2. digital
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How to get into high end digital? (Feeding a DAC)

I am looking primarily at the Schitt Yggdrasil or the Topping D90.
  • How does one feed those?
  • I am assuming any sort of CD transport would output the bit stream?
  • or… they get saved to file and played from some media player into the DACs.

Some example of what is commonly done would be great.

The system currently consists of:
  • TT —> Audio Research PH2
  • An old Nakamichi 5 disk CD player
  • TV
  • Audible Illusions line stage (New tunes on the way, but it still sound OK to me with the old tube in it)
  • Prima Luna (with GoldenLion and TS KT-120 one the way… and I might I’ll get the VTL mono blocks 100w/ch serviced)
  • Vandy 2C and Vandy sub

I also have a Home Theatre pre, which is Roon capable, on the way… So that maybe does some of this for me as well? 

But to be totally honest, the digital side is a bit of mystery to me.
I have always thought we plug in a CD player and the signal comes out. (Maybe with some nuance in DACs, clock jitter, and filtering to separate the higher end from the lower end products.)
128x128holmz
holmz's avatar
holmz OP
2,328 posts
 
Find a local audiophile or dealer who has achieved "something" with digital and learn from them.

Good one…
  • There are no dealers near by.
  • The one that I am most familiar with (In SoCal) has the Merging+.
https://nadac.merging.com/product/merging-player

Hence I am here… and going slowly trying to come up with a sensible plan.
invalid
1,102 posts
 
Pure digital is totally accurate but not everyone's cup of tea. We are influenced by our past


Not true nothing in audio is totally accurate. Solid state has distortion also, it's just not very pleasant to the ears.


pedroeb
493 posts
 
I'm sure by now we all understand that "Digital is all zeros and ones".

As we were advised all those years ago, "oils ain't oils".

Getting those bits off the medium and into a perfect electrical stream without contamination is the real issue and it ain't necessarily that easy to achieve.

Converting an electrical signal to optical and then back to optical just adds additional complexity that doesn't seem to have any benefits. 
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holmz's avatar
holmz OP
2,328 posts
 
The op asked how to get into digital. Easy USB. Maybe a USB isolator. That eliminates virtually every issue no matter what audiophiles may convince themselves of.
Does this infer a NAS playing/buffering into DAC?
Or
Does it also infer some CD player going in in real-time?
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