Ethernet cable comparison, basic and mid-price

On the Unitis you can do it fairly easily with help from missus posted in another room.  But I was convinced on an ordinary listening test that it sounded better but two things make me wonder:

(I) I could not say which was which in a blind test, and

(II) At one point in a non-blind test I was listening to some classical and thinking to myself that USB sounded better.  But, when I looked at n-Stream I had forgotten what I was on and I was actually on Ethernet.  Oh dear.

Say what you like about using Ethernet but it does have some advantages:

(I) No more scratching around trying to find that CD you wanna listen to, it's always on tap, and

(I)) Playlists - Yes you heard me right.  When I first started using a streamer I thought that Playlists were not of great use but how wrong I was.  You can have upto 500 tracks and use of the 'random' button to just give you endless music.  I have a Sinatra, 4 Jazz, 3 Blues playlists that I use with the random on.  In addition I use it for Operas to segregate them into acts.

A useful facility.

Yeah take your point but I just love to sit there and being able to play what I want without any fiddling about.

2 questions

I) you get parametric equalisation a Mac?  That's almost enough to make you go over to the dark side of the Apple World, and

II) what is a DAS?

Ha yes I see.

btw do you know any way I can rip a DVD-A disk?  Not the most important thing I would like to do because I only have one disk in this format but if there is a freebie piece of software you or anyone else knows about then please let me know.

For a one off you could do worse than DVD Audio Extractor, which you can try free for a month. 

Cheers I will have a look, thanks.

Harry I have now downloaded the software and converted my entire DVD-A collection, all one disks, to FLAC.

Why is it nowadays that you can't just download a piece of Freewhere or Shareware, you really have to be so careful when you are downloading.  Otherwise you get God knows what on your computer.  The first site I tried was up for installing all sorts of things to help my browsing experience - yeah I bet.  It even had a link to the author's site which in fact linked me to a Japanese Porn site.  The next site at least gave a good link to the author's site and that didn't try to download anything except the actual software.  I guess the moral there is only downloaded Free/Shareware from the author's site or a trusted downloader like CNET.

I hadn't realised that this was a double sided disk, it had high res audio one side: 24/192 stereo and 24/96 DTS 5.1 and ordinary DVD video and audio on the other.

I ripped both the 24/192 & 96 to FLAC and I think the 5.1 information is lost - not sure in what way.

The DVD video side won't play on my computer because I think it's the wrong region - I bought it in the Far East, but it might play on my Video Recorder.  Must try the video side.

Now when I played this as a DVD-A disk on my recorder it sounded absolutely dead, no life nothing.  I thought this was DVD-A and many people had said the same thing about the format.  But I am not sure I think the orchestra & singer doing extracts from The Magic Flute are quite possibly rubbish.  The personnel are: Europa Philharmonia Budapest, cond: Maximianno Cobra & sop:Eszter Sarah.  Now I have heard of none of these so I asked my mate Wiki Pedia and there was absolutely no mention of the orchestra, conductor or soprano in Wikipedia at all.

Anyway the next step is to play it through my UnitiLite, which is problematical because at this moment we have a plasterer in our living room banging away removing the coving and other stuff. So although I have my streamer in the dining room I will wait until the banging ends.

I have in the dining room a set of tiny JPW speakers and boom box that I bought 20 odd years ago and I am pleased with them.  I drove then with a Marantz CD75 player, Quad pre-amp & a tranny amp I built 30 years ago.  But when I put the UnitiLite onto these speakers I was totally amazed at how good it all sounded.  I think there are very few better value for money deals than the UnitiLite.

Anyway H thanks for the tip I will update you later but I don't hold out much hope for the artistic quality of the whole of my DVD-A collection - all one of them.

Well it doesn't sound good and I think it is a combination of a bad recording and an appalling performance.  Actually the instruments in the recording sound quite good but it's just the pace they do the overture to the Magic Flute, it's so slow that it just loses all musicality.  When I first heard it I thought that it was at the wrong speed - silly I know but that what it sounds like for the opening bars.

Thinking back I seem to remember that I bought a Hendrix DVD-A recording as well.  If I have that will increase my DVD-A collection by 100%, what joy.

Does anyone know if DVD-A recordings are beginning to find there way into charity shops yet?

Same old story really and it's as true with hires as it was with vinyl. You can't polish a turd. 

Apparently you can...according to the WD40 thread. 

Jason.

Maybe you should seal it in 'Lucite' first?

It is difficult to believe just how bad this performance is.  I am no different to most other people, I have bought some cheap stuff in the past that was really bad.  But not as bad as this recording.

I won't bother with the polish!