB wires. Enjoyed the sound immensely. Never did I notice any noisey junk, jitter or other non musical garbage during listening sessions.

Now it is said USB has issues! Beware! USB protocol itself induces or exasserbates jitter!! OMG. Well, get the data to the dAC by another interface! Or do the best you can to diminish the USB gremlins.

There is a thingy called a Jitterbug I think which goes for $49 and it is supposed to help de-jitterize somewhat or entirely such noise off the upstream (?) USB connection just plug it into a port! Violin!

What I find curious here is I’ve been using either USB directly, (briefly) and a Lynx AES 16 xpress sound card to feed my DAC. Using USB was so brief I can’t properly say if or how much noise was actually there from PC to DAC just off my memory.

Additionally and prior to the Lynx connection via AES, I got an early Hiface USB stick and used that for a good while longer. It sounded fine enough as I recall..

The Lynx SC was indeed the better path of these 3 choices.

So if not in practice, in philosophy I tend to believe getting info or data into a DAC be means other than USB is a good thing.

Several reports from those definitely in the know, Rankin, PS Audio’ Ted Smith, and more, say USB is littered with issues… yet the ‘Ethernet conduit’ has greater advantages.

USB does and will work IF the ancillary deleterious concerns of USB are addressed. Some new devices are doing exactly this, attending to the USB issues to clean it up.

My EXP has shown me so far, the better a signal I can get into the DAC, the better the audio will be. So which ever ‘bridging device’ one chooses to use, the better off you will wind up. BNC is better, as is AES, even TOS optical eliminates jitter from USB grounding concerns though many recent streaming and DACs are formally attending to this in their designs and constructs. .

Looks like a De-confuser is needed here. I'm using a MAC Mini with the above mentioned signal cleaners, reconstruction, ground plane devises, etc. I will say the sound is very good. A Music Server with Ethernet in would be the next step up.

Each brand of Music Server or Streamer requires their own OS and supporting accessories.
I use a separate DAC for DSD only, and a PCM DAC for most commonly recorded music. The ones that do both are usually very expensive, proprietary, and like most thing digital, become superseded or obsolete in some way.

My budget doesn't permit the purchase of all the stuff I want for an upgrade. For those that do, I would say stick to one or two manufacturers who are advancing in the field, and who are not too esoteric and exclusionary in their approach.