They said: "I haven't listened to vinyl in a while either, as digital is so good now that if you factor in the convenience there's no contest - digital wins. There was absolutely no listening fatigue after 3 hours with this DAC! It is awesome."
and " Music is so sweet Mick, nothing "digital" left in the finished product"
Both of these guys are very long term, highly respected audiophiles with much experience and very well thought out (expensive) systems, so their opinions are very gratifying and convinces me that computer audio CA (computer audio) is as good as it gets in reproducing music, as it was recorded.
But can it be pushed further? Are we at the present limit of digital refinement?
The obvious place to look for an improvement is the computer itself- I'm quite happy with the sound of my stripped down and optimised Toshiba laptop, but would a computer built solely from scratch and only built for playing computer music files be better?
The Computer Audiophiles CAPS2 is such a device and everyone who owns one or has built their own versions of it report an improvement in sound quality over a generic laptop, pc, mac etc.
However I'm not a computer expert and building a fully tricked out computer music server is beyond my knowledge.
Fortunately I met Alex Le who is both a computer "geek" and an audiophile and he proposed building a no holds barred computer with the best of everything in it for me.
I decided to go with a windows based system, rather than a mac. I believe that in "standard" form macs probably have the edge over windows, but windows based operating systems can be specifically built for music serving, whereas, as far as I know, a mac is not so easily "hot-rodded".
Also, I much prefer the JRiver Media Centre 17's windows based file integration for managing artwork etc, and macs cant easily play flac files. I think wav files sound better, but artwork is not as well supported, and a bunch of wav files can get real messy real quick. JRMC plays everything, and well.
For those that know about such things the component list for the new computer is:
Core i7 2700k
Low latency Corsair 8gb ram
Intel SSD
Sotm Sata filter
Sotm USB PCI card
Seasonic Power supply
Gigabyte z77 motherboard
3m damping and stillpoints ERS material
Case and Heatsinks are by Nofan
The first thing that was obvious when I received the final product was that it was very spartan, with nothing in it that wasn't necessary for solely playing music, and it was very fast.
It is also very quiet, with the only indication it is on a small LED on back panel.
So has does it compare to an optimised for music Toshiba laptop?
The first thing I immediately noticed was a sense of POWER, bass was more immediate and stronger, but not in a sense of loudness or amplitude- it was just more realistic and dynamic.
The next thing I noticed , and importantly for me, as I'm very enthusiastic about imaging and sound-staging, was pinpoint imaging and and a greater sense of 3D'ness.
Simply point, there's more of the recording revealed, which can make bad recordings very obvious, but when you get a good one, well it is just magnificent.You dont just hear the song, you hear the room, and all the 1 percents that make the total sum of the recording.
Like all good electronic equipment, this computer contributes no sound of its own and lets more of the recording come through- its processing and reproduction is "purer" .
Flat earthers who still think that vinyl, with its wow and flutter, tone arm resonances, inaccurate cartridges, and other colorations produces a " better" sound than state of the art CA probably wouldn't like this computer over vinyl. ( Please remember I built phono preamps for 30 years and Suprateks reputation was built on phono preamps)
There is just no coloration from this level of digital playback, indeed the optimised Toshiba laptop I was using previously does sound colored in comparism to the new computer.
The Toshiba's cost around $800, this super computer cost $2500, so is it $1700 better?
In terms of absolute sound quality, most definitely, but you are going to hear every single piece of information on the recording- there are no "tone" artifacts coming from the equipment to color the sound.
Again, bad recordings sound terrible, there is no warmth or veiling for the imperfection to hide behind, but when a good recording is played , everything comes together in a glorious burst of music- it is as good as it presently gets.
Recording engineers are going to have to step up to the challenge of recording for this new breed of super resolving playback equipment, rubbish in-rubbish out becomes very obvious now.
I have a www.2l.no recording done at 352Khz wav , possibly the highest technology available for recording purposes at this time. Played back on this system at native sample rate is simply the best reproduction I've ever heard. The same file is also available as a DSD and sound is also very close to perfection.
Many seem to think that SACD which also uses DSD is in the same league , but there are two extra process's in getting the 352Khz wav file to SACD analog output, it is most definitely not the same "purity" as a master file played on a computer.
