stop-spinning wrote: > I thought I would post this because I was shocked at just how good the > old SB Duet sounds as a Transport! > > I was listening to Radio Paradise last night and enjoyed the open > musical sound from the SB Duet. As I was listening I thought, lets see > if there is a RP app for my iPhone 4S, there was, so I proceeded to > download and install it, then put the iPhone into its Onkyo ND-S1 dock > which takes the digital feed from the iPhone allowing you to use an > external DAC - I thought (using grey matter instead of ears) that the > iPhone dock with high precision clock from the Onkyo would sound > better. > > However I could not relax to RP via the iPhone/Onkyo, it was dryer and > less open - my brain would not accept this - it should be technically > superior. But when I swapped the digital spdif cable from the Onkyo to > the SB Duet is was plainly obvious that the Duet was far superior in > every respect. > > Yes I took the time to make sure the RP app was streaming as it's > highest quality (you can choose) - however the SB Duet was plainly > better. > > I understand from this community that the Touch is better still - > however bear in mind that I only want the SB as a transport and I am not > interested in hi-res recordings. Whatever the parameters, my ears do not > lie to me, the SB Duet is a musical device as a Transport at least! > > Yes I know the experience is rather limited using just RP - interesting > to me nevertheless. I wonder if anyone else here has underestimated the > SB Duet?
You may have compared apples to oranges is the format from the RP app and an RP station tuned in by lms/squeezebox the same ? and it migth be some server transcoding involved . To compare iPhone + onkyo dock vs squeezbox reciever you migth want to try a local lossles file and make sure that that the volume levels are the same. But it may actually be so that you discovered that the squeezebox has a better RP implementation than typical phone apps , maybe the phone is using a lower bitrate . That i would understand as you are supposed to be on the bus or commuter train listening ,rather than plug it in to your posh hifi :) But you are right about that the receiver is an underrated digital transport and so are many other digital transports . The persons who usually "rate" these things are audiophiles and you can probably gues where i'm going with this ;) I have used SB3 and is using Touch as a digital transport ,sounds fine to me in my system (in fact identical to any other reasonably good transport i ever tried ) . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97753 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
