SoftwireEngineer wrote: > Ralph - the term "audible" is subjective. I agree, I am sort of > obsessed with jitter. But I have not spent much on this issue and > probably lesser than you. > I buy things used and sell them if I dont hear a difference I sell them > without much loss. > Music is about things happening within a time span. Any time-domain > anomalies will be noted by people with keen hearing. I have friends who > can identify chords even in crappy systems or computer pitch corrections > in songs. > Right now, my focus is to create a minimalist system that can recreate > live music. For eg, when I got out of the parking lot to get to the > steam trains here in Jamestown, CA, I could immediately identify the > live band playing in the station although amplified. This is surely not > the case with our audio systems, we can tell it is a stereo, One of the > reasons could be the volume, but I feel it is mostly the transient > response or dynamic range performance. > This is the reason I am avoiding DACs/preamps in my system. They all > seem to add some coloration. My direct digital system (either the TACT > or even the Panasonic) are very transparent. If I can hear the switching > of the power supply of my SBT to the stock one, it could only be jitter > (as I feed digital output to my amp). > My point again is - there are reasons people buy very high-priced > systems (that I will never (I think) buy a dCS is because I feel I know > the technology involved and probably not worth the money). I think I can > "tune" my system without spending that much. But I will try to > understand what design issues they are addressing in these systems and > replicate them in my system.
This may be stating the obvious but both the TACT and the Panasonic that you speak of contain internal DACs and preamps, it's just that both of them do not require separate external DACs and preamps. So from a minimalist perspective these units "better" than separate components but make no mistake: the signal is still being processed with the same number of stages whether or not one is using an all in one devices or separate devices. For a streaming Squeezebox system the process goes like this: Digital audio files on hard drive -> sent via Wifi or Ethernet to Squeezebox device -> SB device converts digital audio file to PCM data -> PCM data sent to DAC -> DAC converts PCM data to analog audio signal -> analog audio signal sent to preamp (for volume control) -> preamp sends analog audio signal to power amp -> power amp converts analog audio signal to electrical signal -> electrical signal is send to speakers The only steps in this chain which may vary is "analog audio signal sent to preamp (for volume control) -> preamp sends analog audio signal to power amp" since these steps can be bypassed by using digital volume control and sending the output of the DAC directly to the power amp otherwise it make no difference whether or not these steps are performed by one device (Squeezebox Boom) or many devices since the digital audio file must be converted to an analog signal somewhere along the way in order for we humans to hear it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96407 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
