iMac vs Primare

[John Duncan]

So since I have the place to myself, I can strew the living room with lots of equipment with impunity.

Anf if anybody was wondering, the iMac (straight from the headphone socket, as opposed to into a DAC), is not as good as the CD player when playing the same material - there's a noticeable 'thickening' to the sound. It's better than the Airport Express - in fact for casual listening I could probably live with it. So that scotches the 'An Apple Computer is an audiophile music source' rumour.

If I could find my toslink-to-mini-toslink cable, I'd have stuck it into the DAC on my Yamaha and out through the preouts to see if there was any improvement...........

 

[fr0g]

JohnDuncan:So since I have the place to myself, I can strew the living room with lots of equipment with impunity.

Anf if anybody was wondering, the iMac (straight from the headphone socket, as opposed to into a DAC), is not as good as the CD player when playing the same material - there's a noticeable 'thickening' to the sound. It's better than the Airport Express - in fact for casual listening I could probably live with it. So that scotches the 'An Apple Computer is an audiophile music source' rumour.

If I could find my toslink-to-mini-toslink cable, I'd have stuck it into the DAC on my Yamaha and out through the preouts to see if there was any improvement...........

lol. slight foregone conclusion. Would be VERY interesting if you could borrow a cheap DAC such as the Beresford...

 

[John Duncan]

Yes, I did expect it to be, but there have been some statements made recently that have suggested that a cooking Mac of any sort would best a CD player, and I just wanted to see what the default difference is before DAC shenanigans.

 

[fr0g]

JohnDuncan:Yes, I did expect it to be, but there have been some statements made recently that have suggested that a cooking Mac of any sort would best a CD player, and I just wanted to see what the default difference is before DAC shenanigans.

I imagine it will beat some players. But once you start entering mid range territory and above I imagine things are a little different.

Something that got me from the review of the new Cyrus CD6SE...

"Cyrus claims 20 per cent fewer data errors from its new CD engine than from the Philips-based kit it used in its older machines. A vast improvement - and a figure we would have taken with a ton of salt had we not heard the CD 6 SE. "

Wow, so 20% less data errors. Compared to NONE from a HDD 'bit-perfect' copy... worth thinking about.

 

[Anonymous]

JohnDuncan:So since I have the place to myself, I can strew the living room with lots of equipment with impunity.

Anf if anybody was wondering, the iMac (straight from the headphone socket, as opposed to into a DAC), is not as good as the CD player when playing the same material - there's a noticeable 'thickening' to the sound....

Interesting.

I did the same experiment a while ago, but comparing a Naim CD5X CD player against the same CDs imported into iTunes on my old Apple PowerBook. Playback was through Naim NAC112X, NAP150X and Spendor S8e's.

The sound from the PowerBook was considerably better, much more natural. The Naim player sounded boomy, bloated and spitty in comparison.

 

[John Duncan]

Definitely not the case here - in fact the descriptions you give above could be reversed. I suspect an old powerbook may have had more attention paid to its audio out than more recent iMacs though.........