Mac Dac versus CDP versus transport Dac

Oh boy, watch out!!

Light blue touch paper and retire.

Please do the auditioning and make up your own mind! You will find almost as wide a range of opinions as there are people expressing them, and really your own view is likely to be at odds with at least some ...

I have a strong view, but it is irrelelevant in the light of the fact that others strongly disagree with me. I doubt if what we were listening to was radically different, so it must come down to personal requirements in replay as much as anything else.

Good luck with the experiments! George

George I would quite like to hear all opinions.
Express yourself!

In order to test how good the Weiss is, you may want to test it with a good transport too, otherwise the CDP/Weiss contest wouldn't be fair,
anyway please post your impressions!

Dear DHT,

I am using an old but nice Marantz, which is significantly nicer for being used as a transport [and it is a good one being designed as a daisy chainable recording machine] with a Lavry D10 DAC.

Beyond saying that I very much enjoy the result, I am definately not going to get into comparisons, odious as they are! Perhaps it will suffice to say that I could not afford to get this kind of quality with a new CD player. Yes I am happy.

Dear Goldfinch,

I agree entirely that to get the best from a DAC you need a competent digital feed. Any old cheapo transport will produce a poor result. I have proved this to myself with several different disc spinners. The best by a significant distance that I have tried is the Marantz CD recorder/player that I am using. No doubt of the possibility that a nice dedicated CD transport might be even finer, such as a Meridian, but these are still expensive secoond hand. I have not done a direct comparison to Hard Disc play-back in my own set-up, but when I did audition this at a friend's house I found it completely satisfactory as well.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by goldfinch:
In order to test how good the Weiss is, you may want to test it with a good transport too, otherwise the CDP/Weiss contest wouldn't be fair,
anyway please post your impressions!

Gold finch Hi, I am going to borrow a transport to compare the Weiss on CD against my CDP.

I intend to hook up a Pioneer DV717/Denon AVR 3803 at the weekend to my Naim amps. Does anybody have any thought on the quality of the DV717 transport and the AVR 3803 DAC.

What I struggle to understand is that as Mac/PCs running iTunes and pro studio DACs have been around for years, why has it taken the arrival of the HDX for people to claim the MacDACs better high end CD players?

Dunno - i always thought computer audio must be crap until i tried it.

Rockingdoc ,I beleve'itune' downloads are not cd quality, and that Pc's aren't that great unless you bypass the operating systems sound mixer also there has been the arrival of high resolution files which can only be 'played' on a computer.

Just a really quick update ,I compared my old Naim player against the Weiss dac ( with CD's ) and used a cdp as a transport, the Weiss was better ,just every aspect, I suppose technology moves on ,apparently Weiss are bringing out a music server of their own, does anyone hve any details? H

quote:

Originally posted by DHT:
Just a really quick update ,I compared my old Naim player against the Weiss dac ( with CD's ) and used a cdp as a transport, the Weiss was better ,just every aspect, I suppose technology moves on ,apparently Weiss are bringing out a music server of their own, does anyone hve any details? H

Which old Naim CDP? The Berkley also looks interesting but these are also $5K. Sounds like many prefer the Berkley if they have a good interface but the Weiss straight from a firewire. Obviously this is open to individual interpretation. Nice to see things coming along. Berkley uses proprietary DACs. I understand that there may be a limited release of these to others they approve of. Don't know what the Weiss uses.

JS I have a CDX2 with the power supply , it is a few years old now, I really can't comment on the berkeley although it is requently mentioned on Computer Audiophile.
I have no idea what the Weiss uses, but it is extremely good. H

For a couple of years I have been using iTunes on PC, and a decent CD player, both supplying digital feeds to the same external DAC with a decent power supply.
There is no question that with my setup the digital out of the CDP sounds better than the digital out of the PC. BUT, I am begining to seriously doubt that the problem lies within the i-Tunes ripped lossless files, but rather in what the PC does with them before delivery to its USB socket.

Rockingdoc I had an early experiment with a PC using USB and it was unconvincing, firewire though the Weiss has been a revelation.

quote:

Originally posted by DHT:
....firewire though the Weiss has been a revelation.

Seriously? From unconvincing to revelation in one simple computer cable?

Isn't this maybe just a little bit of hyperbole?

I can imagine there being some difference. I almost can get a grip on it being audible. But improving by leaps and bounds???

Through the USB of my PC using windows media, to the firewire connection of a MAC using the Weiss DACII, that has been the revelation, the mac ( apparently ) is bit perfect, the PC sounded very poor, the Apple is a really elegant solution.

My PC has Firewire and USB2 outputs, and I can't say I noticed any improvement with the Firewire on a PC using Windows (with i-Tunes& Quicktime).
As I already have a DAC with; optical, Coax and USB inputs, I'm keen to try a Mac vs. PC vs. iPod digital output (Wadia 170i).

On the transport/DAC front, I was very puzzled when "He Who Should Not Be Named" brought his Lavry to mine & we tried various combinations of transport/ computer through it into my system.

I dug out an old Orelle transport which, in its day, was highly regarded as a so-called "Audiophile" component and worked very well with its dedicated DAC. Playing this through the Lavry via coax digital into my 552 however sounded, well, pretty awful actually! My redundant Oppo DVD player sounded considerably better.

All very odd and inconsistent. I suppose the Orelle could be faulty...

While we are comparing, it has been my impression that the coax digital cable is better than toslink optical between source and DAC. Is this just my imagination?

Has anyone found a way to extract digital files eg. WAV. ahead of the computer's soundcard and into a coax output? Do the good streamers do this?

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
Has anyone found a way to extract digital files eg. WAV. ahead of the computer's soundcard and into a coax output? Do the good streamers do this?

A Squeezebox will do this, so will an Airport Express playing iTunes and other files through AirFoil.

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
While we are comparing, it has been my impression that the coax digital cable is better than toslink optical between source and DAC. Is this just my imagination?

Absolutely agreed on this. I have a good optical lead which fed from three different transports, and a good coaxial wire cable which only fed from my Marantz CD recorder/player which has very fine digital outputs as it is designed to work as a daisy chaining recorder.

The Marantz in any case was easily the best transport, and the improvement using wire rather than optical fibre was immediately clear, and with no unfortunate side effects. I reverted after a week for about an hour, but there was no doubt that the wired solution was better in every respect.

ATB from George

quote:

My PC has Firewire and USB2 outputs, and I can't say I noticed any improvement with the Firewire on a PC using Windows (with i-Tunes& Quicktime).
As I already have a DAC with; optical, Coax and USB inputs, I'm keen to try a Mac vs. PC vs. iPod digital output (Wadia 170i).

From what I have read it is important to bypass the internal sound mixer on a PC, ( as it messes with the data ) Macs are bit perfect.