Will any of this make a significant difference?.....

[lex365]

Ive just bought a new amp and speakers in the new Cyrus One and some Dali Opticon 2's. I currently use them alongside my Macbook Pro and a Dragonfly Red DAC and all sounds great. However one thing I havent really considered is my source. I am using mostly 320kb MP3's with iTunes with a few Apple Lossless files all converted myself in XLD.

So where do I go from here? The obvious answer would be Flac over MP3's but I have ran a fair few comparisons and I can't hear any significant difference. I do however notice a slight change in sound when using VLC instead of iTunes in favor of VLC. So changing my source player is also another option. Then finally there is my Dragonfly DAC. It sounds great and was a vast improvement over the DAC in my old Nad digital amp but I have also been looking at the Chord Mojo and Audiolab M-DAC. So how much difference in sound can I expect from......

1) Moving from MP3 to Flac, or even a Flac streaming service like Tidal/Qobuz? I have tried Spotify 320kb and it sounds terrible compared to my current set up.

2) Changing my source player from iTunes to something like Audirvana, Jriver, Pure Music? (I have no experience with any of those programs)

3) Changing my DAC to something like the Chord Mojo/Audiolab M-Dac. The biggest improvement I have heard with any system tweak was adding the Dragonfly in place of the DAC in my Nad amp.

Many thanks for any input guys.

 

[Frank Harvey]

Many will say digital is digital, but as far as I'm concerned, source is still important. Despite using a better DAC (which will improve even compressed files) you've identified that 320kbps are not supporting your system well enough. A high quality 320kbps master can sound very good indeed, but on the whole, you will find FLAC files to be better. The DAC itself will make a difference to the end result. They will sound different, for whatever reason.

Your speakers can only reproduce what they're given from the amplifier. The amplifier can only pass on to the speakers what it is given by the source/DAC. And ultimately, the DAC can only convert the files it is given - shortchanging at this point is compromising what the whole system is capable of, and not keeping a balance throughout that system will also have its negative effects.

 

[Superaintit]

I don't think there will be a significant improvement in either 1,2 or 3. I would opt for option 1 because it's the cheapest way to find out if it makes a difference to you.

I find listening to music at 320 kbps quite acceptable. Listening to lossless is better to my ears but not miles better. Imo the ambience of instruments can sound better. Considering that many believe human ears cannot distguish between 320 kbps and lossless, will give you some idea of the added value.

Option 2 I have tried and thought I was very happy with...until I played it again through Itunes after a dac upgrade. No discernable difference. By the way: it worked mainly when I let the files play from the memory. It stopped being effective when I got a dac with an input buffer.

Option 3, a new dac will give minimal upgrade effects for a big investment. I paid 1000 pounds to notice any upgrade. Not very good value for money imo , although I have never tried the chord ones which *might* be worth a listen.

 

[insider9]

Spotify as a default doesn't stream in 320kbps. It's only if the settings have been changed to, depending on device, Extreme Quality.

If this is what you listened to and it didn't sound right, fair enough. Considering your mp3s are 320kbps there shouldn't be a massive difference.

If you don't remember changing any settings than perhaps a revisit would be worth it. Especially as cost would be non existent.

 

[MajorFubar]

1) Storage is so cheap these days that if you have the option to re-rip your CDs to a lossless format like Flac or Apple Lossless then I'd do that for start. Perhaps you can tell the difference between MP3 and lossless, perhaps you can't, but these days it doesn't make sense to use anything but lossless files if you can avoid it. It was a valid struggle 10 years ago when the average computer hard drive was about 120gb and you had to decide whether to rip maybe only half your collection losslessly or your full collection lossy.

2) Bolt-on 'hifi' music players. Overhyped on a Mac. Mac always had the ability to sent lossless rips bit-perfectly to a DAC. The only add-on I'd recommend is the aptly named BitPerfect app, think it's about £8-9 from the Mac App Store. It buffers the file into RAM and automatically switches sampling frequencies, which to be fair is probably only of interest to you if you have any 96k+ files.

3) By all means try this route but try to loan a demo-model from a willing dealer before you part with your dosh. In my opnion, upgrading the DAC will always make the least amount of difference to a system once you've already got a half decent DAC like yours.

 

[muljao]

Personally I do "think" I can hear a difference between a flac file and a spotify stream of 320kb but I suppose it's not really quantifiable because you have the internet between the speakers and the source. It certainly isn't massive but I think with some CDs "Nirvana Nevermind" being one example, the flac sounds great but spotify sound a bit muffled when the music is very dense. I know also you are not talking spotify but that's a fair comparison given their output quality.

I agree that with the cost of storage it doesn't make sense to rip in a lossy format now days if you can do.

I have read that some software adds to even the digital output. Apparently some of the more upmarket ones like jriver and audiovarna, you can send a our output to the dac

 

[lex365]

Many thanks for all your input guys.

6 weeks later and I am finally happy after making the follwing adjustments.

1) I tried Qobuz and Tidal Hi-Fi via Audirvana Plus and I was happy with the sound quality (but not blown away), however I have never really liked the idea of not owning my music. If the Tidal offices were to burn down tomorrow I have no music to listen to so I in the end deicded to find a reputable source to download my music from. I am not overly happy to admit that 80% of the music I own has come from torrent sites over the last 10 years so I finally settled on Apple Music (paying the £10 a month) and a DRM remover/converter called Noteburner. The finished files in Audirvana Plus are indistinguishable from my FLAC collection.

2) I now used Audirvana Plus with system optimization enabled and there is a noticeable difference in quality and clarity over iTunes.

3) I demoed a Chord 2Qute and was very impressed with the improvements over the Dragonfly Red however I settled on a Chord Mojo as the sound improvements were still hugely noticeable at almost a third of the price.