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In Reply to: RE: He is correct posted by fmak on July 17, 2015 at 04:18:13
I have to agree with Bob on this one Fred. I have both tube and SS DACs here and both are very enjoyable to me. But I respect your point of view, and know that Tony and a bunch of other inmates agree with you.
Follow Ups:
My objection to tubes is one of the annoyance factor and instability of many of these devices. It's a case of "been there, done that".
It may be that the low level noise masks "baddies" on recordings and in one's system. In this case, the noise may be perceived as beneficial so long as it remains sufficiently low. One of the differences between digital playback and analog playback is that the digital playback chain may have little or no noise and each time a recording is played one hears the same noise and other warts of the recording. These artifacts may be nothing more than a pattern of air molecules hitting a microphone diaphram. They will repeat over and over the same way each time the recording is played. However, with an analog playback any repeat may be masked by noise in the tape or phono preamplifier.
Listen to a very long recording of white noise. Now take a short loop of the same recording and play it continuously. It may still seem random the second time the loop is played, but if the loop is short enough then it won't be long before the looping becomes noticeable. If one plays records only once or listens to streaming services this theory wouldn't apply. But note that any repeated play of a recording is not going to sound natural, even if the record-playback fidelity is perfect. Real musicians playing the same song twice won't play it the same way.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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This is well known, both in analog and digital audio. The fact that you preferred a 13.5 bit dac with valves over a much better performing TEAC box was just due to at least 2 things:- system synergy with your Mark L amps and whatever preamp, and aural preference for more harmonic distortions and perhaps noise that covers up digititis.
Fred me boy,Why spend the effort speculating why I liked one DAC over another 10 years ago?
You are going to have a nice surprise soon.
Edits: 07/18/15
of equipment usage by Reviewers and their comments, to calibrate the degree to which one can accept and trust their reviews.
I have done so for reviewers in HIFi News, Stereophile and others for many years and some of them have been really unreliable, in relation to what I hear when auditioning/buying what they recommend.
I understand. I didn't really get into computer audio until 2007. Before that I had many different CD players and vinyl was my favorite. I remember how much fun I had with a Sony SCD-1 that was modified.
Edits: 07/18/15
you might still like vinyl better today.
I couldn't stand digital in any form till my ears and brain hit about 60 or so.
20 year old CDs played in my near 20 year old CD67SE don't sound nearly as offensive to me now as they did back in the day. :-(
I still like vinyl. What I don't like is having to move the damn heavy things when the house is being painted. I had to move 1200 LPs the other day from the upstairs bedroom to the garage.
Edits: 07/19/15
Listening room is on a third floor loft now so this poor sucker working for the moving company had to move nearly 100 boxes for records up two flights of stairs.
He started out pretty well, two boxes each trip, on on each shoulder (large dude!).
Lifestyle issues finally got the better of him as those big muscles require oxygen when climbing stairs and those cigarets he smoked soon began to take their toll. If I ever decide to sell my vinyl stash it's gonna be a signed contract, 'all or none' and 'as is, where is'.
"All or none". That will be a tough sell. A guy who never posts in the Asylum posted once a few years ago that he was giving away his vinyl collection.
He lived only 30 minutes from me. We visited while I picked through his collection and came home with only a couple boxes out of dozens he was trying to unload.
This was a few years ago and I believe he hauled the rest to Goodwill.
I had one and it was very good. Those who slate spdif but who are ignorant of good ones should get one and try it. It's even better if the output connector is isolated from the multiple grounds, with a proper BNC 75R socket
that's fine and was my point also. But don't let some vendor, designer, reviewer, or 'expert' tell us that it is right to couple a -70 dB stage to a -120dB one and give me this crap about phase noise, correct usb code, the right computer, the best player software etc etc.
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