How do I get pc music to floorstanders, and get better than CD quality?

[admin_exported]

I have Monitor Audio Bronze BR5 Floor Standers. I have uncompressed music on my hard drive. How do I get pc music to floorstanders, and get better than CD quality? What equipment do I need?

What quality and standard would this set up be compared to cost wise, if I were to buy i.e dedicated Amp, CD player, Speakers e.t.c?

 

[John Duncan]

You need a decent stereo amplifier and a DAC. Depending on which ones, you could outperform many a CD player - what's your budget, musical taste etc?

 

[Anonymous]

Hi John, my budget is around £600. Could I acheive that for £600. Do I have to buy an amp, and Dacmagic, and optichord? How do I connect computer to the amp?

 

[Anonymous]

You don't have to buy a dac magic, if your pc has an SPDIF connection (optical) you could purchase a Beresford or Music Fidelty V Dac, the Beresford is excellent but I would say that wouldn't I, since I own it.

 

[Anonymous]

do I have to connect the beresford to a dedicated amp? How much would you spend on the amp, within reason? Will this equipment sound better than a decent dedicated CD played and Amp?

 

[Anonymous]

Lots of people have sold off their cyrus cd players for instance and instead invested in a dac, that should tell you all you need to know about how good it can sound when playing lossless files. An optical cable from your pc is attached to a dac and then rca phono cables are attached from the dac to the amp. How much within reason? you can purchase some cracking amps for under 400.00 (both new and second hand)

Although obviously if you break down what your favourite types of music are it might make it easier to recommend amps.

 

[chebby]

sewage man:do I have to connect the beresford to a dedicated amp? How much would you spend on the amp, within reason? Will this equipment sound better than a decent dedicated CD played and Amp?

You can connect all these DACs to any amplifier.

Not sure what you mean by a 'dedicated' amplifier.

Choose an amplifier you like, that suits your taste and budget (and speakers) and just plug the DAC into a spare input like any other component.

DACs like the Beresford TC-7520 or DacMagic have USB and optical connections so whatever PC you use it will be catered for.

 

[AudioPlaya]

with your budget (£600 was it?) wouldn't consider any less than the DACMAGIC, although the beresford does offer great value.

it sounds better and has more features (especially ins & outs) than the (admittedly bargain) beresford, also it looks nicer and is clearly of better build quality. On the downside Cambridge Audio has recently increased prices so the DACMAGIC goes from £200 to £230, making the beresford even better value (for now?), also the DACMAGIC has no headphone socket (although that won't matter to most because most amps do).

although I haven't heard the v-dac it is priced in the middle, looks cheaper than the beresford and seems well under-specified in the face of the competition (not enough ins and outs)

There are three main ways to get the digital sound from your PC to your DAC - Optical (TOSLINK), Coaxial (SPDIF) or USB, check your computer to see what your soundcard has, from an audiophile standpoint USB is considered less desirable than coax or optical because it's limited to 16bit / 48khz audio, the beresford TC7520 is claimed to be very good if you do use USB (thanks to a dedicated USB upsampling circuit), Coaxial is said to give a slightly better sound unless you intend to use a long length of cable, in which case you want Optical.

The digital ouputs sometimes need turning on in soundcard settings, your soundcard hopefully should have sample settings for the digital connections too, theoretically for the best possible sound quality at this money you should aim for a shortish Coaxial cable with soundcard settings of 24bit / 98khz which the DACMAGIC upsamples to 24bit / 192khz. Maybe worth noting though that since your music collection is likely sourced from standard 16bit /44.1khz CD-quality files and will end up being upsampled by the DAC at 24 bit 192khz anyway, your results with USB may not vary that much - it may all sound very nice.

Plenty of amps to choose from in the budget price range, some recent well-respected offerings from Marantz, Cambridge audio, Rotel, NAD, Rega etc. To be honest the amp should represent a harder choice than the DAC, just remember to save some for cables.

 

[Anonymous]

Good post Audioplaya and welcome to the Forum, I am fairly new here myself and this forum helped me on my way to a PC based system!

 

[AudioPlaya]

Thanks for the warm welcome AKL, Ive been sucking knowledge from this forum for weeks now, I thought it was time I gave a little in return since Ive been demo-ing DACs recently.

Would be interested to hear how the DACMAGIC sounds with your cyrus amp? I'm thinking of getting a 8vs2 in a month or two.

 

[nads]

sewage man:
I have Monitor Audio Bronze BR5 Floor Standers. I have uncompressed music on my hard drive. How do I get pc music to floorstanders, and get better than CD quality? What equipment do I need?

What quality and standard would this set up be compared to cost wise, if I were to buy i.e dedicated Amp, CD player, Speakers e.t.c?

so you have a pair of BR5ïs and a hard drive. what else do you have? is it a external hard drive or is it on your PC/laptop?

what were you using to power the BR5's before?

 

[Anonymous]

AudioPlaya: Would be interested to hear how the DACMAGIC sounds with your cyrus amp? I'm thinking of getting a 8vs2 in a month or two.

I also demo' ed a friend's CD6se with my amps but decided that my lossless/AE/DACMagic combo is about as good as the CD6se. The two combos into my (floorstanding) Spendor S6e sounded different in terms of tonal balance but neither my friend nor I could say which is "better".

So no more CD players for me! If you are looking at DACs now and hoping to get the 8VS in a few months, maybe you should consider the new Cyrus intergrated 8XPd with bulit in DAC...

Hope the above gives you and the OP some idea of DACMagic's capability.

 

[Anonymous]

"although I haven't heard the v-dac it is priced in the middle, looks
cheaper than the beresford and seems well under-specified in the face
of the competition (not enough ins and outs)"

Not enough ins and outs? What is it lacking compared with the others? Oh, and musically it's not under-specced, either, and shouldn't that be the main criteria?.

 

[AudioPlaya]

thanks for the info on the Cyrus AKL, I know what waves the CD6se has made so to hear the uncompressedPC/DACMAGIC combo is in the same league is very encouraging, I can't quite stretch to the CD6se pricetag yet which is why I'm going the DAC route. The new cyrus amps look awesome but rumour is the launch price will be £1500, a little out of my league unfortunately, but it could mean a price cut in the 6vs2 / 8vs2, good for me

 

[AudioPlaya]

Tarquinh:

"although I haven't heard the v-dac it is priced in the middle, looks cheaper than the beresford and seems well under-specified in the face of the competition (not enough ins and outs)"

Not enough ins and outs? What is it lacking compared with the others? Oh, and musically it's not under-specced, either, and shouldn't that be the main criteria?.

Only one of each type of input is a real problem for some, myself included. I need 2 x coax really, which makes it under-specced for my needs. Also the DACMAGIC has a set of digital outs which should come in very useful.

like i said i havent heard the v-dac so i'm definitely not criticizing the sound. All three machines seem to be well-regarded in that area.

 

[chebby]

AudioPlaya:Only one of each type of input is a real problem for some, myself included. I need 2 x coax really, which makes it under-specced for my needs.
Beresford TC-7520 has 2 x coax and 1 optical and 1 USB ...

http://www.beresford.me/UK/images/TC-7520R.jpg

 

[AudioPlaya]

chebby:AudioPlaya:Only one of each type of input is a real problem for some, myself included. I need 2 x coax really, which makes it under-specced for my needs.

Beresford TC-7520 has 2 x coax and 1 optical and 1 USB ...

http://www.beresford.me/UK/images/TC-7520R.jpg

I know (the beresford was my second choice), It was the V-Dac in question which only has 1 Coax input / 1 optical / 1 usb

http://www.musicalfidelity.com/products/vseries/vdac.html

 

[Anonymous]

These look good:

Sonus BU130 Digital Music System