James Tanner - Bryston
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- Apr 10, 2013
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My 2cents worth...
I've now been 100% digital for several years now. No CD, no SACD no vinyl.
High Rez digital has far exceeded anything I've ever experienced.
No disk spinners of any kind in my listening room. No fans or hard drives for that matter either.
I'm now on my 8th computer player/server now. Mostly for myself, some for others.
Try as I might, all digital front ends I've built sound virtually identical. Atom to Haswell. Identical. DACs are where I spot significant differences.
Beyond all these discussions about bits.. I still find the actual recording techniques matter far more than the format. I have 16/44 recordings that sound wonderful. ... And I have 24/192 recordings that sound like crap.
Generally speaking I've not been spending the extra money for 24/192.
FLAC and WAV mostly... And the WAV are due to my being swayed by forum chatter.
I've never detected 2 cents worth of difference between WAV/FLAC.
Come to think of it... I spent thousands of dollars on SACD players and SACDs years ago. What a disaster and waste if $.
In my case, the reason I don't get into describing motherboards in audiophile terms is that assuming each system is set up properly, they sound the same.
I listen to digital hour after hour after hour. No fatigue, no stress... Just the most pleasing music reproduction I've ever experienced.
Again... Just my own opinion.
Hi
No Really I have not but with a lot of issues in audio I find both sides of the story need to be told before we can make intelligent decisions.
james
Pardon, but with a title of "Don't Stream Digital" it sure appears that way.
I can't say anything about hi res PCM as to how it compares to DSD. I can say that I've heard DSD and 24bit FLAC and I prefer DSD. I won't go along with the crowd and say it sounded more "analog". To me, DSD sounds less filtered, less processed, less compressed. It had an ease about it that made you relax. This could be attributed to a lot of things. For example to get 24Bit flac from DSD most apply filters to the inaudible range and claim that it doesn't affect the sound. I don't know, but there's a lot that goes into making hi res flac. Much less so than DSD. <RANT> So why not give consumers the audio format with the least filters, compression, processing, etc.? PCM or DSD -- who really cares which is better just give us both and let us play with our toys! This exact sort of thought process (that there has to be one winner, a King if you will) that ruined the video industry. The beauty here is that there's not a medium to tie to a format for your make believe war. You don't have to worry about Beta vs VHS or CD vs SACD vs Blu-ray. This is the day and age of the Internet and those who care about DSD and hi res audio, PCM, etc. will have fast enough connections to download whatever formats you throw our way. Just put it out there for us to make our own decisions. </RANT>
OK I will keep my controversial opinions to myself from now on.:lol:
james