Pc connection to V1 Dac - any advice

From my own tinkering, Jriver sounds much better than iTunes, and Fidelizer also makes a big difference. If you don't know of it, Fidelizer turns off a lot of system services to varying degrees, depending on how severe you wish it to be.

From what I have read, having a dedicated PC for audio playback is the best option; I haven't gone down this route yet, but probably will as running Fidelizer at its most extreme setting makes the PC virtually unusable for anything else, and requires a restart to recover from. Not having the PC in this state is enough of a compromise that on some material I don't like how it sounds; typically the worse the original CD sounds, the more significant the difference that it makes.

I *think* that using Jriver to upsample 44.1 to 352.8 (as opposed to lower multiples) also makes a difference but need to test further.

David,

with some patience and the 'search' function you should find just about everything you need. But, as a general introduction:

- Are you using Windows or Mac?

I am not too familiar with the Windows platform, but they say DBPoweramp is great ripping software and JRiver great playback software.

If you're using Mac, some simply leave iTunes as it is; in this case, you may want to use XLD (free) as ripping/converting software and buy BitPerfect in the Apple store: it will automatically select the bit rate of the outgoing file, which iTunes does not (in case you have some HiRes files).

In case you use Mac and do not trust iTunes because it's too much a proprietary, closed player (and it does not replay FLAC), it seems that Audirvana is a good sounding replay software for the Mac.

Main formats are:

WAV: 16/44.1 CD format, not compressed, lossless. Works everywhere but you find it difficult to add artwork to WAV files in iTunes.

AIFF: Apple's own lossless, uncompressed format. You can write CD-ROMs in AIFF and they will be replayed on any CDP.

FLAC: A compressed, lossless format, presently very popular codec. It takes less space than either WAV or AIFF (which use the same 'space' as the original file) but without apparent loss of information.

ALAC: Apple's own lossless codec. Works like FLAC. Most HiRes files available for download in specialized sites are in FLAC.

Naim rippers - HDX, UnitiServe - use WAV.

From here, you can go anywhere with a little documentation.

Best,

Max

- As for cables, in case you don't trust plain USB cables as can be found in the box, I understand that WireWorld make good cables, with clever design behind them and some reason for the design apart from marketing trends and current fashions.

I have downloaded the trial version of Jriver, but the Naim knowledge base advice on settling the audio output seems to have been overtaken by changes to the software. Anyone able to advise how and what settings to choose ? The V1Dac manual has reference to a windows driver installation but I can't find the driver.

Thanks Paul, I've got the driver, but now I don't know what kind of USB cable I need. Is it a Naim proprietary one? I presume that one ships with the US, but mine was shipped with the bag of goodies for a UQ by mistake, and I may not have received a USB cable.

Hi Dave,

My V1 didn't come with a USB cable. I bought a Chord one, principally because that is what my dealer stocks.

http://www.chord.co.uk/product...ct-type-a-to-type-b/

Any type A to B USB cable should get you going though; I'm told they're standard for connecting peripherals to PCs, e.g. printers. I bought the Chord as my cable run is at the 3m limit, so guessed that a decent quality cable was advisable.

Should have added that the cable you need is easily available, PC World definitely have them for a few £.

Ok, up and running now! Thanks to all for the advice.

Just as background, I would usually use Nserve/Unitiserve to play my HD downloads, which are on a NAS. However, network problem stopped me from doing this during the week, and I wanted a backup method. So now I've dug out an old PC, which I can dedicate to this task when required. I've put all my HD downloads on it, copied from USB key. So now I have 4 copies of each download!

Glad to hear you've got it working.