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In Reply to: RE: PC replacement for dcs stack posted by avkmusic on June 12, 2008 at 14:34:01
Here are some links:http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1199206353&read&3&4&
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/2/20591.html
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/3/32627.html
Edits: 06/12/08Follow Ups:
Thanks for all the comments in this thread!!
Looks like I'll go ahead and buy a Big Ben. I've heard others with dCS say they did not hear any difference between a BB and a Verona, and it looks to me like the BB is more flexible with digital inputs. I've read of modifications to the Big Ben. Can anyone recommend someone, and detail the mods and cost? I've looked at mauimods', Empirical's, and Black Lion's etc. sites for info. re this and do not see any.
Then, I guess I'll try to improve upon my Airport Express and replace it with something better to drive into the dCS/Big Ben stuff. Any suggestions?
Then, I'll start to tinker with ripping CDs onto NAS and feed that into the system via AES or s/pdif or USB. Then, I'll revisit the attempt to replace the dCS stuff, or at least the Verdi Encore anyway. I suspect it will be hard to beat the DSD from the Elgar Plus, but I'll try.
Thanks again to everyone who has posted comments!!
Any suggestions I will make will be construed as advertising, so lets take it off-line please.
Steve N.
Steve, thanks much for the links.
But I had read those threads and hoped someone here with experience replacing or comparing the dCS stack vs the Empirical Audio Spoiler, Benchmark DAC1, DEQX, Northstar DAC192 or Extremo, etc. can provide more detail.
I guess I'd also be curious if anyone has compared theh dCS stack to the EMM Labs CD/SACD Player which supposedly upsamples to twice the rate of DSD (though I'd have to use the Lamm L1 in the chain which, as i indicated in the original post, is something I'd rather not do, and it also does not move me to a PC/MAC based solution allowing me to put my thousands of cds in storage).
So, rather than resurrect old threads separately I decided to create this new thread for the purpose of detailed comments regarding replacement of the dCS stack.
And with regard to those threads above, the first thread mentions the dCS in comparison to the Spoiler DAC was "only found pleasing with SACD." I wonder if that includes the dCS upsampling to DSD and, if so, wheher the dCS upsampling to DSD was preferable to the Spoiler DAC.
And the other two threads do not provide much detail regarding a direct comparison to the dCS.
Brucemck2, if you are reading this I would appreciate if you could provide detail as to the DEQX being "stunning". Did you find it much better than your dCS stack? Or was it stunning performance for the money, but still not up to the dCS? Any detail as to other components (amps/speakers/cables, etc.) that you used at the time would also be appreciated.
And, if anyone else has any comments please chime in.
Thanks again.
avkmusic,
regarding your original query:
I never really liked the dcs stack with redbook cds, much prefering the Zanden chain, which seemed more natural, whereas the dcs stack especially when listened to in DSD mode, gave the music a somehwat unnatural, sort of bloated note. Not so with SACD, where I found it to be excellent. The Spoiler now, with internal pace-car through my Toshiba easily bettered the Zanden, not to speak of the dcs, especially in the soundsage and the placing of instruments. Dynamics where more or less the same. If you think of the cost of the Zanden chain or the dcs stack, the SPOILER is a steal!
I owned a dCS stack prior to their release of the firewire and SACD upsampling. For D/A I had the two box Elgar+Purcell unit that up converted to 24/96. Transports were a dCS and a Meridian 800.The dCS is a very nice unit. I preferred the Meridian transport to the dCS transport: it had more "rhythm" and was more coherent, albeit not a huge difference.
The modded DEQX is very nice. It's got tremendous slam and impact; it just never runs out of gas on high impact / transient passages. And it's got a very nice "liquidity" -- a quality I really seek out -- that's pretty rare. It's more like a tight tube preamp than a solid state preamp (more like my old Ref2 than my new 861v4); it's more like a dipole speaker than a sealed box speaker; it's more like a high end Koetsu cartridge than a typical high end moving coil cartridge. Hard to describe, but easy to hear.
Finally, I replaced my Meridian 800 transport with Steve's Off Ramp Turbo2 feeding a Pace Car. Even without the Pace Car the Off Ramp sounded better. Not a lot better, but better, and the amazing user interface of PC based audio over traditional CD made the switch a no brainer. I can't imagine going back.
I've not heard the Meitner gear and so can't comment on it.
Brucemck2,
Do you still have your modded DEQX and Offramp combo. If so, has the honeymoon wore off or have you moved onto something else?
I have a DEQX version 3 and am considering the OffRamp 3.
Thanks,
Tim
Interesting posts, off-ramp? I'll google it,I built an AMD duo-core 4200 with a Micro Star International Mainboard onboard Reltek 888 soundcard, I run Foobar 2000, w/ASIO 4 free Driver thru 2.1 Altec Lansing $75.00 and it sounds pretty good!
Now I Understand
re: your built athlon, go into the bios and play with the spread spectrum control. It may be on or off, its supposed to reduce EMI but it throttles the processor, so it may adversely effect the sound quality, not sure which is better, I have a mac.
8086: Thanks, I went into the bios and the spread spectrum was off, I did turn on the AMD "Cool an Quiet" function, the athlonx2 did quiet down some, I have a Nvidia monitor I'll watch for the difference, thanks again,audioAl
Now I Understand
I would be suspicious of the cool and quiet - anything that throttles the cpu (which is what that does) is going to create switching noise. There is a function on the mac which does this called napping, turning that off made a big gain.
If you want to reduce noise go to quietpc.com lots of great stuff on fans etc. Personally I use a laptop that specifically picked out for audio as I can turn off napping (its a g4 mac) and one that the fans pretty much never come on. The results are spectacular if your willing to dial it in.
I bet you could come out even better than the mac if you tweak your pc, I believe while the mac offers a great bit-perfect playbaack, that the software (foodbar and cplay) for the pc is much more mature and high end. Maybe some day i'll try out the pc, but for now im just enjoying the music.
8086, would you please tell me what you mean by "napping"? It sounds like the snooze in System Preferences. (My Mac is a PowerBook G4 and its OS X Leopard 10.5.3 is in French so the translation may be confusing me).
Before I switched back to a Mac I built my own PCs and one of the few things I miss is all the component and BIOS flexibility I used to have.
FWIW I think I have heard some people now install Linux on their Macs.
Also, my wife has a Mac too, a MacBook. I installed VMWare Fusion and Windows XP Pro on her MacBook, mainly because she needed just one Windows program and I was curious as to how well the virtualization would work.
Anyhoo, I will eventually try to test a music setup with Linux on a Mac and/or Windows on a Mac via VMWare/Windows.
if you install the CHUD tools, and then go to "developer" and extras there is a preference pane called processor. It allows you to turn off "napping" which throttles the CPU somewhat, It was a big problem with g5's and recording studios introducing noise. It really smoothes out the sound and gives a lot of extra finesse.
- https://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MemberSite.woa/wa/getSoftware?bundleID=19886 (Open in New Window)
8086, thanks much !!!
I had a Developer's account when Apple switched to Intel but then forgot all about it. I'll install the CHUD tools and look for other stuff too.
Thanks again.
If your PC desktop or laptop has spread-spectrum and you can turn it off, by all means do so. This modulates the clock adding jitter in order to pass FCC emissions testing. You dont care about this. You just want the most stable clock you can get.
Thanks to both of you, I dont want to fry my processor,audioAl
Now I Understand
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