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I would like to build best sounding PC based source I can. Considering USB to SPDIF to the high end DAC (Probably Bremen, MBL 1511, Thor Audio or AudioLogic 2400) or USB DAC. For USB to SPDIF I'm considering products from Empirical Audio. Any suggestions/advises.
Please help.
$$$ are not as important as sound quality
Follow Ups:
that's all you need. ;-)
the Ti48...http://www.zerooneaudio.com/
I have been VERY happy with the new off ramp turbo 2. It has really helped define my soundstage. If you are just getting started, order the Silentmaxx power supply for you computer (although it made more of a difference when I was using the Lynx L 22 soundcard than now. I find Adobe Audition very usefull.Cleaning all contacts and contact enhancers are a must. Plexwriter cd reader and seagate drives seem to work well. Get a nice power cord and cordless mouse and let the fun begin!
I just purchased the Lynx L22 and installed it. Why did you switch to the Off Ramp turbo....?
Were you using the spdif or analog output? I think , thru my system the asio sounds better than the directsound decoding software that came with the L22..
Do you have an external pre-amp in the system?
john
J,Glad to see you got the ASIO working!
As you will see, there are many approaches to achieve excellent sound. Fmak's use of a high quality sound card, dCS972/954, custom computer design is a first rate approach.I have gone in another direction. USB Dac powered by a computer 65 feet from the stereo system and all contolled with a pocket PC using NetRemote software.
I am presently using a Wavelength Cosecant DAC, but will be replacing this with a Wavelength Crimson when it becomes available.
Again, if you ask 10 folks on this forum what they think is best, you will get 10 different answers. Do a search and read what other people have discovered. Gordon Rankin and Steve Nugent will also be very informative in helping you to discover the "ultimate" system.
Steve
I have gone in another direction. USB Dac powered by a computer 65 feet from the stereo system and all contolled with a pocket PC using NetRemote software.What do you use for a USB cable solution at that 65 ft. length?
Opticis Optical USB Cable with battery power supply
nt
I have posted this response in another forum. I continue to be very pleased with my results thus far.
I currently use the Lynx L22 in my dedicated for music PC. It is slaved to my EMMLabs Dac6e. IMHO this combination for PCM playback is every bit as good as if not better than playing CD's using the CDSD as a transport. It is just a shame that one cannot rip Sacd's and play them back using this interface. BTW, I have had a higher quality breakout cable made for the Lynx card and I must also state that my Emm gear has not had the latest signature upgrade.I am not sure whether this has answered your question but I must reiterate that the quality of the Lynx digital output and the ability to clock it to an outboard DAC has given me the best cd "transport" i.e. RAM that I have thus far heard
Don't discount tweaking the internals of your machine too...fanless would be awesome, if you have a cd drive get a nice cable from www.granitedigital.com and try and clean all internal connections with 99% alchohol and then silclear or Walker SST. I have a tower pc that sits on a maple platform that's spiked to the floor. my ipod, cd and dvd copies, and general pc tunage sound absolutely amazing. last, if you have a tower pc get it running from a nice wall ac outlet and power cord...a friend has a Tact room correction piece, that thing is amazing.
Also room correction might be intresting - could I get good enough results in PC or should I use TacT
I used to have Tact 2.0s and DEQX. I sold both and I am now using PC DRC. With a good sound card, this is a much better option!
Art,
You can check out my setup in my bloghttp://www.digitalroomcorrection.blogspot.com/
Toke awhile to set it up though
The problem with PC based digital room correction are not that you can't get excellent results, but more so the time involved in setting up the process and learning the software.I have set up digital room correction using Linux software and similar software under MS Windows. It is a time consuming process that will take days if not weeks of learning and experimentation to acheive good results. I imagine that using the TaCT system to its full advantage would also require quite a bit of experimentation as well though.
In the end, I found that an external digital processor such as the Behringer DEQ2496 allows excellent results in nailing standing waves at the listening position, along with the benefit of being much easier to use. However, a unit like the Behringer does not allow time and phase alignment between drivers like the TaCT or software based DRC does.
I have HEARD that creating an impulse filter is pretty simple with the ACXO player, and then this file can be used with other players or programs.All the heavy lifting seems to have been done with this player.
THe creator is on record prefering the correction in the computer over that of the Tact.
I think AXCO is the easiest of the software based systems in that it is very simple to get an impulse response. Unfortunately, I never got the AXCO player to properly work with DRC without dropouts, and I think that was because AXCO only supports an earlier version of DRC and I was using the latest version. It is too bad that AXCO is not being developed further because it implements the crossover and room correction in an easy to use package.
Yeah, I used ACXO for years, and it was by far easiest to use player that has crossovers and room correction.I now have Foobar where I want it, but it took forever to get it working and looking right.
When I corresponded with Patrick, he said that he was working on an "embedded" system, and that he was done with acxo. It is a shame.
There are those who would disagree, but I favour outboard dac and Tact.My fanless Pentium M system with Lynx AES16, dCS972/954 sounds as good as a Krell 20i or SonySCD777ES as transport. Howver, I have found that digital silence from the Plasma and Satellite receiver is desirable.
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