Phil Leigh;376353 Wrote: > Jez, > The difference that the OP is hearing is almost certainly down to the > fact that his Nakamichi CD Mech (+whatever spdif cable he is using) is > contributing more jitter than his SB setup.
AND/OR that the Tact processor, despite the claims of it's manufacturer, is incapable of remaining uninfluenced by that amount of jitter. So, either the Tact or the Nakamichi, as I said, is either useless or broken - or poorly designed or poorly manufactured if you prefer less inflammatory terms. So, take the Tact processor out. Listen again. Difference gone? Then Marc Levinson can do a better job from the same SPDIF signal than Tact. Junk the Tact. Same difference? Then it is the Nakamichi that is poorly designed or manufactured. Junk it. Either way there is no evidence that "Served music sounds better", just that good engineering performs better than bad engineering. (Incidentally, I have to say I can't understand why you would put a Tact processor between an SB3 and a DAC - surely you should do the same processing that the Tact does on your server/pc?, or use the Tact to pre-process your stored music. If it is so sensitive to jitter, why put it in the signal path when it doesn't need to be there?). What I am challenging more generally is the assumption that if, say, one $500 speaker cable sounds better in a $10k Stereophile-type review system than another $500 speaker cable, then one cable is 'better' than the other and you should buy it. Obviously, Stereophile and it's advertisers would like you to spend more money, but why not deduce instead that the amplifier involved isn't worth the (probably vast amount of) money, since it should be capable of driving a wide range of loads without being influenced by them. (Assuming of course that the cables aren't absurd or inadequate electrically, and that the amp manufacturer hasn't specified a particular brand of cable to use). So, when you switch one component in a system and notice a difference - it may point to an inadequacy (broken-ness, useless-ness) elsewhere in the system, rather than an inherent advantage in the switched component. -- JezA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JezA's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=21219 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57173 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
