2. digital
  3. 1405364620

Is computer audio a bust?

In recent months, I have had several audio acquaintances return to CDPs claiming improved SQ versus their highly optimized computer transports (SS drives, external power supplies, etc, etc).

I wanted to poll people on their experiences with computer "transports." What variables have had the most impact on sonics? If you bailed on computers, why?

I personally have always believed that the transport, whether its a plastic disc spinner or computer, is as or more important than the dac itself and thus considerable thought and energy is required.

agear
jesusa0
155 posts
 
Well my rig is:

Esoteric UX-1
Yamamoto YDA-01
Leben CS-300 or
First Watt F5 clone
Zu Druid and Zu Method

Instead of the Esoteric I placed a MacBook Pro + external USB PSU + VLink USB SPDIF converter, using Audirvana and Fab Pro Eq, the conclusion was that my setup sounded better with the Esoteric in place.

End of the story: I quit Computer Audio.

Daniel
audiolabyrinth's avatar
audiolabyrinth
4,555 posts
 
@ onhwy61, Hi, I am sorry for my outburst of loosing my patience, however, I believe cables are a important componet in every given system to the point, my cables are the most exspensive part of my system, I have NO regrets, their is no hyperboil with believing that a usb cable will NEVER have the profound sound of a world class balanced interconnect like the Tara Labs Zero Gold with HFX ground station, as a matter of fact, Tara had to down size the interconnect at the terminations to get the interconnect to work with balanced terminations, now, that said, how in the world would they EVER fit a usb termination on this interconnect?, The interconnect's girth is bigger than most speaker cables out there, LOL!
speavler
32 posts
 
Fidelizer opened my eyes with respect to computer audio. JRiver alone didn't do a whole lot for me in terms of sound quality. Running fidelizer made all the difference in the world and encouraged me to go down the computer audio rabbit hole. Now I'm running Audirvana on a mac mini while my cd player is literally sitting by its lonesome in the spare bedroom. Audirvana will soon have it's own file management and will no longer be tethered to itunes. Can't wait.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,341 posts
 
ANyone who has an Amazon Fire TV device already, or thinking of getting one, I am getting very good results from that running Plex ($5 app for Fire TV) to stream same .FLAC files as my current Squeezebox system that I have run happily for several years now.

Amazon Fire TV ($99) is a fairly decent powered, Android computer specialized for streaming high res audio and video. It has toslink out that can run into most any DAC. PLEX connects to PLEX server you run on your computer file server.

An added benefit of PLEX is that you can access your media (video, photos, music) from anywhere with an internet connection. I use an Ipod with good quality earbuds at the local pool for example and sound quality is top notch.

Its all very good stuff. Not a bust by any stretch.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Alex wrote:
"Steve, but I thought you are using one of those third-party off-the-shelf modules in your current products too, thought with improved clocking and power supplies?"

You would be mistaken. All of my interfaces are custom designed by me.

I have modded many CD transports in past years. Some of these became references. None of them hold a candle to my computer audio interfaces. It helps to have 30 years of digital design experience in the computer industry.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
More to discover