what's all the excitement about Dac's?

fun in the bath

lol

LOL.
Adam, I was expecting you to call me old fashioned!!

Many people, including myself, are discovering the pleasure and convenience of having all of our CD's "ripped" (transfered to) and stored on a computer hard drive. This allows access to music one-song-at-a-time, as opposed to necessarily playing an album-at-a-time. Computer software allows access to any of the music by search, or even by software-created playlists. Control can be via a portable or handheld remote (flash, iPhone, etc). All of this comes with little or no compromise in sound quality (some colorful "discussion" over this topic).

This trend has been gaining momentum and is IMHO becoming a "revolution" in home audio experience and products. It clearly is and has been a focus of the Naim R&D department as witnsed by NaimNet, DAC in the Supernait, HDX, Unity and soon a new DAC.

Hope this helps explain the interest in DACS. Now, as to why the intensity of discussion that has kept Adam so busy moderating, I haven't a clue...


Cheer,

Charlie

quote:

Originally posted by CharlieP:
Now, as to why the intensity of discussion that has kept Adam so busy moderating, I haven't a clue...


Cheer,

Charlie

LOL!!!

so,can I use one in my office where I listen to iTunes on my PC when working in there, and if so how?

quote:

Originally posted by CharlieP:
Many people, including myself, are discovering the pleasure and convenience of having all of our CD's "ripped" (transfered to) and stored on a computer hard drive. This allows access to music one-song-at-a-time, as opposed to necessarily playing an album-at-a-time.


Cheer,

Charlie

I cant think of a worse way of listening,track picking,most good albums are recorded to be listened to as an album,how can you get deep into the music by track picking,hate it,for ducks sake.

This topic crops up from time to time - http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5801938...312904996#9312904996 .

It is a new form of ritual. Not for everybody. many feel strongly about their rituals.

Duck!

quote:

This allows access to music one-song-at-a-time, as opposed to necessarily playing an album-at-a-time.

I'm not sure I understand this right...

Why would it be necessary to play a whole album-at-a-time, when you'd only use a CD-player ?

When I use a CD-player I mostly listen to a couple of tracks of an album.
(rarely a whole album from beginning to the end) With my SB3 it's not any different.

I am intrigued by the PC or MAC/DAC approach. However I cannot quite see how it is more convenient than a CD player. All ones CD's have firstly to be ripped to the hard disc and catalogued before one can access them. OK, I know on-line data bases take care of much of this, but what if some of your CD's (eg. very obscure ones) are not on the database? This must be a real pain. Then you have to have a monitor switched on all the time in order to view track information. Do people not find this distracting when listening to music? If you use a MacBook, as many seem to, then surely you need to keep getting up to peer at the screen as you navigate through tracks, unless you sit very near to the Mac. Then if you want to use your MacBook elsewhere for some other purpose it has to be disconnected from the Hi-Fi. What if your other half then decides they would like to listen to music on it? What if your hard drive fails - you've lost everything. You are also paying for an enormous amount of functionality that is entirely unconnected with music. Perhaps I'm missing something fundamental here, and if so I'd be happy for someone to put me right. To me it just seems so much simpler to pop a CD in a player and press PLAY.

Peter

Anyone wondering why people are interested in a Naim DAC should go and have a read through the Distributed Audio section of the forum.

pji: I found ripping my CDs to FLAC quite painless, I think out of 400 plus CDs only a couple didn't come up with info automatically. I don't use a computer to play back my music but rather a streaming device (Squeezebox 3) so there is no need to mess around with computers to listen to music. My CD5i hardly gets a look in anymore, having all my music only a few taps on a remote away is amazing. So for me a Naim DAC or streaming media player are interesting products that I may well purchase in the future.



I'm sure you'd rather see a Naim DAC in that photo?

Whats the excitement?

Well you DO want to be able to listen to digital files right?

Regardless of source CD, DVD, computer files from Naim website, DAT, laser disc, Wii, DCC, or ADC, you gotta change the "0"s and "1"s to an analog signal so your ear can hear them.

Unless you live in the Matrix of course.

pjl,

Understand I am not trying to persuade anyone to abandon their CD players. Only I am sharing what I have found appealing about this new approach to music enjoymet. I had (and still have, for now...) drawers full of CD's. I played a random mix (can't remember if it was on iTunes or SlimServer...) and it would play music from my collection at random. A song would play - Wow! who is that? I had forgotten I owned it, and it sounds great! This got me hooked at first.

Next I discovered the Pandora music service which is an internet music service that custom creates internet radio stations. You indicate a song or artist, they find similar music to play. You can fine tune the "station" by giving thumbs up or down to any song they play. Even though the quality is MP3, it isnt too bad, and I just loved it because it is a terrific way to learn about new music. I had never heard of Brad Mehldau before I used "Kind of Blue" to create a music stream on Pandora. There are many interesting internet radio stations which interest me (if I can keep from being snobbish about the MP3 quality thing) because of the variety and the fact I have very poor FM reception in my home.

Later I used MusicMagic (now called MusicIP) which allowed me to create playlists from my own music collection, in a manner similar to Pandora. The iTunes Genius playlist now is similar. This will find music in my collection which matches my mood or taste for the moment. These features also have a music discovery aspect where one can find music for purchase on the internet. (As for me I am still a snob about MP3's, and only buy my music as CD's or hi-res downloads).

This brings us to another major motivation for owning a decent DAC, which is to download and play music in 24 bit 96K hi-res format. There is currently only a negligible amount of music available this way, but... who knows what the future will bring.

In my opinion we are seeing just the beginning - the tip of the digital music icegerg.

Cheers,

Charlie

I have to agree with matt here
(Hi btw, nice to meet you here to!)

I belong to this "itunes generation" and cant stand to handle CD`s. But I own a few which i love like artworks.

I have full respect for those of you that only uses CD's or even vinyl, the feeling of handling the music in a physical storage medium is fantastic, the smell, the booklet, the artwork and so on.

How ever is the physical medium restricted to some point. Instead of switching CD's all the time I can enjoy my time in the sofa and just adjust the song or album in a few seconds.

There are a few interfaces I like nowdays to give that feeling of actual CD´s.
The iphone app for the Squezebox (as showed in mat's picture), or apples itunes remote app for iphone...
Or itunes coverflow in fullscreen on my computer in the sofa.

One more thing to consider is that I've bout a few albums online (flac) that I couldn't find as CD's in my country.
It just take a few minutes from I bought them online to I play them through my dac with very good quality. That has to be a big advantage...

(I use Apple Lossless format through Apple Airport Express to a Cambridge DacMagic)

quote:

Originally posted by CharlieP:
I am not trying to persuade anyone to abandon their CD players.

i am...

thanks for all the comments,but as I asked earlier, how can I use one on my office computer to improve the sound where I listen to iTunes whilst working?

quote:

Originally posted by matt303:
I found ripping my CDs to FLAC quite painless, I think out of 400 plus CDs only a couple didn't come up with info automatically.

Out of interest does this process preserve crucial artistic information like gap-length between album tracks and/or gapless playback? iTunes seems to persist in remaining spectacularly ignorant of either - it's one reason I'm hesitating ripping my whole CD collection to iTunes.

quote:

Originally posted by matt303:
I'm sure you'd rather see a Naim DAC in that photo?

hehe - absolutely!

hi munch, I have just a regular desk top of with a couple of external hard drives holding 600 or so cd's ripped at lossless to iTunes. I have some desk top speakers plugged into the PC, nothing special!!

quote:

You might as well just buy comp albums,and greatest hits.
Each to there own though.

Eek, I kinda hate Greatest Hits albums, Munch. (or "Best" of albums for that matter).

It's just that I don't often discover an album of which I like every song on it. So, why listen to tracks you don't really like, instead of picking out the ones you prefer.

I guess from the (around) 670 CD's I own, there are (around) 30 to 40 at max, that I really love completely.

For me the big bonus of computer audio + dac is its quality potential because of:
- You can play high resolution audio formats. CDA is limited in this.
- Hard disk (or better memory disk)used for storing music has again the potential to produce less jitter than CDP.

As I note, unfortunately I just say "potential" because computer audio IMO is still at its infancy. The fact is computers are being used for producing music for some time now and it is obvious you can use them too at your home.

quote:

Originally posted by carruthers esq.:
hi munch, I have just a regular desk top of with a couple of external hard drives holding 600 or so cd's ripped at lossless to iTunes. I have some desk top speakers plugged into the PC, nothing special!!

Simple solution is use one of these new 'audiophile' standard soundcards:

http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=13396

into good headphones , an amp/speaker combo (Nait/NSat?) or other PC type speakers of good quality.

DAC's are the big debating point because a number of users have been using them with PCs/MACs to good effect and when this happens the proponents get rather evangelical and the opposition defensive, so the debate all gets a bit polarised and heated.

However, the technology moves on and Naim like any other manufacturer will not wish to get left behind indeed they will be seeing it as an opportunity to further their customer base and good luck to them.

Fender (Strat)