cepheid Wrote: > Bitrate Limiting is and was disabled. AFAIK it also applies only when > transcoding to mp3, anyway. But regardless, it's disabled. > > > The conversion would be to AIFF rather than WAV (I'm on a Mac), but I > see your point. I'll give it a try. It's only about twice the > bandwidth so it shouldn't kill the network... though, why would this > make a difference? You say that FLAC->WAV sounds better than plain > FLAC, but since both are lossless formats, what could cause the > difference in sound? > > > I can hook up the SB3 to a separate digital input simultaneously... any > reason to use the same digital input, rather than a different one? Of > course, using the SB3 digital outputs means I'm using the receiver DAC, > not the SB3 DAC. Given that my receiver isn't exactly top-end, the SB3 > DAC should be superior, so shouldn't it also provide better sound than > using the digital outputs and the receiver DAC? > > > All items connected to the receiver are in the same cabinet, so the > longest audio cable is 6 feet, which is the SB3's analog RCA cable. I > only have 3 things hooked up to the receiver: the DVD player (digital > optical), the SB3 (analog), and my HDTV cable box (digital optical). > Both of the digital optical cables are 3 feet long. > > > I'll certainly give that a shot, although the receiver is fairly new so > the gold-plated analog contacts should still be reasonably clean. But > it's an easy thing to do. > > I suspect that using the digital outputs of the SB3 will "fix" the > problem, though I can't really believe that my receiver's DAC would be > better than the SB3's DAC... that just seems silly. And yet, the only > other thing that I can see affecting the sound quality on the SB3 but > NOT on the CD would be the Smart Gain, but since Sound Check in iTunes > doesn't muddy the sound, it seems unlikely that the SB3 Smart Gain > would be the culprit, either. > > Thanks for the advice, I'll give those a shot... if you have other > insight, please let me know! Or, if anyone else out there has > experienced this same issue with a similar setup, please post!
The first step is to find out why it is DIFFERENT. Forget about what is "best", and what DAC must be best, and so on, for the moment! Two different inputs are not guaranteed to be identical. Try different ones, but also try swapping inputs and cables. Yes, FLAC should be just as good as WAV, but for some reason it isn't with my server and firmware. Upgrades might alter this. I don't know what the reason is, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility. -- P Floding ------------------------------------------------------------------------ P Floding's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2932 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22635 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
