CD quality streaming

[admin_exported]

Hi All

Pretty new to PC based music, I currently have my laptop playing spotify premium wirelessly to my PS3 which is connected to a beresford DAC via optical to my Amp. This is OK to listen to but sounds terrble compared to my CD player....any advice on how to improve sound? I do have quite high end equipment (£12,000 for CDP, AMP Speakers, cables) I am prepared to sell CD player if I can get near in sound quality (I realise the PS3 is probably the weak link)

Cheers

 

[The_Lhc]

For that kind of kit I think you'd have to be going lossless, which means ripping your CDs to FLAC or ALAC, I couldn't tell you what sort of kit to use at the kind of price level you're looking at though (what is the CDP, amp and speakers?), I swim in shallower waters!

 

[Anonymous]

Cheers

lector 7T CDP

Graaf GM50 Amp

Art Emotion floor standers

 

[Anonymous]

I don't use Spotify personally but knows it streams 320k Vorbis (presumably 16bit/44.1khz) if you are a Premium User so it should not sound that bad.

Assuming you are using a PC, you need to clarify the following :-

1) What OS is the laptop running ?
2) Do you bypass the windows mixer, which tends to resample audio badly in XP and not so badly in Vista, but if i had 12K's worth of kit, I would want no resampling ?
3) What sample rate does the optical out of the laptop pump out at. Most tend to be set at 16bit/48khz which once again means poor quality upsampling ?

In short, the first thing I would do is bypass the PS3 and connect the Beresford DAC directly to the PC via USB (I assume it has a USB connection), this will ensure the Beresford acts as an external soundcard and negates the problem raised in 3) all together. I suspect this should make quite a bit of difference to things like soundstage and timing etc.

The second option is investigate whether it is possible to bypass the mixer using reclock or ASIO drivers instead of Direct Sound. I can't comment on this as i don't use Spotify, but know you can do this with some players so that audio files stored on disk can be sent to the soundcard "bit perfect" which I would guess is a must in your case.

 

[Anonymous]

I have made a mistake in original thread.....Laptop (Vista) is sending spotify (using Jamcast - this sends whatever in the PC soundcard to the PS3) wirelessly to my PS3, then optical from PS3 to DAC....not sure if i bypass the windows mixer...I think you are right tho, best to USB wire Laptop to DAC

Cheers

 

[Anonymous]

mac mini into the lavry or naim dac is an option

otherwise theres the naim hdx which is a hard disk plus dac or a number of linn products which might suit not to mention t+a if you can find them in the uk

 

[idc]

Spotify vs a Lector 7T CDP. That will be Spotifys toughest test ever! Sbscribe to Spotify premium and get the higher bit rate, even just try it for a month at first. Then I agree with the others to miss out the PS3 and to reduce distortion have Spotify and the PCs volume set to maximum and use the amp to control the volume. That last bit sounded daft the first time I was advised to it, but it works. Once you have done that, Spotify is unlikely to make you want to replace your CDP, but it should sound better.

 

[Anonymous]

do you intend to rip your cds to some form of hdd then play back though a dac

if you dont then your not going to get near equivalent quality with spotify

 

[TheHomeCinemaCentre]

Ripping your CDs in a lossless format is the best chance you have of getting better quality. We have recently been using a PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC and fed the matchng transport, Sonos and Meridian Sooloos into it - the results are stunning.

 

[Anonymous]

Just A/B with PS3 Opt out against PC - USB - DAC - no contest, USB wins. Still far inferior to CDP but so it should be, I am happy with this as it is only for spotify, will used CDP for CDs

Cheers

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, I've done exactly the same thing as you and Jamcast is the weak link. 320Kbps tunes from the PS3 through the dac will probably sound pretty good, as will spotify from your PC to your dac, however even on my humble system Jamcast is only good enough for casual listening.

 

[Anonymous]

thequality is not so great.