A Journey into Streaming and HiFi

Wow!  That's a long post, a possible record in my time observing activity on the Naim forum.  

Let's pick up from the point at which you're armed with a good old CD.  It's been mastered, and whatever distortion was introduced, and however many bits were lost in the digital trickery that went on during the mastering process, that's done.  Now that is locked in time, you have the challenge of reproducing it as a sound wave as best you can.  It's fair to say that everything you introduce in that process, from electronics, to cables, to DSP trickery and in particular speakers, is going to move it further away, rather than closer to, what was put on the CD.  That is unquestionable, would we all agree?  Good, glad we're singing from the same hymn sheet.

Now, high end audio manufactures and cable manufactures alike, do their best to minimise the unwanted distortion that can be introduced in the replay process.  Therefore, amplifiers, DACs, Streamers blah etc, can all sound different, due to different methods.  But I suspect said manufacturers attempt to 'engineer' the sound according to different ideologies in terms of the best representation of the performance itself, rather than the recording perhaps.  Given how wildly different albums featuring the same instruments can sound, they have a tough challenge, and it will always be a compromise.  

I find that a recording / master that sounds wonderful on my Naim system, is notably better than average when played on my Pure Contour D1, my Iphone / ear buds, in the car, or via my desktop PC speakers.  And while the Naim setup doesn't outright destroy anything that is less than perfect in terms of recording quality, mediocre mainstream stuff is still much more enjoyable via the Naim system than anywhere else, but the absolute worst examples , are much more listenable on my PC desktop 2.1 setup, as they are quite warm and wooly by comparison. 

Recreating the master as it was originally, in a worryingly number of examples, particularly with popular / rock type music, is a bad idea.  For my own listening tastes, Naim seem to have the balance about right.  Great recordings sound great, mediocre recordings sound better than I ever imagined they would, and Metallica sounds crap.  So it all makes sense, and I can live with that.

Maninblack,

Wonderful prose, but you lost me after the 25th paragraph.

Maninblack posted:

I have recently acquired a SuperUniti and a UnitiQute2. I am very happy with these, but the journey before and after was interesting and eye-opening and I thought it might be of interest to other people going on this journey.

My last real dabble in hi-fi was many years ago with NAD, Linn Cartridges, AIWA tape decks, Celestion speakers, messing with different types of tape and bi-wiring speakers. For practical reasons I most recently had marantz cd/amp and B&W speakers. Also a set of Dali bookshelf speakers. So I needed to catch up, and ideally utilise my current speakers. But I had started to move into the streaming world. All my CDs were ripped onto my iMac, or various memory sticks, and the whole family were also using Spotify or Tidal. I was using Tidal. I wanted to be able to play in at least 2 specific rooms in the house (one of which didnt have the iMac. So I started looking at multi-room streaming and of course Naim and Sonos were both highly visible solutions. And so the journey started….

Things I came across on this journey included the real possibility that the quest for accurate sound reproduction may a false one. It might be that it is all about distorting the sound in a way that suits my ears. It might be that a good amplifier makes no difference at all. Music is mastered (and then sold) by engineers using “Monitors”. Surely I should just want to reproduce what they created in the studio? Why should hi-fi equipment add more to the sound than was there in the first place? A conundrum.

But I am jumping ahead. As a novice at this, I hadnt known about Monitors, or about companies that made these and consumer equipment. I hadnt even known about why some loudspeakers (and most monitors) were “Active” with dedicated amplification (or why this was, and how “cross-over” design was the key thing here…). I also had to look into what a UPnP server was and I why I needed one. I had to find out about Airplay and Bluetooth, and about enhancements to iTunes that ‘improved’ its ability to play music. Also about ‘ripping’ cds accurately. Also about the many ‘lossless’ formats that may or may not be appropriate. What can an ear actually hear? And more…. What about power supplies or power cables even - apparently this makes a big difference but is often not part of a core product and has to be added on? Also cables to connect components and speakers. Again, much of this is NOT used in professional or recording environments, so why add it in a home environment after the music has been created (and processed - never a natural recording of ‘live’)? It got very confusing. And what about vinyl? does it really sound better? And does “power” make a difference….? What is a DAC? What is Polarity of speakers? Should I use optical connections? What is Hi-Def music? Where do I buy it, Qobuz? HDTracks? What are electrostatic speakers or magnetic planar? What is Class G Amplification? What is an XLR connection? Is it different to DIN? or Phono? When might I want a sub-woofer or a ribbon-tweeter? What is a Banana? Aargh.

So. After all this, and I will go through some findings below, why wouldnt I just connect my iMac and play directly to Active Monitors - using something like Dynaudio Xeo (http://www.dynaudio.com/home-audio/xeo/) which are active with a DAC and dont need speaker cables… and do multi-room. And are made by a company making some of the leading studio monitors. Or perhaps via a separate DAC, or a Streaming pre-amp? Or perhaps …. etc.

Ok, so here are some findings (not in any particular order)…

Skeptics. >> See http://eandt.theiet.org/magazi...elieve-in-better.cfm There is been no real proof of anything, and many challenges to perceived wisdom…

Amplifiers. >> look up Bob Carver (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Carver). Also see what Alan Shaw (Designer/Owner of Harbeth Loudspeakers has to say… (http://www.harbeth.co.uk/userg...cturing-still-exists). This school of thought says all amplifiers do (or can) sound the same, using the same criteria/volume settings etc. That differences in sound are distortions that can be measured and mimicked. So in true scientifically unbiased testing of matching conditions amplifiers really dont matter, nor does cabling, power etc. Harbeth are used in the BBC and this view is based on commercial experience of recording and production environments. I have to say in equipment auditions I heard differences, but they werent blind, and I despite looking I have found no scientific evidence supporting the differences produced by different equipment. And referring back to the observations I made at the top, if equipment sounds different, this probably isnt closer to the original recording anyway. But Power does seem to be the key. Keeping an amplifier within its middle range of operation (easier with more power) seems to always be good. Note how ‘better’ amps are often more powerful. I certainly notice the difference between my UnitiQute2 and SuperUniti at volume. Led Zeppelin needs the SuperUniti. Conclusion: get as powerful amp as you can, or active speakers with high internal amplification. Also if it sounds good to you, that is ALL that counts - there is no ‘better’ or ‘optimum’. The best is likely to be a perfect reproduction of the studio equipment, and you may or may not like it.

Streaming Source. >> For streaming, there is no question that Tidal, providing “CD” quality streams is as good as it gets. There are others now, but the Tidal catalogue is pretty good, and the App is OK (though not as good as Spotify). Cds need to be ripped accurately. I think you can do this OK with iTunes, using the ‘error detection’ option, but others seem to think you need something else such as PowerAmp or X Lossless Decoder(XLD). I have used XLD and iTunes to create AIFF lossless. (see http://www.audioquest.com/audio_file_formats/ for description of file types). I chose this because it doesnt include any compression (apple lossless compresses/uncompresses like a zip file) but include Metadata for the tracks/albums. I still use iTunes to maintain my library and other metadata (album covers etc). I tries MANY UPnP servers. Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers and streaming hi-fi to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the network and share files. I ended up with Firestream having tried many others (Asset, JRiver, MinimServer, Twonky, Serviio, Linn Kazoo, Allegro). Plex was also nice, but had issues with artwork. Firestream seems more stable, keeps up to date as music was added/changed and picks up the metadata best, such as album covers - and was available on the appstore (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/ap...a/id1005325119?mt=12) . Testing was with the Naim app and other generic media player such as VLC. None of this was easy, and there was great variation in ability. Why doesnt OSX or Windows just do this? The Naim streamers handle UPnP and Tidal perfectly well. I have them connected with wires (Cat5, not Cat6 - another topic to discuss) and there is often some latency, but generally OK… See also http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue63/aiff.htm (also related to HiRes below).

DAC. >> Ok. This was a challenging area to pick up from scratch, but is clearly the key to all digital music. How to you Convert the Digital 010011 streams into something you can hear (Analogue). This is probably the source of many discussions over “why doesnt my CD sound as good as my vinyl?”. This is serious computing and as with most electrical/chip components these are provided by specialists such as Texas Instruments (own Burr-Brown .. see : http://www.ti.com/product/PCM1796 - which cost $8 by the way and is considered the best) or Cirrus Logic (own Wolfson, who were British, see :http://www.cirrus.com/en/products/pro/areas/PA65.html ). Audio Equipment manufacturers take these DAC Chips and create things you can use, or create their own solutions (eg the Chord HUGO (http://chordelectronics.co.uk/chord-hugo.asp). These amy be quite simple USB solutions (to bypass the internal DAC of your computer) such as Audioquest Dragonfly (http://www.audioquest.com/dragonfly-series/). Or as mentioned earlier, active speakers may take a digital feed (and use their own DAC). It might seem obvious once you know - but it really isnt - that clever stuff is going on here. For example if I output a digital signal from my computer or my streaming source, it wont use its internal “DAC” as it doenst need to create the analogue signal. This digital signal is then converted by the whatever DAC is in the stream. For example a stand-alone DAC (NAIM DAC, Hugo, Dragonfly etc) or the DAC is the integrated device you may be using (such as a SuperUniti). So a SuperUniti for example can improve the quality of any digital source (from streaming to TV) because it uses its own DAC. This also means I can use an old (ish) CD player (my Marantz) to output a digital signal to the SuperUniti, just using the CD player as a transport. This works nicely.  I suggest reading Naims paper on DACs : https://www.naimaudio.com/site..._dac_august_2009.pdf  

See also Bitperfect ; https://itunes.apple.com/ca/ap...ct/id455545700?mt=12 “BitPerfect is an App that runs alongside iTunes and provides capabilities to improve its playback of high quality audio files. When you use BitPerfect, iTunes is still your main interface to your music collection. You still use iTunes to create, store, and manage your music collection, to build playlists, and to decide what you want to play and when you want to play it. BitPerfect just sits in the background, doing nothing, until you ask iTunes to play a track; then BitPerfect steps in and takes over the playback. However, you won’t see anything to visually indicate that anything is different, because iTunes still thinks it is playing the music – the track position indicator moves along as normal, and the volume control slider ramps the volume up and down. But all of your instructions to iTunes are intercepted by BitPerfect, which implements any playback actions you have just initiated.” So combined with a good DAC…..

Multi-Room >> Why not use Airplay you ask? Indeed. An airport express has an optical out, so Airplay could be used to feed the Naim. Or in fact, the SkyQ boxes I have are also Airplay devices. So connecting these to one of the Digital inputs of the Naim (or via the TV) gives me the TV/Sky audio as well as the Airplay streaming (either from iTunes or from any audio on the iMac). Is this ideal? no, it doesnt support Hi-Def music, but is actually pretty good, hard to tell difference from UPnP streaming and gets an artwork visual on the TV! And does multi-room… Having said that the Naim Multi-Room is really good, but only for the streaming. It wont play the other inputs (such as CD) through Multi-Room. Bit of a catch that one. You can also Bluetooth directly which is handy for guests (who dont have apple).

Hi-Res >> Having reviewed lots of evidence here are some observations. The components of digital audio can be broken down into three basic categories—sample rates, bit depth, and bit rates. High-resolution audio’s sample rate is generally between 96 kHz and 192 kHz or higher whereas CDs are sampled at 44.1 kHz. The more bits, the greater dynamic range of soft to loud sounds that your audio file can have. There are basically two audio depth measures in use today: 16 and 24 bit. CDs are traditionally produced as 16 bit, while 24 bit sound files are typically used by audio engineers during recording and production. And then we have bit rates which are the most widely quoted figure when talking about compressed audio files such as MP3s, AAC etc. 256kbps means is that to store one second of audio, a file uses 256 kilobits or 256,000 bits of data. The bigger the bit rate, the bigger the file—and, presumably, the better the sound quality. However the maximum frequency the human ear can perceive is widely accepted to be 20 kHz. Based on what we know about sample rates (see Nyquist) means to get your ear to perceive 20 kHz, you have to produce an audio file with a sample rate slightly greater than twice that amount (hence the 44.1 khz used with CDs). All advice from recording engineers and scientists is that the difference is how well they’re recorded and mastered. So a HiDef recording may sound better, but simply beacause it has been ‘manufactured/mastered’ differently, or came from a different source in the first place. For example see Steven Wilsons Mix And Master of Jethro Tull - Aqualung. A fundamentally different album. Another point is that DVDs use 48KHz, and the process of converting to/from seems to sometimes cause issues. See this for ensuring an iMac plays hi-res optical output (http://www.mcelhearn.com/how-t...udio-files-on-a-mac/). And these…. https://www.justmastering.com/...asteredforitunes.php & https://www.justmastering.com/...hresolutionaudio.php As for where to buy should I want any, HDtracks is a leader, but Qobuz has much the same files and is a lot cheaper…. I use Qobuz (http://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/shop )

Vinyl >> I hear my vinyl and it sounds good. Sometimes. But it is clear that from reading around the subject this is essentially a feature of poor mastering being put elsewhere (eg: on CDs) and a poor DAC being used to convert the digital output from CDs. If genuinely comparing the same recording on reasonable equipment, the digital version is more accurate to the recording. This can be measured. And scientific listening tests support this. What sounds ‘best’ is up to your ears, but if you like the vinyl it would be because the recording (master) is actually different or you like the ‘distortion’ introduced though the turntable mechanics. An example of ‘different’ is the recent Beatles Mono reissues. The CD and Vinyl masters were down differently, the vinyl from the original analogue masters (http://www.thebeatles.com/news...ad-directly-analogue). Now I have most of the original Beatles Mono albums (not the new ones) and it would be interesting to compare… Another point. If you want to connect a turntable into your system you will need an appropriate phono pre-amp. It may be included in your amplifier, or it may not (SuperUniti needs ones such as the Rega http://www.rega.co.uk/fono-mini-a2d.html ).

Speakers >> So. Speakers. As I mentioned early on, I hadnt really thought about what studios use. But they use Monitors. Sometimes from companies that also sell to the consumer. Think Harbeth, but also B&W, Dynaudio and Focal. Top Studio Monitors might be KRK, Adam, Neumann or ATC. B&W are used at Abbey Road apparently. A significant number of speaker manufacturers originated with BBC developed designs by the way…

Anyway if you are not familiar see : http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/professional/ or http://www.dynaudio.com/profes...studio-main-systems/ or http://www.adam-audio.com/en/pro-audio/products or http://www.harbeth.co.uk/uk/in...e=harbethinthestudio

Quote: “In a fully active loudspeaker system each driver has its own dedicated power amplifier. The low-level audio signal is first sent through an active crossover to split the audio signal into the appropriate frequency ranges before being sent to the power amplifiers and then on to the drivers. The main benefit of active versus passive speakers is in the higher fidelity associated with active crossovers and multiple amplifiers, including less IMD, higher dynamic range and greater output power.” and see : http://pteacoustics.com/linked...wered%20speakers.pdf

Leading manufacturers that have been referenced for use with Naim include Dali, PMC, Dynaudio, Harbeth, ATC, B&W, Focal, Neat, ProAC, Tannoy. But of course there are many more.

I have old B&W 603S2s and these sound great with the SuperUniti but I couldnt get the room filling power I wanted with the UnitiQute2. The UnitiQute2 sound really great with Dali bookshelf speakers though. These are old speakers - would a new speaker, ot indeed a new Monitor improve things? mmm. Ok the upgrade path…. But really all is OK. But Should I have spent money on new speakers - even active monitors, or something like the Dynaudio Xeo (http://www.dynaudio.com/home-audio/xeo/) I mentioned at the beginning, and just connect them to my iMac? Would that have given me something simpler but better? Or just different? Of course the only answer would be to listen, but that is really hard to get a fair comparison.  I think I would like to try the Harbeths, or some other Studio Monitor at home with my setup.....

Another key point is room placement. Some speakers have adjustments for rooms, some amplifiers have adjustments for rooms too (balance, tone). Most dont. You just have to think about it.  My room is a little asymmetric and this shows with left/right balance.

Accessories >> So, apparently modified power delivery helps. The Naim Powerline for example is just a plug and a wire but seems to be effective - see http://www.6moons.com/audiorev...naim2/powerline.html “Impacts are very physical. You really feel the power and slam.” General consensus is that if you have several products, that connect a multi-block like “Wireworld” with a single powerline makes some sense (see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0...coliid=IR3GZL3WW9776), but it doesnt stand much engineering scrutiny. Some argue that yes ‘improving’ the power supply can help, but actually it is not hard and should easily be fitted within the main product. Again, no true scientific testing supports the use of dedicated power supplies, so tread carefully. However read the Naim white paper on regulation : https://www.naimaudio.com/site...er_May2012_FINAL.pdf . I could then go on about cables and connectors, but I think this again is a question of “buyer beware”. See http://www.audioholics.com/gad...-audio-interconnects for example. I guess just try it, but it won't be making things closer to the original, they weren't used in the recording studios or in post-processing.  There is more… for example speaker spikes sound like a good idea, but not if you have thick underlay and they wont reach the hard floor beneath. Then very unstable!

nb: I had a speaker cable the wrong way round. Sounded a bit wrong. Polarity. These files help you check all is good… http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_index.php

This brings us back to where I started. Just thinking logically, it is actually impossible to get the music to sound how it was first recorded since it has since been ‘mastered’ whether a studio or live recording. You could get it to sound like the mastering engineer heard it or course, but their focus would have been on technical aspects of the recording. So there is no point looking for more unless you accept that it is just about your own ears - and perhaps some real functionality in the system as a whole (eg: supporting Tidal, Multi-Room playing, HiRes files, Bluetooth).

In the Naim world, why not use a streaming pre-amp such as the NAC-N 272 and pair with active speakers? Or indeed go straight from the source (files on an iMac) to active speakers? In the end I am very happy with SuperUniti and UnitiQute. The functionality is exactly what I needed, the sound is enjoyable to me, and I can see how adding something like a Mu-so Qb might be fun. And I can change stuff with new speakers when I feel the need. But it want easy getting there. Oh - and why not Sonos? Not sure really - never heard them in the end with my speakers, which kind of sums it all up. It is an emotional purchase like a car. And I wanted some traditional British HiFi.

Then I found out that Naim were now French…..

Oh well.

 

Maybe.

TL; DR as the kids say today