Solid State sound

[David Ketley]

Im finding the more you can eliminate any electromechanical devices in the sound path the better things sound? Computers introduce many problems, CD players too.
Im currently investigating going completly solid state with a media player with say a USB stick or a solid state hard drive feeding a good quality DAC. Of couse ripping the music to the highest possible format is advisable.
Any one else gone this direction Im just about to purchase a media player and would welcome suggestions.
Dave

[Hoerninger]

... eliminate any electromechanical devices in the sound path the better things sound? ...

Of couse ripping the music to the highest possible format is advisable.
... and would welcome suggestions.
Dave

I would not expect any differences between playing music from a rotating HD or a SSD. I use a SSD. (- Both can crash .)
For me 44.1 kHz/16 bit from HD sounds better than from a CD Player.
MP3 is a no-go.
____________
Peter

[David Ketley]

Peter thats what I found using the CD to rip the music onto a HD then playing back via a outboard DAC sound better than CD to DAC.
Going one step futher eliminating the HD with one of the new media players with a solid ste drive seems to make it even better.
Dave

[Ducatista47]

The sound quality issue is determined more by the quality of the DAC - especially of the DAC's analog stage - than where the DAC resides. Or whether it is in cahoots with a mechanical transport or not.

The tube analog output of my CD player is better than the analog stage of most stand alone DACs, so it sounds better through the CD player. BTW, there is a nice tube stage available from Welborne Labs that can be grafted onto a digital player. http://www.welbornelabs.com/dto.htm
Wadia uses excellent solid state analog outputs. Basically, you should get what you pay for but with stand alone DACs that is seldom the case.

The one thing I can think of that could determine whether a SS or mechanical transport would sound better is the quality of the disc transport. Good ones are hard to get. I have heard that the Phillips CD transport is the only actual CD unit left in mass production. Everything else is a DVD transport. Some high end (with prices to match) companies make their own transport, I think. If you are clever you can sometimes score a nice Phillips unit out of an old odd piece, like an old player or a call waiting message machine. Older disc machines tended to have nice, real CD transports.

Moral of the story, get a unit with a nice pro Phillips disc transport and you won't need the whole music server thing for any reason other than "convenience" of storage and retrieval. Admittedly old school, I do not find music server systems, iPod included, to be convenient or sonically superior. But to each his own.

Just don't blame SS vs disc media for what substandard players are doing. There is nothing wrong with the bits on a disc. Flash drives have nothing on them. I know you were speaking only to the mechanical part of electromechanical, but I just wanted to put this all out there. I read so much talk about music servers that resemble snake oil about wire, etc. Your initial premise is a nice theory, but the sound depends on the implementation of real world parts (and their quality), not theory. "Computers introduce many problems, CD players too" should read "Computers can introduce many problems, CD players too." To which I will add "Most DACs have analog outputs that usually do degrade the sonic output of the unit." So my answer to your initial sentence is "usually not."

Worrying about transports, jitter, etc. and ignoring DAC analog quality is like worrying about the tires (tyres?) on a car with a blown engine.

Clark

[jcrobso]

As long as the storage medium can supply the needed bit rate it doesn't matter if it's spinning HD or a flashdrive. When you playback a CD for audio the CD spins slower than if your ripping the audio from the CD. This may account for what your hearing, the slower the speed the more minor speed variations maybe apparent.
It would be interesting if a CD had a buffer that it would read into and the play out of.
5 seconds of audio could be buffered and this way the bit stream would all wise be constant.
There is an advantage of flash memory over a HD and that is HD will crash someday.

[Ducatista47]

It would be interesting if a CD had a buffer that it would read into and the play out of.
5 seconds of audio could be buffered and this way the bit stream would all wise be constant.

We had an early Sony Car Discman unit. It was a portable CD player that used either AC or a 12v jack. To defeat jostle & bounce it stored read data and played it back. Like an iPod but way ahead of its time. This was probably around 1990.

It was built like a truck but it died eventually anyway.

Clark

[David Ketley]

I was thinking of getting a Benchmark DAC feeding it from a simple media player like the Western Digital (able to plat just about any digatal format) via a USB stick, a nice simple soloution and no computer or CD player interfering with the digital stream?
Any one else tried this set up?
Dave

[yggdrasil]

If understand your plans right, your plan is:

store music on usb-stick -> directly attach to media player -> optical/coaxial connection -> DAC -> pre-amp

That seems like a setup that has every possibility of working great.

I use a setup like this:

Music server (squeezebox server) -> wireless lan -> Squeezebox -> optical connection -> DAC -> pre-amp

It just works. The Squeezebox pre-fetches quite a lot of data, so e.g. rebooting the wireless lan does not affect playback.

I also use my music server another way (with another media player):

File server -> 100Mbit lan -> media player(Asus O!Play) -> pre-amp

This setup is less satisfactory as a music player for 2 reasons:
1) pre-fetching is single track, so there's a glitch with every new track
2) no search functions besides alphabetical listing of directories/tracks

I have read in a few DAC specifications that there's a degradation in performance when using USB instead of optical/coaxial. This may not be a universal truth, but also not a point to forget.

[Hoerninger]

I was thinking of getting a Benchmark DAC feeding it from a simple media player like the Western Digital (able to plat just about any digatal format) via a USB stick, a nice simple soloution and no computer or CD player interfering with the digital stream?
Any one else tried this set up?
Dave

Simple and straight, why not? USB-space will be no limiting factor.
___________
Peter

[David Ketley]

The Western Digital media players can be fed from just about any source a digital hard drive might give better results.
The drawback is they have to be connected to HDMI Tv to give menue and control but they will play just about anything. Output is SPIF but only optical not sure if thats a problem.
Cost the basic model is well under £100 well worth messing with to try and get a jitter free signal path?
Dave

[richluvsound]

David,



I heard the Olive HD 4 at Guido's .... I was very impressed with the sound qualities .... Too expensive for my blood at present . The touch screen and being able to use an Ipod or I phone as another remote is a brilliant idea ... The new HD 2 for under a grand is nice too ,but no balanced output .

Rich

[House de Kris]

I was thinking of getting a Benchmark DAC feeding it from a simple media player like the Western Digital (able to plat just about any digatal format) via a USB stick, a nice simple soloution and no computer or CD player interfering with the digital stream?
Any one else tried this set up?
Dave

OK, if that is what this is all about, then go for it. I've been a fan of my WD TV HD Player for some time now. Mine has composite video out as well as HDMI, so for simple times, I use a 7" portable DVD player as the dispay being driven by the composite out. No need to turn on the big display just to play music. Plus, after I select the music to play, I close the DVD player so its backlight shuts off to preserve its life.

[David Ketley]

Ive got a portable DVD player I was about to put on ebay thats great news. I thought I was going to get a response saying the result would be rubbish but I just cannot see why with a top quality DAC it should produce some stunning sounds. I will oder a Western Digital media player when Im back of hols from Turkey. I tried a new Chinese model using the same chip but it would not even load but it did have both coax SPIF and Optical.
Dave