How to improve computer based music sound.

[MiddleMan]

I am just getting into this music streaming lark and maybe one day it will fully replace my CD collection and CD player. It is the future right?

However, unlike upgrading a CD player to improve sound, how do you upgrade the sound on hard drive based music. Apart from adding a DAC and the obligigatory upgrade of amp and speakers, there is no other way of upgrading the source component right?

How much extra can you extract from a lossless audio file with the DAC being the only thing connecting it to the amp. A high end CD player will reveal more detail than a cheap model, but how does this relate to stored audio or am I missing something?

 

[Anonymous]

i think it's the same thing, a cdp reads the digital data from a cd and channels it through it's inbuilt dac for decoding to analogue, a pc reads/transports the digital data from a file or from spotify etc, and sends it to whatever dac is being used. i think any difference would be down to the ability of the different dacs, presuming they are different.

 

[The_Lhc]

That's pretty much it, you can't do anything to the file to improve the sound, anymore than you can do anything to a CD to improve the sound, so if you want to upgrade the sound you're pretty much left with upgrading the DAC.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have a sound card (Ausentech) with a built in DAC must you use a additional DAC as well?

 

[iMark]

MiddleMan:
How much extra can you extract from a lossless audio file with the DAC being the only thing connecting it to the amp. A high end CD player will reveal more detail than a cheap model, but how does this relate to stored audio or am I missing something?

It all has to do with error correction that is used in redbook CD's. The better your CD player is, the better the error correction will be and this will improve the sound quality.

The trick is to find a CD-ripper that will give you the best error corrected file that will be the base of your computer based music. If the ripping program does its work well the file will best possible copy of your CD. You can compress it to a lossless format like Apple Lossless or FLAC. Your files can sound better than most (maybe all) CD players because your files are already error corrected and the software you use to play the files doesn't have to deal with error correction. This is the reason why a lot of people are surprised that computer based audio sounds better than their expensive CD player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_ripper

My personal view is that there are many advantages to use computer based audio over a CD player. The error correction has already been done by the ripping software. For the best results you send your computer audio to a DAC that you connect to your stereo. If you do this with a digital link (like TOSLink) from your computer to the DAC you will also eradicate any ground loop problems that many people experience when they connect their computer to their stereo system.

I have ripped with error correction all our CD's to Apple Lossless and send the audio to a DACMagic through an Airport Express. This made a big difference to listening to the CD's through our old CD player. I will not bother with upgrading our CD player. Some audiophiles claim that iTunes is not the best ripping software available. I did a couple of tests by ripping the same CD with both Max and iTunes. I couldn't hear any difference.

 

[Lee H]

A related question if I may?

My music is in Flac, sent to a sonos with digi co-ax straight from the ZP90 in to my AVR. Would I be better using the onboard DAC on the AVR and phono leads or does the ZP90 have a decent DAC built in?

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Lee H:
A related question if I may?

My music is in Flac, sent to a sonos with digi co-ax straight from the ZP90 in to my AVR. Would I be better using the onboard DAC on the AVR and phono leads or does the ZP90 have a decent DAC built in?

With respect, if you are using the Kef sats as your speakers, I would stick to what you are doing already.

 

[Lee H]

Are you saying they're cheap entry level!

Yep, it's the sat/sub set up so I know it won't be the best sound I can buy, but I like to maximise whatever it is I have. I normally run it with PLII Music as I prefer that sound

 

[The_Lhc]

Lee H:
A related question if I may?

My music is in Flac, sent to a sonos with digi co-ax straight from the ZP90 in to my AVR. Would I be better using the onboard DAC on the AVR and phono leads

Err, with your current setup you ARE using the DAC on the AVR? You'd need to use analogue connections from the Sonos to the AVR in order to use the ZP90s DAC.

or does the ZP90 have a decent DAC built in?

It's not a bad one, but I noticed a big increase in quality when I changed to a digital connection to my old AVR. Having said that I was using cheap (read: free) rubbish phono leads for the analogue connection, which might have something to do with it. I think it's fair to say the ZP90s DAC can be improved upon with an external DAC.

 

[Lee H]

Right-ho. So it's stay as I am unless I spring for another box between the ZP90 and the AVR?

 

[idc]

johno01:If you have a sound card (Ausentech) with a built in DAC must you use a additional DAC as well?

No, only one DAC can be used at a time. Adding a DAC usually means that DAC installs a driver on the computer which bypasses the onboard DAC.

 

[idc]

You can tweak the computers sound by switching off any sound enhancer or anything on your music manager that adds digital processing to the files. It also helps to reduce distortion by maximising the volume on your music manager and the PC and then using your amp only to control the volume.

 

[The_Lhc]

Lee H:Right-ho. So it's stay as I am unless I spring for another box between the ZP90 and the AVR?

Well you could always try an analogue connection (with a decent cable, unlike me) to see which you prefer but if you're also doing post-processing (the PL-II) then I doubt you'll be able to notice a difference anyway.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Lee H:
Are you saying they're cheap entry level!

Yep, it's the sat/sub set up so I know it won't be the best sound I can buy, but I like to maximise whatever it is I have. I normally run it with PLII Music as I prefer that sound

You know I didn't mean that - there are far worse speakers than your Kefs - they are very good AV speakers. No, my point, which has been made by someone else is, digital from your Sonos to your AVR will utilise it's DAC and analogue from Sonos to AVR will utilise the DAC in the Sonos. I don't think that an AV amp and sat speakers will take much more detail from an external DAC so you are better off saving your money.

 

[Lee H]

Gerrardasnails:Lee H:
Are you saying they're cheap entry level!

Yep, it's the sat/sub set up so I know it won't be the best sound I can buy, but I like to maximise whatever it is I have. I normally run it with PLII Music as I prefer that sound

You know I didn't mean that - there are far worse speakers than your Kefs - they are very good AV speakers. No, my point, which has been made by someone else is, digital from your Sonos to your AVR will utilise it's DAC and analogue from Sonos to AVR will utilise the DAC in the Sonos. I don't think that an AV amp and sat speakers will take much more detail from an external DAC so you are better off saving your money.

I know you didn't

 

[amcluesent]

>how do you upgrade the sound on hard drive based music.<

Directional SATA cables? A veil is lifted etc.

 

[Anonymous]

This is a very educational thread. Can I ask a 'buying advice' question? Perhaps I should start another thread, but here goes. I have top quality FLACs, two laptops, a Cowon X5 portable player and a Cambridge Audio A1 Mk3 amp which I hope to upgrade significantly. The X5 has pretty much the best sound quality you can get (for a portable) and a line-out and a USB port. How should I play the FLACs through the A1? What lumps of hardware should be on my shortlist? A Squeezebox Touch looks tempting - I've read it has a good DAC, but no storage. Would I connect the Cowon to it, or buy an external hard drive for it, or what? I think I'd be able to use my laptop as a kind of wireless remote, which would be handy.

Then there's the Musical Fidelity V-DAC...which apparently has great sound quality but is just a DAC, nothing more. I have a spare laptop, so maybe the FLACs could live on that and it could be attached to the V-DAC with a cable? In other words, the laptop would become a Media Centre PC...but perhaps it's not qualified to do that. All it has is USB 2.0 and HDMI. And I wouldn't be able to control the FLACs remotely.

I really need an idiot's guide to this stuff.

 

[iMark]

Are your FLAC's hirez or CD quality? If they are no better than CD quality you could convert the FLAC's to ALAC, play them in iTunes and use an Airport Express to get the signal from a computer to the stereo.

If your FLAC's are hirez you could look into a laptop with optical out to connect to a DAC. It's a bit more complicated to get a bit for bit output from a computer bit a can be done.

 

[Anonymous]

No Apple stuff for me thanks! I'll stick with FLAC.

 

[iMark]

Of course you can stick with FLAC. But are your files hirez or CD quality? If you want a serious answer you could give us some more information.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't understand your question - what do you mean by hirez? All my files were ripped with EAC from original CDs

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[iMark]

I didn't understand your first remark about 'good quality FLAC'. That can mean anything from a decently ripped CD to high resolution (hirez) 24/96 (or any other bitrate) downloads. Having 'just' CD quality makes the choice for DAC's and the way to get your music to your DAC easier than also having to deal with hirez FLAC's.

 

[Anonymous]

Most of the log files for my FLACs say the bit rate is 768 kBs. Is that any help? A minority of them say 24/96. I suspect the latter were ripped from vinyl. My Cowon X5 can't play them - I downloaded them because I didn't know what I was doing. There are lots more 24/96 files on the site I get my downloads from so it would be useful to end up with a system which does them justice. Eventually I hope to upgrade to a system as good as the one I used to have pre-recession, a Mark Levinson CD player with ATC 100 active speakers.

 

[iMark]

Playing back FLAC 24/96 (or better) is quite a bit more complicated than playing back CD quality (like 768 kbps). You need quite a bit of software and tweaking of your Windows machine to play them back. It's also not very common (yet) for streamers to support 24/96. The Airport Express doesn't support it. Although I don't like this limitation for the moment I'm happy enough with upsampling ALAC files.

 

[Anonymous]

iMark:Playing back FLAC 24/96 (or better) is quite a bit more complicated than playing back CD quality (like 768 kbps). You need quite a bit of software and tweaking of your Windows machine to play them back. It's also not very common (yet) for streamers to support 24/96. The Airport Express doesn't support it. Although I don't like this limitation for the moment I'm happy enough with upsampling ALAC files.

Playing back 24/96 files is only a problem with Apple and Sonos. Plenty of other streamers support 24 bit files, Squeezebox have been doing it for some time now and there is nothing i can think of that is complicated. It has nothing to do with Windows. Of course the source marerial has to have been mastered 24bit and this is the exception, with majority being 16 bit files.

Depends how one defines hi res files - in my mind anything lossess is hi res.