Interesting topic this one.... I think that an EAC FLAC Rip should be no worse than the original CD and if the Rip is more accurate than a standalone CD player then in theory it could sound better, however there are 2 other issues to consider:
1) modern high end CD players/transports go to greatlengths to ensure the disc is read accurately. 2) as already stated jitter can cause problems on the SB or DC to DAC interface I have spent many months experimenting with external DACs. Recently I tried a Linn Numerik (10 years old and 20bit 8 x oversampling) and a Bel Canto DAC 2 (192KHz 24-bit upsampler). With the SB3 the Linn seemed to give a more musical sound (though softer and less defined in the bass) than the Bel Canto, which sounded flat,lifeless and slightly harsh. This went against conventional wisdom as reviews and other users would have me believe the Bel Canto should be a technically superior DAC. I discussed this with my favourite Hi-Fi dealer and he lent me 2 CD transports to try at home, one being an Audio Synthesis Transcend and the other a Linn Karik, being the preferred partner for the Numerik DAC. Using the Transcend with the Bel Canto the improvement over the SB3 was amazing, bass firmed and tightened and a new musicality injected into the midrange compared to the SB3. Sudddenly the Bel Canto was performing as it should do. When I tried the Linn combination again there was an improvement although in this case the bass was somewhat excessive and this combo sounded a little bright when compared to the Bel Canto/Transcend. (As a result of these tests I bought the Transcend which I now use with the Bel Canto for serious listening although the SB3 is still very much in regular use for all its other marvellous capabilites....) The common factor that makes CD transports better than the SB3 seems to be jitter reduction. Both Audio Aynthesis and Linn use proprietary systems to reduce jitter caused by clock recovery on the SP/dif interface between the CD transport and the DAC whereas the SB3 uses the unmodified interface. In the case of the Linn this is by adding a second clock interface to clock the transport from the DAC and in the case of the Audio Synthesis by replacing SP/dif with a modified interface they call c-code. (I'm not sure how they do this but it works effectively with the Bel Canto, but not with the Numerik where SP/dif has to be selected). The interesting thing is that if the Audio Synthesis is switched back to SP/dif mode and used with the Bel Canto the resulting sound is much closer to the less than satisfactory result using the SB3. So to answer the original question my conclusion is that CD sounds better than the SB3 in my system but it is highly dependent on what you are comparing. When I compare CD and FLAC from the SB3 through the same DAC using the unmodified SP/dif interface the difference is very small and if you compare a DAC that is "sympathetic" to the limitations of the SB3 it can quite possibly sound better than a reasonably good budget CD player (Arcam Alpha or equivanent) The limitation of the Squeezebox is always going to be its poorer handling of jitter on the interface (or the limitations of the internal DAC if that is what you are using). I haven't heard the Transporter yet but from what I have read I would expect this to compare well with mid to high range CD players whether using FLAC encoding or uncompressed WAV files (which incidentally I can't tell the differnce between on the SB3). -- adrianh1960 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ adrianh1960's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5421 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31203 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
