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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2011 22:28:28 GMT
BTW, this weekend I had the Asus Xonar D2X in the PC to compare it to 02 once more and I prefer the 02, the difference is not night and day in fact it is quite sublte but it is there. Maybe the 02's output is a tad hotter, no idea but everytime I listened to both for a while I ended using the Musiland even though it is supposed to be an inferior and cheaper sound card. Javier Are you talking about Analogue Out, or SPDIF Out ? Alex P.S. Preferences in software players will also come into this, as will the rest of the system, and even more importantly, personal preference.
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Nov 6, 2011 22:39:53 GMT
BTW, this weekend I had the Asus Xonar D2X in the PC to compare it to 02 once more and I prefer the 02, the difference is not night and day in fact it is quite sublte but it is there. Maybe the 02's output is a tad hotter, no idea but everytime I listened to both for a while I ended using the Musiland even though it is supposed to be an inferior and cheaper sound card. I expect you've mentioned this somewhere, but into what are you feeding the output of the 02, i.e., do you have a separate HP amp? (I ask because I'm using the much-maligned headphone output of the 02, driving 150ohm Sennheiser HD565 Ovations, and it sounds fine: I rarely bother to connect up a separate HP amp.) EDIT: I see Alex has had the same thought as me, just couched in different terms!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2011 23:35:08 GMT
I was using analogue out into the CHAmp and using eithr AKG K601 or K501. Neither the 02 nor D2X can drive the 501s half as nice as the CHAmp (100 Ohm, 5x gain, full bandwidth, dc coupled and LM4562s in the Voltage Gain/Servo role). I don't have any external SPDIF DAC. Player was Foobar using ASIO output and material ranged from plain 16/44.1 WAV to SACD ISOs decoded directly to 176.4KHz PCM with the latest plugin with all sort of Hi Res FLACs in between.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 0:16:38 GMT
I was using analogue out into the CHAmp and using eithr AKG K601 or K501. Neither the 02 nor D2X can drive the 501s half as nice as the CHAmp (100 Ohm, 5x gain, full bandwidth, dc coupled and LM4562s in the Voltage Gain/Servo role). I don't have any external SPDIF DAC. Player was Foobar using ASIO output and material ranged from plain 16/44.1 WAV to SACD ISOs decoded directly to 176.4KHz PCM with the latest plugin with all sort of Hi Res FLACs in between. Javier Despite the manufacturers claims, few soundcards do a great job driving headphones directly, and are far better lightly loaded using a quality HA. Those are also the settings that I would have used with those headphones, IF I was to use an I.C. based headphone amplifier. However, many prefer the sound of a high quality discrete based HA over even those using I.C.s like the LM4562/LME49720 series, as in this excellent design by Frans. At a recent GTG, we started off playing with Foobar then changed to cPlay.None of the 5 present felt the need to change back to Foobar, and most clearly preferred cPlay. One of those present is now loving cPlay driving his Stax Headphones with a Stax transformer driven by a Class A HA/ preamp using 10 ohm output resistors presently. J.K. prefers jPlay over Foobar as he recently posted. I found jPlay and cPlay quite similar sounding, , but jPlay costs >$100 , so I can live with it's poor interface! As I said previously, personal preference is the key issue here. Hell, some people even prefer music with high inherent Jitter. Alex
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 9:20:06 GMT
Alex,
I was comparing two soundcards using exactly the same system so the cards themselves were the only variable. I think that is the best way to be as fair as possible and not favour one over the other.
At no moment were the cards used to drive the headphones directly, as I said in my previous post they were connected using their analogue line out to the external amplifier, in my case it was Frans' design.
Indeed it is true that some would prefer a discrete class A amplifier but I wasn't trying to compare headphone amps nor evaluating the CHAmp nor defending one topology over another, I was only comaping my two soundcards.
I think I already told you why I don't like cPlay besides its clunky interface and it is most probably for the same reason you do like it. This reason being the one that makes it sound so different to Foobar's default configuration and that would be forced upsampling. cPlay will always resample to the selected value under preferences. If you are using an upsampling DAC like the XDAC-3, this most probably won't matter because the signal will get upsampled anyway as soon as it hits the ASRC chip inside the DAC and then oversampled by the Burr Brown PCM17xx chip. Don't know if your other DACs do the same though. None of my soundcards imposes ASRC so I prefer to leave the signal as unprocessed as possible (KISS?) with only the unavoidable BB PCM179x chip oversampling applied, that is also the same reason I use ASIO or WASAPI instead of DS (Directsound).
If you really wanted to to compare cPlay and Foobar, in a true "apples to apples" way, it would be as simple as installing the SOX resampler plugin (uses IDENTICAL algorithm to the one cPlay uses), configure it identically to the one in cPlay and then play something. Once this is done I'm quite sure you'll find the differences between them are greatly reduced.
Still, to each his own.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 10:04:19 GMT
Javier Quite a bit of the material played was 24/96 and I imagine that David's PC was set for that too, as mine was. Irrespective, we preferred cPlay over Foobar, just as J.K . has found jPlay far more revealing too. I would recommend that interested people try John's suggestion and DL the trial version of jPlay and decide for themselves. As far as comparing soundcards via analogue goes, again the preference would be very dependent on the actual HA used and also how it combined with the headphones in use. Something else that isn't being taken into account here, is the absolute quality and source of the material used.Many PC rips are sub standard compared to that heard from even a medium priced CD player, which makes it even harder to judge the quality of the components used. My main DAC is the SC DAC, and no, it doesn't upsample like the X-DAC V3 does. It was in use for much of that listening session, and again last Sunday in a rerun with Allan's B3 at my place through speakers. Still, in the end, it all comes down to personal preference. Alex
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 12:19:55 GMT
Alex,
If you re read my statement you'll see I didn't say one card was (objectively) better than the other but rather that I prefered (subjectively) one over the other (in my system).
If anyone wants to spend 100$ in a media player, please be my guest. I won't say anything against it. If you feel there is a positive difference go ahead, just as with boutique interconnect cables, CD demagnetizers or any other SQ enhancing gadget. Some swear by them other don't just like millions have felt the presence of God in their lives at one point yet there are also many atheists with a very different opinion, so one's perceptions must not make things objectively true after all IMHO.
Along the same lines, if you believe anything that is not ripped the way you want does not have quality enough to show the differences between two soundcards, again, is an opinion (to be a fact there should be 100% consensus) I respect though, obviously, don't share.
I tend to pick a soundcard for my system and not the other way arround, and the souncard does what I want at a reasonable cost, so much better. In other words, as I already have the computer, headphones and the amp and wouldn't want to scrape them for something that went along better with the D2X so, I repeat, in my system I prefer the 02 as it gives me better performance. It might be due to impedance mismatches between the soundcard and the amp or one card having a hotter output or who knows, I've no idea but still the result was that one.
Last, I don't quite follow your line of argumentation. Why don't you point straight to the flaws of my comparisson instead of engaging in things that are completely, at least to me, unrelated not only to the topic but also to my post as why many of you prefer cPlay over Foobar or that many others prefer discrete over integrated?
If you said something like:
-"IMO your testing is not vallid because:
a).....
b).....
c)....."-
It will make discussing things much easier.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 22:04:04 GMT
Alex I do get your point but I think you don't get mine. What I'm saying, or trying to say, is that as good as those special rips may be, IMHO they are not a "sine qua non" condition to appreciate the differences between the two DACs, nothing more nothing less.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 22:20:09 GMT
Alex I do get your point but I think you don't get mine. What I'm saying, or trying to say, is that as good as those special rips may be, IMHO they are not a "sine qua non" condition to appreciate the differences between the two DACs, nothing more nothing less. Javier My main point is that with some of the higher quality rips, and I am not referring to mine here,that little added something you heard with one sound card, may be annoying long term with a rip where the treble is already better than average. Many people are now finding that 16/44.1 can be very close indeed to high resolution material, some even claiming that with the right playback software etc. that high res isn't needed for high quality playback, and may best be used just for the production area to reduce losses.I don't completely agree with that though, although I agree that the gap certainly is reduced. Do you do 24 /192K natively? I can UL a high quality reference track for your use only.( no compression, no limiting, and from just 2 stereo mics.478MB though.) Alex
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xerxes
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Post by xerxes on Nov 7, 2011 22:52:30 GMT
I just downloaded and tried JPlay. Brilliant, lets take the power of the PC, the ability to have a nice graphical interface, the convenience of having your entire music library at your fingertips - strip all that out and go back to the hassle of wax cylinders and charge €99.00 for it - I'm sorry, but EPIC FAIL! I'll be sticking with J.River. A while back I downloaded some comparision files in 16/44.1 and 24/96, my DAC can't handle 24/192, and I couldn't hear the difference. I suspect that the biggest single influence on sound quality is the original recording, however it was done, analogue, 16/44.1m 24/192 etc. and its subsequent mastering and production. If this is done well and with care, the playback can sound fantastic. Whereas if the recording has already been royally screwed up in the studio or by the mastering engineer by pushing the levels over the limits and messing about to make the recording excesively loud then no subsequent efforts to make excellent rips, high resolution files, bit perfect playback etc. can put back what has been lost. Sadly, a lot of rock and pop recordings are themselves the limiting factor in the hi-fi chain and the subsequent efforts to perfect the playback software and hardware are somewhat in vain. Having said that, when you do come across a track or album that just sounds fantastic and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, it's worth it - maybe.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 23:03:03 GMT
Owen Sadly, I would have to agree with that.
As for the other , I don't need album artwork, or want to listen to every track in an album ,as many albums only have a couple of standout tracks. Also, whether you want to believe it or not now, one day you will find that there is a SQ penalty from having a huge library at your fingertips. I prefer to hear each track as close as possible to what the record producer intended, not just as background Muzak. Alex
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2011 23:31:42 GMT
Javier That is not what I meant, and you know it. There is a huge variation in the SQ of rips done on different PCs due to the actual ripping program, the type of PC, whether laptop, Mac, or PC,even the medium they are stored on, and some even say due to the actual OS. There is also quite a variation due to the actual Optical writer itself, it's physical location and the type of power supply used. However, that is an area that you appear to refuse to accept as being possible . The article "Ripping Yarns" by Malcolm Steward in HFC some time back, where he highlighted the differences between a typical PC rip and that from a Naim HDX sums it up quite nicely. As it is copyright material , I will remove it again a little later on. Alex
P.S. Copyrighted material has now been removed, but I can supply a copy if requested. I had to delete the original post to get rid of the attachment, and then repost it, so this is not a new post like it may appear. It's a different matter when you are using Image Shack etc. as you can just edit the post.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 8:08:16 GMT
Alex, what I'm trying to do is stick to the thread's subject and avoid turning it into a debate on the potential benefits that higher quality power supplies may have on digital media storage. My test was related to the 02 as I was comparing it to another soundcard but that triggered this OT line which I'm trying to get back on track. Really, that is it, nothing more. Don't try to read between the lines or find second meanings, there are none.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 17:05:09 GMT
Hi Javier, received the 02 about an hour ago, boy my son's going to think his dad's the bees knees when he gets it.........mmmmmmmm!......... mabey he won't get the 02 might just keep it for myself. Once I found the 026 drivers with a little faffing around it's playing away with Alex's great files SQ is very good, only thing a very minor point are the clicks you get when it changes resolution Perhaps it might be better set to fast rather than precision......not tried that yet. Question to come on interface, just a few screen pics to take first. Regards, Alan
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 17:43:21 GMT
Congrats Alan, normal is much worse SQ wise than precission, unless you jump a lot from 44.1 family freqs to 48 ones I wouldn't recommend it but nothing lost by trying.
Don't forget to configure your player to use ASIO for best results.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 20:46:30 GMT
Hi Javier, Foobar with Asio yes call me a meanie if you like but any other player would have to be streets ahead for me to change, especially if I have to pay. My only question is with regard to the Musiland interface........you all seem to have obtained a nice set of knobs to twiddle in a GUI which I can't find. Perhaps you could point me to where it resides? Only GUI I see is Monitor 02 US [0001] -Warning License Invalid MIXER ADVANCE MMDI MMDI is that just Musiland Monitor Device Index? Alan
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Nov 8, 2011 20:56:10 GMT
Hi Javier, Foobar with Asio yes call me a meanie if you like but any other player would have to be streets ahead for me to change, especially if I have to pay. My only question is with regard to the Musiland interface........you all seem to have obtained a nice set of knobs to twiddle in a GUI which I can't find. Perhaps you could point me to where it resides? Only GUI I see is Monitor 02 US [0001] -Warning License Invalid MIXER ADVANCE MMDI MMDI is that just Musiland Monitor Device Index? Alan Hi Alan While we wait for El Genio del Monitor 02 to connect from Madrid, I'll butt in with a suggestion: have you got a little blue M in the systray (bottom right)? Clicking that once should bring up the control panel. Also check in task manager/processes that MICyMon is running. If you look back in this thread, some of us had that same 'license invalid' error message with some versions of the drivers. The version that (almost) everybody has found to work reliably is 0727. Uninstall the 1026 and give the older one a go.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 21:11:27 GMT
oh boy, here we go again...
If you have the license invalid you won't be able to use most of the functions of the GUI (which you can access as John has said)
Did you install the drivers before connecting the 02 to the PC?
John's suggestion of uninstalling 1026 and trying 0727 is a good starting point.
I'd recommend doing it as follows:
1) Unplug the Musiland from the PC 2) Uninstall drivers from the control panel 3) Reboot 4) Install new drivers with the Musiland still unplugged 5) Reboot again (optional, can be skipped) 6) Connect the Musiland
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 21:14:51 GMT
While we wait for El Genio del Monitor 02 to connect from Madrid ;D ;D ;D
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Nov 8, 2011 21:15:28 GMT
Javier While looking back through this thread for the posts about 'invalid license' for Alan, I came across this. I'm wondering if the issues I've had with 1026 are to do with not having the latest firmware installed. I've had a look around the Musiland site, but can't find anything about the zip file to which you refer in the above post. Any suggestions as to how I can get the latest firmware (I understand the process of emailing, waiting, etc.) but can't seem to get started!)?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 21:21:19 GMT
The firmware update tool is located here: www.musiland.com.cn/downloads/utils/MlCyMonAct.zipInside the zip there is a program than when run generates a .dat file you have to send to Musiland with the s/n of the 02 in the subject. The problem is how long they take to answer (if they do). It will really surprise if Alan's 02 didn't have the latest firware, it'll be pretty shocking if his unit had been in stock for 1.5 years. Alan, I forgot to ask, what Windows are you using? XP, Vista or 7? is it 32 or 64bit?
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Nov 8, 2011 21:40:22 GMT
License.dat looks like this: 䀊ꯜ퇅ᗖ댤䐀譆꽚錣큄㾟더噑賙봊쮣靘釄쯗뉲뾴澾痴퉟腼禠ꀅ䖆苩㵈䩛ഫٶ訩ɉ쁳↹牿Έ鰅肫폓毅⊽㝠嫟䛣꒯齺ʋ딯倻쬮蜟ఐ Google translate converts this to: 䀊 ꯜ 퇅 ᗖ 댤 䐀 laugh??? 꽚 Chuo 큄 㾟 더 Haozhou 봊쮣 Jingmi 쯗뉲뾴 Ta crazy 퉟 shy felicity ꀅ 䖆 Bo 㵈 䩛 ഫ وٴ 訩 ɉ 쁳 ↹ shed for cattle Έ Yu gizzard 폓 Yi ⊽? ?? 㝠 Ni 䛣 ꒯ Zou ʋ 딯 Gaya 쬮 Yu ఐ Are they 'avin' a larf?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2011 22:40:50 GMT
That was a really good one John, I laughed so loud all my family came to see what I was looking at on the screen.
Most probably it just contains data to make sure it is a legit 02 made by them so they don't send potentially "hackable" firmware to any competitor with a patch over the eye and a hook instead of a hand ready to look inside their magic FPGA code and copy it.
That is just the file you have to send, btw it needs to generated with the "License Invalid" drivers installed. If one is lucky enough in a week or so they'll send the firmware that will be uploaded using the other program in the zip.
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Post by JohnnyBlue on Nov 8, 2011 22:57:05 GMT
Ooops! I haven't had '"License Invalid" drivers installed' for ages. Didn't get that message with 0727 nor with the more recent 1026.
Anyway, I'll wait and see what comes back from Musiland.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2011 0:18:05 GMT
Hi Javier, I've been listening to and fro with Will's DAC SandyK combo and M02 HP out and although I still think my son will be well pleased with the M02 on Xmas day and that it's a good buy...................can I modify that by saying that I don't think it's such a good buy for the average man in the street when you are presented with a veritable Chinese Puzzle before you can use all of it's features........................... I like to think I am reasonably savvy PC wise....... although I do bow down to "El Genio del Monitor 02" who's PC wisdom is legend across the Grotto........and do understand many of the foibles that surround the implementation of PC software and firmware after all I have been struggling with it since my ZX81 days. The Musiland is working I've been listening to it I've had it hooked up to Will's PK DAC via spdif into the SandyK. The only part hiding is the extended GUI. I have some thoughts on that but I'll have to run through the install again and see what I've possibly missed. I can tell you however how I find it compares to my iteration of Will's PK DAC SandyK combo, All music stored on my "Ancient" PC...Mobo circa 2001.. running XP 32bit Musiland is good listening, fares much better than the Li-Ti that Shaun kindly lent me and Plain Jane analogue out of the Asus DS2, shows how good and convenient USB out of the PC can be. The hardware's up there....pity about the software Spdif out of the Asus DS2 into Will's PK DAC into the SandyK now were talking SQ that lies on another plane, given that I have a huge vested interest in both Will's PK and the SandyK perhaps I'm biased. Thanks for you help Javier your threads are always interesting. Regards, Alan
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