[SlimDevices: Touch] My thoughts on the sound quality of the Touch
Well, I had a pretty rocky start with my Touch since I was unable to play anything out of my iTunes library due to a bug in the way Apple Lossless files are detected but with Phil's help I am running witha workaround now. I wanted to post my impressions of the Touch from a sound quality perspective. I have my Touch optically connected (glass toslink, don't EVER use plastic toslink if you want good sound quality!!) to a Pioneer Elite SC-25 receiver which drives a pair of Klipsch Forte IIs (custom crossovers) and a HSU VTF-3 Mk3 sub. I have the Touch's analog outputs connected to an Audio-DG C-2C headphone amp that drives my AKG K701 headphones. Prior to the Touch I had a Squeezebox 2 connected the same way. The first thing I noticed was the lack of what I would call edginess or sibilance with vocals. Patricia Barber's 'Touch of Trash' (no pun intended) always had a fatiguing sibilance I could never get rid off dispite the myriad of components I have had thru my system. With the Touch, the sibilance actually sounds likelike and non-fatiguing. I think this is so due to the more full bodied sound you get from the Touch. Instruments sound fleshed out, rounder and complete. They stand out in the soundscape and are not homogenized like they were with the SB2. There are 2 other things that are exceptional with the Touch. First, imaging and soundstaging are first rate. For the first time with a digital streaming product it is impossible to coorelate the sound as coming directly from each speaker. The soundstage is slightly above and way left and right of each speaker but the center imaging (I don't have a center channle speaker) is perfect. I am going to guess that this is due to the nearly lack of jitter in the digital output of the Touch. It is spectacular to finally be set free from the confines of the width of the two speakers but retain pinpoint instrument placement. Secondly, frequency extremes are ... more extreme. Listening to some old Neil Diamond songs I hear some odd low frequency thumps here and there that could be from the analog tape transfer or some studio noise during the recording. Whatever it is, it was glossed over with the SB2 but the Touch reveals such things easily. In the upper range, cymbals are likelike with that 'ping' and shimmer you get when hitting a cymbal lightly with a drumstick (check out E.S.T or Keith Jarrett jazz albums). With the SB2 there was way less body and far more sizzle which made it sound very artificial in comparison. At this point I am thrilled with the Touch and I would delete my initial posting I made of the Touch if I could (although SBS 7.5 is still broken for ALAC as far as I know). If the Touch doesn't make Product Of The Year by Stereophile or Absolute Sound then I will lose complete faith in the audio press. Im my opinion it is by far the best money I have spent for a piece of audio equipment in ages, maybe ever. I do not work for Logitech and have not been told by anyone to praise the Touch for any reason. I just want to try and right the wrong I made ititially about the Touch. Ed -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77649 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
Re: [SlimDevices: Touch] My thoughts on the sound quality of the Touch
Covenant;538075 Wrote: Wow, what a great review-can't wait to get mine. I was interested in your comment about glass optical interconnect cables. I use a high quality coaxial one handmade by someone on one of the hifi forums. I guess if it was produced by one of the well known makes it would cost three figures. Have you compared yours to a decent coaxial? Glass opticals are not often mentioned. Sorry if this is an audiophile question but its your fault Logitech-you have obviously made an audiophile product! What lead me to optical was that I had a slight ground loop (or something similar) going on when I had the SB2 connected via coaxial digital to the Pioneer. I had a cheap plastic Toslink cable that came with my PC's soundcard so I tried it and the low level hum went away but I wasn't happy with the mildly grainy (for lack of a better word) sound quality with the Toslink. I googled for Toslink sound quality and found lots of posts and jitter measurements comparing plastic to glass Toslink. The consensus was that glass is much better if your system can reveal the differences. I bought a 3' glass Toslink cable for about $30 (BetterCables.com) and the sound quality was grainless AND hum free. Problem solved. I like the idea of the connection being electrically decoupled in a sense. -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77649 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
Re: [SlimDevices: Touch] My thoughts on the sound quality of the Touch
Yes, terminations are critical and from what I'm reading are usually better on glass toslink cables. I was concerned about the quality of the conversion from electrical - optical - optical - electrical but I can honesty say that the glass Toslink sounds identical to the coaxial digital connection in my system (despite the hum) but the plastic Toslink was borderline disasterous sonically. It could be that a better quality plastic Toslink cable could be just as good as glass but why bother when the costs are not huge between the two. Certainly less than a tank of gas for my van! -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77649 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
Re: [SlimDevices: Touch] My thoughts on the sound quality of the Touch
Phil Leigh;538202 Wrote: Not really. Light transitions travel just as well through plastic as glass over a few meters. And - to make toslink work - it really doesn't have to travel all that well. One of my best friends owns a company that actually makes fibre... It has to handle WAY more bandwidth than Toslink.. The real problem with toslink/optical are the transition points from cable to opto-isolator/driver. There really (almost) isn't such a thing as a crappy plastic cable - but there are badly finished ends that scatter...and poorly fitting connectors. Anyway, this is way OT now! Then it sounds like maybe my plastic toslink cable had some poor termination to make it sound horrible. I'm just glad the hum is gone! -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77649 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
[SlimDevices: Touch] Aarrg! SB Touch + SBS 7.5 = waste of money...
Ok I am frustrated. I have an SB2 and 2 days ago purchased a SB Touch which mandates SBS 7.5. I have installed SBS 7.5, 7.5.1 + 7.6 and NONE of them will FIX the 'Cannot open D:\Itunes' issue. I have a large Itunes library completely made up of ALAC files and I cannot listen to any of them. This is such a huge bug for a product that supposedly had been delayed to make sure everthing worked out of the box. I have read the threads about this issue and have tried different SBS builds, different FAAD.EXEs (even one that a none-Logitech person modified to try and fix this issue) and none of them work. SBS has always been the Achilles Heel of this product line and when it works it works well but it has been plagued with bugs that somehow make it thru 'QA'. I was hoping this would be plug and play but I am ready to throw the Touch thru a window. Sorry for the rant. This is just so unacceptable. -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77511 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
Re: [SlimDevices: Touch] Aarrg! SB Touch + SBS 7.5 = waste of money...
Don't need too since a Logitech developer is already aware of the issue (in the DEV forum) but it has not resolved yet. How can this slip past testing? -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=77511 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
Re: [SlimDevices: Touch] Has the Touch release date been delayed?
People! The complaints here show just how materialistic and impatient our society is. It's just a music player. Do you not have an MP3 player or a CD player already? Is your life at a point where your biggest worry is when you can get your Touch? Do you not have other hobbies or interests? Do you think the Touch would be important to you if you lost your job tomorrow or if a family member became sick? Grow up and get your priorities straight. It's just a plastic box with a screen, nothing magical. end of rant -- AudioFrog AudioFrog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9568 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71178 ___ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
