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PC-Audio vs. High-end CD Player-GAME OVER

Hi All,
I just auditioned the Wavelength Audio Cosecant DAC on a very nice system at the local dealer. It was run through a Hovland 200 preamp , a Plinius amp and Avalon Eidolon Diamond speakers. This is all in a very well treated, good-sounding room.
It was, in a word spectacular. Beautiful tone, excellent bass, imaging soundstaging, etc. What was really amazing was a sense of space, or ambience that was imparted. We then compared the same CD's (Diana Krall, Jennifer warnes, some jazz), on a Levinson CDP. I'm not saying that the levinson is the last word in players, but it was what he had on the shelf.While it sounded good, it was much more bright, and "constricted".
Control was through an Imac using I-tunes, and the CD's had been nurned using Apple Lossless.
I ordered my Crimson on the spot.

David
deshapiro
hatari
94 posts
 
Questions from an old school, open minded guy:

So how far a run of USB cable do you have. Is there a similar issue as with analogue cables as far as runs go? Do you run an equal cable of firewire to use a dedicated hard drive?

Assuming your CDs in lossless format don't fit on your laptop drive, do you then buy 2 external hard-drives? One for the data, the next for backup?

Do you get an external CD player too? Doesn't the internal one just heat up and make lots of noise when ripping or playing? If someone brings a CD over that you don't want to download, but you just want to play it.

Just curious... If I can control my music from my listening position and have it sound better than my CDP, and have all my collection at my fingertips... this becomes quite compelling.

Thanks - it's interesting to explore this.
phaelon
1,053 posts
 
Hi guys,
For those of you who bought the Cosecant or Crimson, did you do compare the copper and silver units? Is the sonic difference as substantial as the price. I realize that's a tough question to answer for some one else but would still welcome your opinion and some description of the differences.
bigamp
219 posts
 
Hatari-USB is limited to around 15 feet, but you can buy extenders that allow longer cables. I use an Opticis 30 meter fiber optic USB cable that converts USB to fiber optic and back again with no degredation in the signal. That way, I can keep the loud PC out of the room.

Personally, I use a 500 GB drive to hold ripped CDs and back it all up to another 500 GB drive in case of a drive failure. The drives are internal drives. Number/size/external/internal is up to you.

After the CDs are ripped to hard drive, there is no need to play them from a CD drive. The music software, like iTunes, reads the album from hard disk (or memory if you load the album into a ramdisk). So, internal/external CD drive is irrelevant in my opinion. CD drive heat during ripping shouldn't be an issue.

If someone brings over a CD to play, I recommend ripping it first to avoid jitter that is introduced from playing from the CD.
deshapiro OP
177 posts
 
Gordan Rankin recommends having 2 firewire hard-drives, with one acting as backup. The control can also be with a remote that comes with the Mac mini, or Imac, if you use one of those as your control computer. Itunes can act as your archival/control software. It will organize your CD's, and fetch album art automatically. As to the sonics, I will know more in a week or two.

David
tgrisham
1,291 posts
 
David,
Thanks in advance for the help. I have not made the jump to PC music, yet. A couple of questions, if I may...
1. Do you copy music to your ipod for the car?
2. Do you distribute the music to other rooms in the house and do you need an RF remote?
3. Since the HD does all the work do you need a sophisticated computer or would the simplest computer with massive HD space work? Have you tried different computers? It seems that the better the DAC, the better the sound. Is that right?

Thanks again. I like my CDP. My next upgrade will be to a fine DAC in preparation for a conversion to PC.
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