Direct to DAC or Streaming?

Good question. 

I've seen plausible arguments for both. In general, computers give out quite a bit of electro magnetic interference and aren't particularly well earthed. Although if there is some sort of galvanic isolation between the computer and the dac, then this can be prevented. Also the digital output of some computers can be prone to high jitter readings. But both of these can be avoided. This is essentially what the HDX is a 'quiet pc' with a very good sound board. These are the 2 main arguments I've seen against connecting a PC to a DAC directly, however, if properly implemented it shouldn't be an issue.

Supposedly the use of use TCP/IP in streaming gets around the jitter problem as the protocol handles the loss of packets and the streamer just buffers information before passing on to the DAC  for conversion. As long as the network doesn't introduce EMI into the system then Streamer can be isolated from the 'noisy' computer. The introduction of a network does, however, bring the disadvantage that if the network breaks you cannot listen to your music as it is stored else where! The other side of this argument is that the network allows you to distribute your music around the house.

I've heard some very good computer based and streamer based systems, I personally don't believe that either is inherently beter than the other.

Rich

Dear Rich,

Thanks. ... as I thought really.

So with a decent computer then there is nothing to loose with a direct connection to a DAC. I have little PC that runs iTunes alone that has no optical drive, an inaudible fan, and two Hard Drives - a small one for the operating system and the other [half TB] for the iTunes folder. The Power Supply is external [like a laptop], and well away from it. It does go rather well!

I only want quality replay in on place in the house. For the rest I have conventional radios dotted about!

ATB from George

Hello George,

The Naim dealer near me, which is THE high-end audio dealer in the Boston area, sells a custom-built line of PC music servers (silent operation).  Their customers often connect these directly to the dac and then the rest of the hi fi.  While only indirect evidence, if this was not an acceptable scheme, I doubt that they would promote it.  They absolutely know what they are doing.

Hi Bart,

Is this a Warlo on your avatar? If so, I wouldn't certainly go hunting around your place! 

Sorry about this interruption George.

Originally Posted by cat345:

       

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Hi Bart,

Is this a Warlo on your avatar? If so, I wouldn't certainly go hunting around your place! 

Sorry about this interruption George.

Cat, it is the very rare "Jackalope"

Oh , I see...

The ones we got out here north of the border are called Warlo's but the difference is that they wear moose racks!

My little PC is not actually silent, but quieter than a gas fire for all that.

Glad that there is some recognition in quarters with good judgement that the idea can work.

I would not want the additional complication of streaming. Among the Naim products the HDX seems the elegant solution to this in my mind! But it is so expensive!

ATB from George

I've had both. Either are valid and offer a lot of flexibility and a are able to create very high quality music as the end result. At the end of the day it's down to personal preference - control, ripping, library management, storage and other devices served which define individual approaches. 

James

> My little PC is not actually silent, but quieter than a gas fire for all that.

Dear George

Please don't connect your gas fire to your DAC, it won't like it. 

All we are really trying to do is provide the DAC with a jitter free data stream. A new Mac Mini, for example, does this exceptional well out of its optical port. TCP/IP over Ethernet will provide a relatively jitter free stream on all but the busiest networks. 

I can feed my UQ in both ways and I sometimes think Ethernet sounds better. In the case of the UQ this does make some sense to me, as the UQ does the rendering and the path between the music data and DAC is internal to the UQ. Rather than a Mac doing the rendering and then sending the music data over a cable. However, there are so many other things affecting SQ that I don't think this is one to concern over. 

In your case, I'd use to the most convenient method. If you wanted to keep you PC well away from your DAC then stream. If you are happy to have it with an optical cable (or USB - no more than 5m) then that will work well to. James has summarised this perfectly. 

All the best, Guy

> Among the Naim products the HDX seems the elegant solution to this in my mind! 

Depends - it assumes music starts life on CD (from the consumer perspective). If you download then you need a NAS to hold the files. If you have already ripped files then you need a NAS to hold your files. So the ND5 XS might be more elegant if you obtain your music from non-CD sources. 

The primary reason I moved from computer-based audio to a purpose-built solution -- a Naim network player using a centralized UPnP source -- was to see if I could eek out just a bit more sound quality in my listening room.  That did turn out to be the case, but the gain in sound quality turned out to be of secondary importance to my gains in flexibility and reliability.

In terms of flexibility, I can now listen to music in my home in three places: 

1) My listening room -- this is where my Naim setup is, and where 95+% of my listening occurs.

2) Our main room -- this is where our home theater setup is, and it is also where we entertain.  I stream music to my 5.1 setup (very softly) during parties and other get-togethers.  Our last use was playing Christmas music for our Goddaughter's kids while they opened their presents.   It was fun to do, but it is certainly not an essential use.

3) Wherever my Mac Airbook happens to be -- I was very grateful to have all of my music on a NAS device and available via UPnP during our recent plumbing disaster.   During the two weeks I had to evacuate my listening room for ceiling repairs, I could still stream my music collection.  Asset, running on a small, home built W7 PC that sits in my home theater rack, transcodes my FLAC files to WAV on-the-fly, and the Playback application turns my Airbook into a UPnP client.  From there, I use a Centrance DacPort and a pair of Sennheiser 650's.  I could have survived the two weeks without music, but was glad I didn't have to!  Also, when I feel like hearing music on a nice day, I drag this setup out to our 3 season porch, or to the back yard.

The other pleasant surprise for me has been an increase in reliability and availability.  When I was using my W7 PC (running JRMC 14, and using an RME 9632 sound card's S/PDIF output) as my main source for the Naim DAC, I found myself spending too much time faffing about with the app, or with the OS, or the network connectivity...and usually at just the wrong time!   During the work weeks, I typically get one shot at listening to music, from about 10pm-to-bedtime.  When, to my unpleasant surprise, I would spend that time debugging instead of listening, it would leave me annoyed, and I would often not get a good night's sleep.   Since moving to the NDX and Asset, that *never* happens.  The NDX and N-Stream have been rock-solid, and Asset and my NAS have also been extremely reliable. 

And the NDX sounds just that much better than my purpose-built PC did.  Mrs. Hook agreed, picking the NDX every time in a blind test.

Everyone's situation is different, and for you George, it sounds like iTunes on a PC is ticking every one of your check boxes.  Were you starting from scratch, then maybe something like the digital output of an SB Touch into your DAC might have been a good option.  Regardless, I am glad to hear that your setup is working well, and that you continue to be pleased by it!

ATB.

Hook

George

I would second what Hook says about convenience for multi-room playback but that his not your situation or desire I believe.

Using your PC is ideal for you and i am sure gives an excellent result. In your case also I would guess the dominant quality music listening is Classical which is fussy to catalogue simply on a NAS because of the complexity of the listings possible. ( Composer, work, movements, artists etc, which to choose for filing?). I suspect it is a little easier to drill down in i-tunes.

regards

geoff

Hook's "surprise" was what I'd hope to achieve too when I decided to buy a uServe as my digital music source. My parameters were the same -- a few hours each evening to listen to music, and knowing myself, although technically competent and curious, I did not want something I'd have to 'fiddle' with at that time. The prospects of having to reboot a computer, or deal with pushed updates, etc etc, lead me to take a guess and go with the uServe.

It's a bit odd I suppose to own a music server that is not serving anything than the nDAC that is 6 inches above it on a stand and connected to it by a DC1.  But it's a solution that WORKS for me. And I don't feel that I (substantially) overpaid for what I got, adding up sound quality, convenience, and the fact that I like the look of all black Naim boxes on the shelves, with nothing that "looks like a computer."

George, I agree, that a reasonable question to ask at the start is how your digital files will be created (will you buy some as well as rip some from cd's?) and where they will be stored. But believe me, I know .  . . sometimes we figure out what works best for us by trial and error and cannot plan it all from the start.

I only put this little starting post up out a curiosity about the qualitative differences that people here have found. And the replies are splendid. Much to ponder, though Geoff P has caught my needs well. It was those needs -  primarily the ease of catalogung classical music with iTunes [as a list], making for a very power search engine, that has driven my choices so far. I can search by work catalogue number or work name as a rule or by composer and genre, but the genre is named in the title of the work [say Bach Harpsichord Concert, or Beethoven Symphony etc], and then narrow down to the work by finding the opus or catalogue number and then artist to allow for an uninterupted play of a single performance of a single complete work alone.

It is very quick, and allows me to listen to the end without worrying about something playing straight on, which I don't want at that time.

For example I remember a very large number of published catalogue numbers, so that for the Toccata und Fuge in F by Bach, I type in 540. This brings up two performances, and typing in Alain or Walcha, selects the specific one I want to listen to  ... all in a ten seconds. Sometimes the catalogue number brings up works by different composers, but the subsequent choice can be nailed by typing the composer name as well as the artist. Never a labourious process. Anyone who has been here and I have played music to will attest to how accessible my collection of music recordings now is! And it does make for a varied music listening session when it is so easy to go fom one piece of music to the next, for the thoughts that arrise while listening. T makes for fascinating linkages in programming an evening's istening!

But I am very grateful for the many detailed replies, covering details of the technical aspects and the SQ implications. Certainly all these suggestions willbe considered as and when I improve the digital side of my music replay, though it seems that I shall loose nothing I want in the multi-room sense by sticking with direct connection.

At the moment I am pondering a little DAC from Halide that plugs direct to the USB port, and is actually hard wired in a two metre [or more optionally] that would allow the PC to be away from the amplifier and tuner.

It is offered on a thirty day trial, so if it offers no improvement over the current arrangement then it can go back without a cost beyond postage. It is about three times the cost of my current arrangement [£345 compared to £105 for the aune] but clearly the cables are a bonus as I don't have to look for superior interconnects, which might be a way of tweaking what I have already to a small degree. Then my Lavender can go onto the vintage Leak tuner - hard wired in at the tuner end when I get it re-trimmed later this year!

Sincere thanks from George

Regarding the sources of the music I have seven MP3 downloads, about fifty files still in WAV, and about seven thousand tracks ripped from CDs as ALAC. The curious thing is that the WAVs were saved that way by accident. LP transfers to CD, saved also on the hard drive, transferred to USB memory stick and inserted to iTunes that way. For some reason they were not transcoded to ALAC when inserting from USB memory stick! They are neither better nor worse than the ones transcoded when CDs were ripped directly. But there is no tagging of course, which is a nuisance. I anticipate that these will in time be replaced with formal commercial CD issues ...

The only reason I would download is if it were the only way to get a specific recording not issued on CD. Some of my tracks are from CDs that were transferred from vinyl. these are surprisingly successful even beside the official CD releases, though in no case actually better. As these appear on CD I tend to replace these vinyl recordings with the CD release. But some may never come.

As I regard the collection of music as a sort of reference central core to stand beside broadcasts of music that I am less likely to want to listen to all that often, I am content to wait for broadcasts rather than buy recordings.

And for the central repertoire, I have recordings of nine tenths of all the music I love the best. sometimes two or three different recordings, so really my collection is quite mature, almost complete as far as I want it to be, and very focussed on my favourite performing artists, and also on my favourite music. So there will never be a massive expansion in future. So in that sense I see no reason for more than half a TB of storage. As it is I have used forty percent of the half TB with ALAC files in the main.

Naturally I have retained all the original CDs ...

ATB from George

George

If you want to improve further on your sound quality you should have a look at JPlay.

With the recently released 4.1 version there is an iTunes plugin that will allow you to use iTunes as for music management and selecting your tracks and which will use JPlay as the playback engine.

I think JPlay is THE best windows playback engine out there now. Esp. the fullscale hibernation mode is exceptional.

So if you would like to get the best from of your PC music google for jplay.eu

and while you're at it, consider to use a good USB-SPDIF converter. That can improve over your PC's own SPDIF by quite a margin.

-

aleg

Dear Aleg,

Thanks for the suggestion. As it is I use USB as my method of getting the data out of the PC now. I have found this is a good way to do it, though initially I was forced to adopt the idea because my then computer had no SPIDF output.

As for additional software, I am quite shy of making it more complicated. No doubt I would get it horribly wrong. iTunes really is plug and play apart from a few settings in the ripping side, and keeping the volume control at 100%.

I'll look at your suggestion, and possibly experiment on my old PC, which still just about boots up. Most of the attempts anyway. And if it works out, then I could try it on the new PC. But I get quite worried about add ons.

Thanks for the advice! Best wishes from George

PS: For Aleg.

Maybe for another time but JPlayer requires more than my little computer offers. It is on XP for a start and that is unsupported.

Maybe one day I'll get a higher powered PC for the job, but the current music one is only a few months old, so must serve for a good while longer! Upgrading will only happen when it is showing signs of not working well any more!

Thanks for the hint though.

ATB from George

The flexibility of streaming solutions is of value only if:

a) One can get past the whole UPnP nightmare.

b) One wants or needs that flexibility

Dear Winki,

When I was investigating solutions to the computer audio thing - at the time - many solutions did not allow for seemless [gapless] replay over track joins. My first rips were done with EAC, and that was a nightmare, though I did manage a few rips, and replay was with media monkey, which elided rather than perfectly joined the consequent tracks. I soon relised that media monkey was no good.

At the time gapless replay was not guaranteed with upnp either. I still don't know if perfect gapless replay is possible with it.

I needed this because in a live recording, or one where the music does not stop between tracks clearly gapless is crucial.

As iTunes was and still is a free download that is easy enough even for me to get right, I tried it and found it work really well.

I also realised that I had no use for a multi-room facility, so the solution became clear.

I suppose the longer term is to truly optimise the computer, and the disadvantage with MAC for me is the sheer cost, so that the system is totally optimised for audio performance. I am sure there is room for refinement over what I have already, though as it is the scheme is immensely glitch free. I have never had iTunes cause a freeze on the computer in about two and a half years.

Oddly I have no problem with booting up the computer to use it. It is always off when not in use. The new machine boots up quicker than the Leak [valve based] tuner warms up, so I am not complaining!

This thread has answered the question about the quality potential of either option, and now is a gradual process of optimisation, rather than any radical system change.

If the view had been that there is a quality advantage to streaming then I might have changed diredtion a bit with future plans ...

ATB from George

Dear Hook,

Thanks for your most helpful reply. I found that the software I attempted to use first was beyond me to make work nicely. Probably my own problem rather than the software, but I was able to drive iTunes painlessly, so perhaps iTunes is simply more intuitive. It certainly has a much finer interface.

I am glad that upnp works properly. When I was first struggling with this I think I got some advice here that was really more suitable for an expert. An an expert I have never been!

Fortunately the friend who built up my little [small cased] PC for the muisc seems to have produced a machine that can father a good quality from my little DAC. Don't ask me the technicalities of it though!

ATB from George

just now read through this thread.

George... in your case, as well as mine, single room is fine.  Therefore avoiding streaming has its benefits.  As you mention you get gapless replay as well as the ability to use any codec you want.

In my case (using J River) I can use any UPNP/DLNA device I want throughout my network and they simply show up as a Zone I can play to.

In your case going to streaming would require using only Airplay enabled devices, or go to a different media player.

The one advantage of using a streamer/dac in a one room scenario would be getting rid of any spdif cables in the chain.

Cheers!

Patrick

Dear Patrick,

I have the DAC hooked up with USB. I don't know if that is the best way, but my old PC [now nearly dead] did not have a coaxial [RCA] or Toslink [optical] output for SPIDF, and USB is how I have carried on with the new miniature PC.

Works well enough to please me, though not many "golden ears" have sampled it yet!

ATB from George