Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] external DAC could someone suggest anything?
Pat Farrell;211596 Wrote: First, I'd listen to it for a month or two, and see if you really like it. If you are happy, you are done. I second that. I somewhat prematurely (I am new to all this and had some misconceptions and my amp-speaker combination is new too) bought an external DAC myself, a Beresford, one of the cheapest DACs you can get. ;) To my ears the Beresford isn't better nor worse than the SB3 internal DAC and so far I really have heard differences only in a few tracks. To come to the point, my view now is that I wouldn't have needed the Beresford for my needs, since the SB3 with it and the analog outs of the SB3 alone sound both very similiar and very good IMO. My amp is an Cambridge Audio 540Av2, speakers are Mordaunt Short 904i. Bye, signor_rossi. -- signor_rossi signor_rossi's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11941 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36480 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] NAD 3020 variants
swhite58;211519 Wrote: I'm looking for a cheap used amp to replace my aging (and dying) Luxman L4. I don't want to spend much money as I'm saving up to buy myself some more serious gear for my 50th birthday next year. I thought what about an old NAD? Currently, there are three different NAD 3020's for sale on eBay Australia: 3020e 3020i 3020 series 20 They'll probably sell for a similar price. Doesd anyone know whether there are any significant differences between them?Why don't you look at the 3130's as well. Very similar presentation to the 3020, but with a little more power. I believe they were very highly thought of too. -- david68 david68's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12107 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36468 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] external DAC could someone suggest anything?
The Lavry DA10 I'm using is stunning and works great with the SB3. But it's expensive at close to $1k US. The SB3 is a wonderful transport device, but it isn't an audiophile grade source. I personally love the flexibility that the combination of SB3 and external DAC gives me. And the Lavry is world class if you can stomach the price of admission. -- bmclaurin bmclaurin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12183 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36480 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Where to buy a Lavry Black
ErikM;211195 Wrote: Atlas Pro Audiohttp://www.atlasproaudio.com/ Just got mine $975.00 free shipping and a free T-shirt :-) x2 Atlas was great. Free, quick shipping, and yes, even a T-shirt. -- bmclaurin bmclaurin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12183 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36369 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] external DAC could someone suggest anything?
Short tale I bought a behringer src 2496...as it was so cheap approx £90..with a little effort I made a number of simple standard mods ..damped the case fitted schottky diodes swapped the psu caps for panna fc's . Anyway I took this over to a chap with a mk1 benchmark dac1..to cut the story short he was gobsmacked at the src not only did thourghly spank the benchmark it put it to bed with no supper. He sold the dac1 for about £700 bought a src and I modded it total cost of about £250 tops ..then spent the rest on music ... -- zanash zanash's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12157 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36480 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] NAD 3020 variants
the sonic t is not up with the 3020b in power terms but it has imaging to die for ..if you have 100 db sensitiviety speakers you could give it a go...if not the nads great ...I've got both -- zanash zanash's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12157 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36468 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Lite AH DAC (modded), SB3, dedicated 5v linear p/s
I agree there should be a classified .would stop people posting in the wrong sections ? -- zanash zanash's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12157 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36454 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Nostromo;211622 Wrote: I see... But is there a master list of problem CD's? More or less all of them released since 2000, and a significant proportion of them since 1995 or so. -- Mark Lanctot 'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910postcount=2) Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Here is why no FF/RW
Thanks to Sean for the detailed explanation as to why ff/rw can't be implemented as it is in a CD player. However, add me to the list of people that thinks ff/rw should be done differently than it is currently. The current implementation essentially doesn't work (at least not for me -- I use mostly FLAC). I would much prefer a solution that does the following: ff: jump forward about 30 seconds (it doesn't matter if it's not exactly 30 seconds), rwd: jump backward about 10 seconds. This would be very useful and I'm guessing it could be implemented easily. Right now I use songscanner plugin and I'm reasonably happy with that. -- lanierb lanierb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5566 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36446 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Here is why no FF/RW
flipflip;211357 Wrote: the need for jumping forward and backward in a stream is critical to me. I listen to lots of podcasts (downloaded separately [1]) and audio books (e.g. language courses). And in this case I need to skip backwards a few seconds all the time to listen to a sentence I did not understand again. And here the FW/RW which is available is not suitable. So I wrote a small plugin that offers a function to skip forward or backward a certain amount of time [2] and mapped that function to buttons I don't need otherwise. This works great, apart from the playtime display which gets out of sync and the inaccuracy of the skipping, but that doesn't bother me. [2] http://oinkzwurgl.org/skipper Have you looked at the Song Scanner plugin? Like lanierb, I've been using Song Scanner to move through longer recordings like podcasts and radio shows. One reason I mention this is that Song Scanner doesn't seem to cause problems with the playtime display. I think your skip forward/back sounds really good. That's something I've become accustomed to having for video recordings with my MythTV setup, and I think it'd be nice on the Squeezebox. While I've said before that I think the overloaded/modal button behavior is problematic, I wonder about an intelligent all-software (no map file edit) solution like a plugin that would provide two modes for Fwd/Rew: jumping seconds forward/back within a track; and skipping to the beginning/end of tracks (current behavior). Default behavior would be that jumping would require you to press some button on the remote like Now Playing and then within a second or so, press Fwd or Rew to jump. Subsequent Fwd/Rew presses (within the 1 second of the last Fwd/Rew/Now Playing press) would be interpreted as jump. The plugin should allow users 1) the ability to reverse the behavior (i.e, treat plain Fwd/Rew as Jump, and require a Now Playing button press to get the Skip behavior that the buttons have out-of-the-box now) 2) the ability to have the plugin always treat Fwd/Rew as Jump if there's only one item in the playlist, since Skip only makes sense with multiple items in the playlist (my typical podcast usage; probably not as helpful for language lessons where you probably queue up multiple tracks) 3) the ability to specify how many seconds to jump, and allow different Fwd and Rew timings (normally I'd expect Fwd to jump more seconds than Rew) -Peter P.S. I don't use the built-in podcast support, either. I've been much happier setting up a third-party app to download selected podcasts to my Slimserver music directory. -- peterw http://www.tux.org/~peterw/ free plugins: http://www.tux.org/~peterw/#slim BlankSaver BottleRocket FuzzyTime SaverSwitcher SleepFade StatusFirst VolumeLock peterw's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2107 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36446 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] NAD 3020 variants
david68;211678 Wrote: Why don't you look at the 3130's as well. Very similar presentation to the 3020, but with a little more power. I believe they were very highly thought of too. Funny you should say that - now I'm bidding for a 3140 -- swhite58 Clark Connect Linux file server-SB3-Luxman L4-Gale speakers/Sennheiser headphones swhite58's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5038 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36468 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
RG can't be used on a CD. But yes, this is exactly what RG is meant to combat. Unfortunately if the waveforms are clipped flat right on the CD, there's nothing RG can do about that. That data is gone forever. -- Mark Lanctot 'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910postcount=2) Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Mark Lanctot;211712 Wrote: RG can't be used on a CD. Absolutely impossible or technically impossible right now? But yes, this is exactly what RG is meant to combat. Unfortunately if the waveforms are clipped flat right on the CD, there's nothing RG can do about that. That data is gone forever. But if something like RG was made universal, it would put an end to the loudness war era. Of course, the music made during the loudness war era would still sound bad. -- Nostromo Nostromo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=6322 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Nostromo;211716 Wrote: Absolutely impossible or technically impossible right now? It's not defined as a CD standard. It's not impossible, look at all the extra data they can fit on a CD. But it's not part of the standard. Besides, it would be better to get them to stop doing this stupid stuff in the first place. If they won't stop that, why would they ever put RG correction data on the CD? -- Mark Lanctot 'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910postcount=2) Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Nostromo wrote: Mark Lanctot;211712 Wrote: RG can't be used on a CD. Absolutely impossible or technically impossible right now? Nothing is absolutely impossible. But, and its a big but, the CD is dead. The RedBook spec is 25 years old and is not going to be changed. SACD and DVD-A were supposed to be the audiophile solution to CD's limitations, and they have failed. But if something like RG was made universal, it would put an end to the loudness war era. Of course, the music made during the loudness war era would still sound bad. And this means all pop/rock/alt/emo/... music in the past decade or more. In theory, they could be remastered from the original tapes, but there is no reason to expect that. Only a tiny number of CDs sell enough to get a second printing, let alone remastering. -- Pat http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Mark Lanctot wrote: Besides, it would be better to get them to stop doing this stupid stuff in the first place. If they won't stop that, why would they ever put RG correction data on the CD? And it is even less likely that they would put a *correct* RG value in there. it would just be another opportunity to make the music EVEN LOUDER. ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
The CD player couldn't scan the tracks on the CD, give them a Replay Gain value and then store it on the CD player itself? Anyway, like pfarrell pointed out, the CD is dying. -- Nostromo Nostromo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=6322 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Mark Lanctot;211718 Wrote: Besides, it would be better to get them to stop doing this stupid stuff in the first place. If they won't stop that, why would they ever put RG correction data on the CD? They would add RG values indicating that amplification was needed -- and still compress the dynamic range, because music with RG amplification *and* compressed dynamics would sound louder (and, in noisy environments, *better*) than music that only had RG amplification. If CD players started reading using RG data on audio CDs, the problem would only get worse. It would be much better for audio standards to include compression recommendations. Record full-range tracks on the CD and use metadata to indicate the recommended amount of dynamic range compression. And add compression controls to music players that could be applied to music that lacked compression metadata so they can make full-range music sound better in worse listening environments. It's a shame that Sony Philips didn't build this into the audio CD standard from the get-go -- I don't know if they failed to foresee the problem, or if this seemed unthinkably demanding on the 1980s era playback gear. -Peter -- peterw http://www.tux.org/~peterw/ free plugins: http://www.tux.org/~peterw/#slim BlankSaver BottleRocket FuzzyTime SaverSwitcher SleepFade StatusFirst VolumeLock peterw's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2107 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Nostromo;211727 Wrote: The CD player couldn't scan the tracks on the CD, give them a Replay Gain value and then store it on the CD player itself? That would need one helluva CD player. And don't forget, aside from us crazies, this isn't seen as a problem. The labels are doing this quite on purpose and think it's a good thing. -- Mark Lanctot 'Sean Adams' Response-O-Matic checklist, patent pending!' (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=200910postcount=2) Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] First shot at using Inguz
After buying a decent sound card I get good measurements now and am enjoying a proper working room correction now, which really is a huge improvement over non-corrected sound :- I am a happy guy :) -- tingtong5 tingtong5's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9671 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35615 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] SB3 Internal Power Supply Circuit Questions
I already have a 5V linear regulated supply in place of the walwart and am pleased with the improvement to the sound. The next step would seem to be to provide a well filtered 14VDC for the linear regs that supply the analogue stages. Question 1: Does the switcher that normally supplies the 14VDC need a minimum load to function properly? The analogue stage uses approx 20mA. Question 2: The digital side of the DAC runs off 3V3 supplied by a switching PSU. Is there much/any benefit to be gained by using a linear PSU instead? Sean Adams suggested the possibility of using the headphone amp's 3V3 supply in an old thread. -- S-Man S-Man's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9593 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36495 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] prefered listening position a or b ? - hope it make sence
What is the preferred listening position: a:speakers either side but in front of me spkr...spkr me b: speakers either side of me and in straight line spkrme.spkr -- fast eddie fast eddie's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7826 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36496 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] prefered listening position a or b ? - hope it make sence
A. That is what the engineer who mastered the CD did... -- Phil Leigh You want to see the signal path BEFORE it gets onto a CD/vinyl...it ain't what you'd call minimal... ...SB3+TACT+Altmann+MF DACXV3/Linn tri-amped Aktiv 5.1 system and some very expensive cables ;o) Phil Leigh's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=85 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36496 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Even if a RG standard were adopted that still doesn't fix all the badly mastered CDs already there. Think of it as being served a scrambled egg and wishing you had poached instead. Just as the egg can't be unscrambled, a distorted compressed CD with clipped signals can't be restored. A good example in the past would be the many LP records recorded in the 70's when one of the fads at that time on many rock records were poorly recorded, muffled drums and bass. It certainly wasn't a technical issue as there were recordings that got those right. Then, like today, I suspect the producers are far more concerned how their stuff sounds to the mass market listeners than whether they've produced a quality audio product. -- mlsstl mlsstl's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9598 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] prefered listening position a or b ? - hope it make sence
A is also what makes sense from a psychoacoustical perspective. The music should be 'over there' while I am 'over here'. Having the centre of the image away from the listener therefore makes sense. Unless you are listening to recordings of yourself, I guess, or are an irrepressable egomaniac... :) -- adamslim Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others http://www.last.fm/user/AdamSlim/ 'Last.fm group: people who don't listen to any of last.fm's top artists' (http://www.last.fm/group/People+who+don%27t+listen+to+any+of+last.fm%27s+top+artists) SB+, EAR 859, Living Voice Auditorium II plus some other stuff SB3, Shek d2, Ming-Da MC84-C, Harbeth HL-P3ES adamslim's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7355 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36496 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] Nice feature on why modern music sounds bad
Pat Farrell;211600 Wrote: It is purely a myth that louder CDs get more airplay and thus more sales. What it does is suck all the life out of the music. And it destroys the hard work of the recording and mastering engineers. Why sweat to make it right to have some bozo crank up the compressor at the end? Its very disheartening. What is really sad is that *all* radio stations have their own compressors to wack the music and suck the life out of it. 20 years or so ago, I was the engineer at one of those radio stations. For maybe a couple years, I did a pretty good job of staying clear of the loudness war. But, finally the management told me I must make our station the loudest in town. Talk about disheartening. All the work I'd put into tweaking on the equipment to get it to sound the best it could was now wasted; the audio processing shredded it right before the transmitter. I resigned shortly after cranking up the processing. -- Timothy Stockman Timothy Stockman's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8867 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36476 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
[SlimDevices: Audiophiles] *Cheap* 2-Channel Receiver for SB3
Hi, I need to power two speakers on my deck. Looking for an inexpensive receiver to put between my SB3 and the two speakers. Budget is $200 or less. Thanks, Chris -- parfour7th parfour7th's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11289 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36501 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] *Cheap* 2-Channel Receiver for SB3
http://www.si5.com/products.php?pID=4004 Works best with high-efficiency speakers -- vdonovan vdonovan's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11536 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36501 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
Re: [SlimDevices: Audiophiles] *Cheap* 2-Channel Receiver for SB3
Yup. The T-amp will sound a lot better than a cheapo 100-watt receiver. -- Pale Blue Ego Pale Blue Ego's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=110 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36501 ___ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
