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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: Alan Taffel's response below, in case you missed it... posted by mkuller on July 6, 2009 at 15:11:45:
This open letter response predates my posting at http://www.avguide.com/article/tas-194-the-state-usb-audio#comment-17726 but I think the points mentioned there should be restated and Mr. Taffel should be corrected.
First, as regards Firewire I think Daniel Weiss would be miffed to learn that you do not consider the Weiss Minerva DAC an Audiophile product. He does have another pro product but the Minerva is specifically targeted at audiophiles.
Second you are simply wrong when you say the DACs that have USB do not also have SPDIF. The Chord QBD76 does and you can, therefore, listen to your CD player or transport through the DAC and compare it to the computer rip you did allowing your "apples to apples" comparison. I did this, by the way and found the Chord to be exemplary: surpassing the DAC that is part of my Meridian 508-20 when compared to it and also found that the Computer rips to an external hard drive were as good, perhaps even a tad better (attributable to digital cable differences).
I did not hear Mr Taffel suggest or imply that Chord would not participate in the comparison he did and therefore must conclude that one of the best DACs on the market was not included in this comparison for reasons that are simply not specified. And, again, this product produces better results in USB than the Weiss Minerva - so consider your assertion challenged.
I was not one of those who disparaged Mr Taffel's knowledge of computers but neither should he disingenuously assume his readers are computer illiterate and that USB audio users should be able to use their computer "without knowing its inner workings". Let's get real, Mr. Taffel, computers are not built like pop-up toasters. They are meant to do many things. So, it is not unreasonable to expect a user to know that (just as EMI and RFI are important to audiophile equipment they also are important in computers) so they should use laptops which produce less EMI and RFI, that external hard drives are preferred for the same reason, that those drives should not be USB or they will compete with USB Audio, that the monitor being off during playback also reduced EMI, that the fewer running tasks that interfere or compete for time with audio the better, that the audio player should be given a high priority. Also, while SSD is ideal, it is not required (I do not have one on my Acer Aspire Laptop nor is my laptop a speed demon of any sort). However, if you do not have SSD, your choice of players WILL make a difference. Foobar can play a series of short connected tracks without a gap when it opens the file for the subsequent track while Windows Media Player cannot. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out, just do a little experimenting. You will also find that using upsampling in the Media Player itself is beneficial even if the DAC already does upsampling. Unlike Mr Taffel I would not denigrate the computer knowledge of audiophiles any more than I would question his.
As stated in my other posting. I have superb equipment to play CDs. Equipment which TAS gives its Golden Ear Awards to including JM Labs Alto Utopia Speakers, McIntosh MC402 Amplifier, Pass Labs Aleph P preamp, and Meridian 508-20 CD player. I play exclusively classical music and am very picky about the fidelity of my system which is why I excluded so many other DACs including the Benchmark.
But Mr. Taffel seems to want to construct a universe in which his assertion applies and, to do so, either rules out the fact that his readers have the knowledge to use computers effectively, fails to test certain DACs, or falsely tells us the ones available do not allow an apples to apples comparison with SPDIF. Well Mr Taffel, any assertion can be true if the the conditions set are limited enough. I can say it rains every day and that would be true if I chose only the days on which it rains. However, saying it's true doesn't make it so.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Alan Taffel's response below, in case you missed it... - Mannacio 02:39:12 09/14/09 (0)
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