The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.

Joe Mac said:
Unless I was stuck in Apple Music I’d totally cut the cables. Cables in plain sight are something I really hate lol.
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Just remember, wireless works great unless you need it. You want to do a quiet listening session to unwind? No problem. You want to do wireless music for a party including your future mother in law? PWBWPWBWPWBWPWBWPWBWTTTTT!!!!!!! Good luck with that!
 
JohnnyCashFan said:
We have the 2i (non Steely Dan model :cool:) and do not plan on upgrading. But we do use a external $200 Schiit dac also. The new convertors in the 3 are supposed to be a slight upgrade from everything I read. But if I had the 2 and wanted a bit more I would look at external dacs (Topping, Schiit, Chord, Denafrips are a few).
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I was trying to see about using my Raspberry Pi or Dragonfly Cobalt DAC with it, but I couldn’t make them work. Unless I’m missing something…lol.
 
JohnnyCashFan said:
We have the 2i (non Steely Dan model :cool:) and do not plan on upgrading. But we do use a external $200 Schiit dac also. The new convertors in the 3 are supposed to be a slight upgrade from everything I read. But if I had the 2 and wanted a bit more I would look at external dacs (Topping, Schiit, Chord, Denafrips are a few).
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I’m really tempted to get a Denafrips one of these days…I want to add an external DAC to my secondary setup as I’m just using the DAC in my receiver now there.
 
MikeH said:
I’m really tempted to get a Denafrips one of these days…I want to add an external DAC to my secondary setup as I’m just using the DAC in my receiver now there.
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I've heard the AresII and it was smooooottttthhhh! Wish they were easier to get, direct order from Singapore only and short supply usually.


brownsugah said:
I was trying to see about using my Raspberry Pi or Dragonfly Cobalt DAC with it, but I couldn’t make them work. Unless I’m missing something…lol.
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hmmm, interesting. Not sure how the Pi works tbh, the Dragonfly is a usb only dac, you may want to touch base with Audioquest cs and see what they say, if there is a way they will know? Maybe something like Loopback might help ? Loopback - Cable-free audio routing for Mac
 
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Mather said:
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Yeah I like this thing, understated. Sits nicely in the front of the media console although to be honest I don't think it really requires any line of sight so I could probably bury it at the back amongst the birds nest of cables, but it looks nicer than the streaming cable box or the Apple tv so I buried them instead.

My wife was impressed with the sound, she could instantly hear the difference between this and the old Spotify. If you want to blow someone's mind with this thing, put on "The Man in The Long Black Coat" by Bob Dylan. It's a great reference track in high res.
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You should see how much of the upgrade is the DAC, and how much is Tidal. See if she'll sit down for some blind A/B tests between Spotify and Tidal all running through the Node.
 
displayname said:
You should see how much of the upgrade is the DAC, and how much is Tidal. See if she'll sit down for some blind A/B tests between Spotify and Tidal all running through the Node.
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I guess that would work but I'd have to only use CD quality tracks from Tidal I guess? Is Spotify even CD quality?
 
Joe Mac said:
With Tidal “HiFi” is CD Quality (16/44) and “Master” is HiRes. I’m guessing that because they won’t get the rights to everything HiRes, that a whole host of what you’re streaming will be CD quality. That’s certainly the case with Qobuz.
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And how much better than 320 is 16/44?
 
Joe Mac said:
320kbps to 1411kbps so on numbers alone almost 5x lol.

The real answer is I’ve always found CDs to sound miles ahead of a Spotify mp3 stream.
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Well this makes sense. Because even the CD quality Tidal tracks are LIGHT YEARS better than Spotify. I'll do a proper A/B today but I don't think I can even compare the two services, I can already tell that Tidal will crush Spotify on any of these. I don't think I'm golden ear but I did a hearing test and I've got hearing that's on average good for someone 20 years younger than me so, it's pretty good, and the difference between Spotify and Tidal isn't even close on the lowest Tidal res.
 
GStephenH said:
My wife's ears could probably discern the difference. My old ears...not so much.
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I think I can tell but only over longer listening periods. Just like stuff with small dynamic ranges (I am looking at you Metallica) can fatigue your ears listening on headphones for longer periods.

If I played shorter snippets back and forth I probably would not be able to tell the difference between a well mastered song at 320 or cd quality.
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
I think I can tell but only over longer listening periods. Just like stuff with small dynamic ranges (I am looking at you Metallica) can fatigue your ears listening on headphones for longer periods.

If I played shorter snippets back and forth I probably would not be able to tell the difference between a well mastered song at 320 or cd quality.
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Yeah it definitely does tend to be more noticeable on longer listens or more dynamic tracks. For more dynamic tracks, like Clasical in particular, 24 bit hi res begins to make more of a difference too because I think it gives an extra 30-40db to the dynamic range as opposed to 16 bit. That said 16 bit is around 100db in dynamic range which is hardly constricting outside of maybe recording an orchestra.
 
Joe Mac said:
Yeah it definitely does tend to be more noticeable on longer listens or more dynamic tracks. For more dynamic tracks, like Clasical in particular, 24 bit hi res begins to make more of a difference too because I think it gives an extra 30-40db to the dynamic range as opposed to 16 bit. That said 16 bit is around 100db in dynamic range which is hardly constricting outside of maybe recording an orchestra.
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Oh the MQA tracks are night and day. All that digital harshness is gone, the range and the sustain and dynamics on things like vocals and acoustic guitars and horns are just light years better than than the lower res.
 
Mather said:
Oh the MQA tracks are night and day. All that digital harshness is gone, the range and the sustain and dynamics on things like vocals and acoustic guitars and horns are just light years better than than the lower res.
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Yeah on top of the bits they also have a higher sample rate too which I think, and this is a very rudimentary understanding, refers to the amount of samples per second. So a 24/192 would have 192 audio samples per second and thus be a truer representation of the original than a 16/44.1 cd which would have 44.1 per second. Not sure how a 320kbps mp3 stacks up there.

It seems to be a similar concept to refresh rate in digital video?

Any professionals please feel free to correct or better explain what I’ve got from very rudimentary internet research down the years…
 
Joe Mac said:
Yeah on top of the bits they also have a higher sample rate too which I think, and this is a very rudimentary understanding, refers to the amount of samples per second. So a 24/192 would have 192 audio samples per second and thus be a truer representation of the original than a 16/44.1 cd which would have 44.1 per second. Not sure how a 320kbps mp3 stacks up there.

It seems to be a similar concept to refresh rate in digital video?

Any professionals please feel free to correct or better explain what I’ve got from very rudimentary internet research down the years…
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It's actually in khz, so 192,000 samples per second vs 44100 samples per second.

The number of bits determines the precision with which each sample is captured.
 
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