Pvor123 wrote: > Hi, > > I have the following set up: > > Spotify Premium stream > Touch > SPDIF optical output > MF VLINk-II > MF pre+power > > Spotify streams at 320kbps, with a sample I'm presuming of 44.1/16bit. > > Listening to a Spotify stream versus CD, I'd estimate there's a 10% > difference in sound quality, specifically clarity. > > I've tried a few Spotify tracks (random) to rule out one off ripping > issues. > > I'm guessing that there's nothing that I can do to further improve the > setup, other than using a different sound source, because the MF DAC > auto up-samples to 96/192 and I'm using an optical cable to eliminate > noise. I've read about triode Enhanced Digital Output software > modification, but I'm presuming this wont make any difference as the > source is only 44.1/16. > > What do I know is the MF DAC is a big improvement on the Touch DAC > (which already was pretty good) and would strongly recommend this > upgrade. > > Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on my assumptions (ie are > they right/wrong) and possible upgrade paths from here. > > The main thing is that I'm spoilt by my high end hi-Fi setup, especially > from CD and I'm suspecting that I either rip my own CD collection to > lossless or continue with the convenience of Spotify accepting the > trade-off in quality. > > Many thanks.
You are correct that these spotify tracks are 16/44.1 and nothing about upsampling or using triode's EDO (for 24/192 playback) should improve your sound quality. Triode's EDO shouldn't help you, but I have seen posts suggesting that the EDO app improves sound quality even on 16/44.1 files. My personal opinion is that this "improvement" is likely a placebo effect. Spotify and MOG, etc. are nice for listening to things you don't own, etc. but ultimately things I care about I own on CD and then I rip those CDs to FLAC (using dbpoweramp) for use in my home system. For my portable devices, I create a mirror of mp3 files from the FLAC. But my desire to own the music is not as much related to 320mp3 vs lossless (because for most normal music, I can't ABX a high bitrate lossy file from a lossless in a double-blind test), but because I prefer to own and not rent my music. On Spotify and MOG things appear and then are removed often. Whether the album I had bookmarked will still be there 4 years from now is a crapshoot. And I own hundreds of CDs that I quite enjoy that haven't been available for purchase for years. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ garym's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17325 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98181 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
