Thank you for your post Alfalfa You are of course entitled to your view and accordingly I value it even if I respectfully cannot agree with most of what you say. Dynamic compression occurs but far less than you would think, particularly on non pop recordings eg Jazz , Classical.
The 2L comparative files you list are excellent reference points and provided you have a high res system are interesting. My system cannot really pick the difference between 24/48 and 24/96 FLAC - but it is fairly modest. Musical but modest. I don't have capacity for the higher res to either be played back or heard at this time. Having said that I have heard the HRX high res files played via a MAC/Lynx/AES/ Berkerley DAC and they are very, very good indeed. But then again so was the rest of the system (about $70,000 worth) so the red book wasn't exactly shabby either.... I don't think anyone is against high res music (48/96 and above) - I think what is being said is that it is largely irrelevant at the moment and likely to remain so for some time, the commercial realities being what they are. Besides many, many great performances cannot be repeated for modern mastering so that I am afraid is that. Should we not value them because they are 16/44 only? Furthermore, after hearing some truly high end systems (between $100,000 - $500,000), I would say there is plenty of info on red book. It gets mighty close to top analogue systems (which have fair less freq extension but are more pleasing, at least to my ears) of the same caliber. I think perhaps you might like to read abit more of Dan Lavry's white papers on output stages. 90% of DAC's are crippled by the cheap and nasty implementation of Op Amp's. Nothing wrong with them if they are done right. I would say that no one design of DAC chip is clearly superior to another - rather it is the implementation of the DAC that is key. The humble NOS Phillips chips, correctly implemented (Zanden,47 Labs/Altmann) can sound stunning. The best oversampling ditto. Indeed the Transporter is open to criticism in this area and why most modders focus on tidying up the output stage eg a tube buffer (Modwright) or JFET. I guess without trying to be provocative I would suggest if you are interested in truly high res beyond 24/96 then you best go the pc audio way - the best of which at the moment are the MAC/Lynx (AES)/Berkerley or Lavry 924. Incidentally I have built a number of pc based systems with various high end cards for transport duties to various dac's and I must say that they can sound very very good indeed. With Kind Regards tricka -- tricka Transporter +/- Lavry DA 10 - LFD Zero - Harbeth C7 es3's "Harbethed" and lovin it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tricka's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11614 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57631 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
