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Who uses which media for primary listening and why?


halfbaked

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Over recent years my analog and digital sources have evolved and improved.

When my analog (vinyl) system was better than my digital system, I listened to more LPs.

As my digital system improved, I listened to fewer LPs.

 

Currently, I rarely listen to LPs. My Rega PR-1, fitted with an Audio Technica OC9 MC Cart proved to be unsatisfying and not worth the extra effort. In fact I sold the Rega yesterday, fitted with a lesser A-T MM cart I had on hand. I have a Technics SL-1600 I've had since new on my bench awaiting a full rewire. Now I have more incentive to tackle this project soon.

 

I have to admit I'm lazy. I stream Pandora (paid subscription 192 Kbps) and Deezer Elite (320Kbps) through a Sonos Connect. I added an Adcom irDAC to the Sonos, and that was a vast improvement. I find it very pleasing to listen too, even though I know the Sonos is now the weak link. One day I decided to to an A-B comparison to the Deezer/Sonos/irDAC against my Deezer/MacBook/irDAC. There was a definite improvement in sound quality when streaming directly from the Mac. Great!(*,) Now I'm considering Streaming device options for some future upgrade.

But, like I said, I'm lazy and still listen to the Sonos/irDAC as my primary listening source.

 

I have 2 more Sonos Connect devices in the house too. One in the garage and one in the basement/office/electronics shop. It suits these purposes just fine.

I also have my CD collection ripped in ALAC to a NAS drive which I can also stream via the Sonos. I have a dozen or so "radio stations" Deb and I set up in Pandora which provides a decent variety of music. I have been introduced to a number of new artists this way. And if I hear something I like and would like to listen to the entire album, I switch to Deezer, search for the album and stream away. All while never leaving the couch.:D

 

 

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I was thinking how much work and time spent each day 20 years ago compared to today.  I won't say lazy but high mileage has slowed me up and lessened my work I have to do here. The several in here I use to say vinyl junkies was great to see. Somehow digital junkie doesn't really ring my ear. 

 

Those still cruising fm was good to hear. Variety is a spice of life. No reason to let the Carver tuners sit around. I appreciate all the comments about all the formats. Also it's good to here a real cross-section. No shame about what works best for you as some seemed fearful of what they use.

 

Anyone here able to comment about any music service (ie audio fidelity)?  Also the SACD's were interesting as I was doubting was semi-negative comment from audiophile critics. All these comments did clear some things for me. To me there are professional haters or at least biased or stuck.

 

Also another question can anyone mention aluminium discs? Or any other exotic material or format discs? I think those are imported from Japan. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mostly CDs and albums.....I have about 1/2 my collection ripped to puter, but dont bother with it much.....too easy to jump from one artist to another.

 

I'm wondering how many people here have had the opportunity to listen to their CDs on a really outstanding player in their system.

I was very lucky a bunch of years ago to buy one of these.....used.....Raysonic 128

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/raysonic/cd128.html

 

This player absolutely changed my opinion of Cd playback, and is why I prob still use them as my main "go to"

 

 

 

Perrysroom-Oct222011-3.jpg

ray128inside (1).jpg

Edited by PDR
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15 hours ago, zumbini said:

You didn't say so Steve, but I assume you no longer have the original CD's, otherwise you could just re-rip them.

 

I rarely buy a CD or LP unless I like all the tracks, so it would seem wrong if I skipped a song or played them out of order.

 

I still have all of my CDs - This will be a winter project. I will also need to buy the Apple SuperDrive in that new iMac's don't include them anymore.

10 hours ago, xavionics said:

 

 

 

I have to admit I'm lazy. I stream Pandora (paid subscription 192 Kbps) and Deezer Elite (320Kbps) through a Sonos Connect. I added an Adcom irDAC to the Sonos, and that was a vast improvement. I find it very pleasing to listen too, even though I know the Sonos is now the weak link. One day I decided to to an A-B comparison to the Deezer/Sonos/irDAC against my Deezer/MacBook/irDAC. There was a definite improvement in sound quality when streaming directly from the Mac. Great!(*,) Now I'm considering Streaming device options for some future upgrade.

But, like I said, I'm lazy and still listen to the Sonos/irDAC as my primary listening source.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, xavionics said:

 

 

I ran across a preowned Wyred4Sound modified Sonos Connect at TMR Audio here in Denver. I highly recommend the upgrade:

 

Wyred 4 Sound Sonos Upgrade

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I was looking at a couple of the mofi releases and I saw the phrase hybird SACD. If someone can spare a dime about hybird SACD? It does not ring a bell to me.

 

I wrote a couple of nights ago and never made it to the submit button.

 

Those FLAC'ters on hard drives anyone going through 3rd party sound card or just what your pc came with?

 

Any of the oppo fans waiting for their last release also looks to be a masterpiece?

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CDs loaded into the CD changer is the go-to, LPs  (as much as I like the jacket art & info, an attraction from days gone-by) are bystanders. Contemplating digital for the future– Bluesound Vault 2 as an avenue came up in conversation with Charlie (jazzman53): rip CDs in high resolution formats, or space-saving MP3, or both; stream music; access and connect to internet radio stations, cloud music services, and my own local music library. 

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23 minutes ago, dcl said:

CDs loaded into the CD changer is the go-to, LPs  (as much as I like the jacket art & info, an attraction from days gone-by) are bystanders. Contemplating digital for the future– Bluesound Vault 2 as an avenue came up in conversation with Charlie (jazzman53): rip CDs in high resolution formats, or space-saving MP3, or both; stream music; access and connect to internet radio stations, cloud music services, and my own local music library. 

 

That looks like a nice solution. 

I just burned ONE song from a CD in AIFF and it was 59.6MB @ 1411 kbps.

The Vault 2 has a 2TB hard drive = 33K songs ....

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2 hours ago, halfbaked said:

If someone can spare a dime about hybird SACD?

 

From Wikipedia:

SACD is a disc of identical physical dimensions as a standard compact disc; the density of the disc is the same as a DVD. There are three types of disc:[17]

  • Hybrid: Hybrid SACDs are encoded with a 4.7 GB DSD layer (also known as the HD layer), as well as a PCM (Red Book) audio layer readable by most conventional Compact Disc players.[18]
  • Single-layer: A DVD-5 encoded with one 4.7 GB DSD layer.
  • Dual-layer: A DVD-9 encoded with two DSD layers, totaling 8.5 GB, and no PCM layer. Dual-layer SACDs can store nearly twice as much data as a single-layer SACD.

Unlike hybrid discs, both single- and dual-layer SACD's are incompatible with conventional CD players and cannot be played on them.

A stereo SACD recording has an uncompressed rate of 5.6 Mbit/s, four times the rate for Red Book CD stereo audio.[17] Other technical parameters are as follows:

  CD layer (optional) SACD layer
Disc capacity 700 MB[19] 4.7 GB[17]
Audio encoding 16 bit PCM 1 bit DSD
Sampling frequency 44.1 kHz 2.8224 MHz
Audio channels 2 (Stereo) up to 6 (Discrete surround)
Playback time if stereo 80 minutes[20] 110 minutes[17]
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Zum Thanks that really breaks it down so well. Seeing a bunch of realeases saying hybird led for me to ask. I wanted to know before I spent money.

 

Does any of you that loads onto a harddrive do you back that up. Also those download are you downloading in wave or flac.

 

Thanks also to some that gave some excellent info with some of this. I didn't quite like the idea of paying digital almost the same cost as physical. But there is a ton of bonus material especially on some rock classics.

 

Then I saw only the "cover" art was downloadable. I suppose that is the remnant of loving album art and the different goodies from first presses.  I know no one buys jewel cases now, not seeing all the art even just digital is missed.

 

Which is a much rarer event though I just order bluray bridge on the river kwai with a special booklet case clearance at 3.99 I believe. Dvd's offered some interesting art/packaging and blurays so much less.

 

Btw there were some interesting mofi cds released yesterday.

 

 

Dcl and Itchitch 4 tb drives are low priced. Can a music fan ever have enough storage? 

 

Pdr very nice, I noticed the Chinese earlier this year had quite a few toploading cd transports. But yours is a definite topper.

 

Xavionics you reminded me about how special a well made/produced with a good master offered great sound. Although I was careful I always worried especially with hard to get albumsm

 

I remember an NME article talking about album collectors offered a quote about "my wife was real good. But some of those records are really rare".

 

Wow streaming is so popular and some of you have nice sets for that.

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1 hour ago, halfbaked said:

Seeing a bunch of realeases saying hybird led for me to ask.

 FYI:

hy·brid
ˈhīˌbrid/
noun
 
  1. 1.
    BIOLOGY
    the offspring of two plants or animals of different species or varieties, such as a mule (a hybrid of a donkey and a horse).
    "a hybrid of wheat and rye"
    synonyms: cross, cross-breed, mixed breed, half-breed, half-blood; More
     
     
  2. 2.
    a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture.
    "the final text is a hybrid of the stage play and the film"
    •  
    •  
       
adjective
 
  1. 1.
    of mixed character; composed of mixed parts.
    "Mexico's hybrid postconquest culture"
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On 6/4/2018 at 10:29 PM, PDR said:

Mostly CDs and albums.....I have about 1/2 my collection ripped to puter, but dont bother with it much.....too easy to jump from one artist to another.

 

I'm wondering how many people here have had the opportunity to listen to their CDs on a really outstanding player in their system.

I was very lucky a bunch of years ago to buy one of these.....used.....Raysonic 128

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/raysonic/cd128.html

 

This player absolutely changed my opinion of Cd playback, and is why I prob still use them as my main "go to"

Perrysroom-Oct222011-3.jpg

ray128inside (1).jpg

 

I feel the same way about my California Audio Labs Icon Mk2, the DAC is amazing

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19 hours ago, halfbaked said:

I was looking at a couple of the mofi releases and I saw the phrase hybird SACD. If someone can spare a dime about hybird SACD? It does not ring a bell to me.

 

I wrote a couple of nights ago and never made it to the submit button.

 

Those FLAC'ters on hard drives anyone going through 3rd party sound card or just what your pc came with?

 

Any of the oppo fans waiting for their last release also looks to be a masterpiece?

The audio-specialized storage products appear to be at extraordinarily high prices for a little arguable convenience. A 2TB USB drive is $50, 4TB is about $90, and any pc made since 2014 with easy to use open source software can rip from cd's to lossless FLACs, WAVs, or lossy MP3s (usually at 6x or faster the normal dc playback speed.)  Anyone who can understand how to get email online can do it. 

For playback the pc sound circuitry included on the motherboard can be improved upon with either an add-on internal card or a USB external AD/DA converter. I have had good sound results from both.

As I mentioned earlier, the PiFi DAC with a RPi3 can be used to distribute tunes (up to 384kbsampling rate, 112db dynamic range) from a pc hd to hifi systems over wifi with excellent results, too, although it does require some reasonable setup time.

Edited by iamjohngalt
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I put my flac files on a network drive and access them with the Oppo 105D.

The Oppo software is clunky though.

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Actually open source software for ripping closing in on 20. The concert community was tight and active. P2p killed the spirit of sharing.

 

I miss those days talking about music and shows on the forum. All my tech questions asked here is me catching up is because I have not done much the past 10 years.

 

Dusting off the old noggin get getting to finish digital integration from a few years ago.

 

Out of all things a crazy persisting virus is slowing my progress to a crawl. The disc listening has been enjoyed.

 

I have noticed a small cadre of dinosaurs here. The stereo listener is not totally extinct species.

Zum you know I was asking about hybird SACD's. The earlier posting of those charts cleared most of my questions.

 

Now eager and waiting to hear one.

 

Iamjohngalt. My asking about sound cards was an effort about sound cards vs usb. Also hoping to see any comments about  power supply noise or other negative factors.

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2 hours ago, Sk1Bum said:

I put my flac files on a network drive and access them with the Oppo 105D.

The Oppo software is clunky though.

 

The iPad interface makes it MUCH better...

 

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57 minutes ago, Daddyjt said:

 

The iPad interface makes it MUCH better...

 

 

I have the Android Oppo app, and I'll have to check it out. Thank you!

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After a few years of my proper system languishing and gathering dust, I've finally kicked back into life (I'd forgotten what decent - to me - audio was like).  Media ha primarily been my choice for years, though a DAC is in transit to me, and my turntable is almost, properly properly set up.  I have plenty of choice, but the shear convenience of CD is tough to beat when you have little actual time.

 

In the end, the best media is the one you have and enjoy, so go crank some tunes.

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I prefer Vinyl but I borrow CDs from the local library and rip them to an SSD Drive create a mirror and press on. TheNewOfficeRig(tm) is a Carver rig but mostly driven from my PC through a Schiit Modi multibit DAC. My Schiit supports RedBook to 192k. I use VLC for hirez support and Media player for rips ‘cause it’s there/free and easy to use.

 

At home my rig is far more sophisticated. Storm Trooper PC to Schiit Yggdrasil to EAR Yoshino V20 to modded Spatial Audio M3s. Other owners and many reviewers claim Yggdrasil resolves music not recovered by any other DAC. I have found that to be true in my system. I whole heartedly suggest a listen if you get the chance. 

 

On the the Vinyl I use several tables and arms but use a Grado Statement Master1Cardas litz wire in front of a Fosgate Signature phono pre across each platform. 

 

The synergy of this rig is nothing short of amazing. Even with just 24watts a channel it brings a smile to my face every time I fire it up.

 

ray

Edited by Magnaryder
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I wish that I read some of this thread awhile back. This is such amazing topic, given say, a 20 year period. Seems that everything has changed, and changed again. Vinyl was king back in the day, and i am glad that I owned a rig worthy of keeping for so long. Once I moved on to CD, things were actually pretty good, but the recordings made a big difference just like it did with vinyl. Years went by, and I finally tried SACD. For the most part, I found it to be impressive, but as luck wins out, SACD had become more difficult to find and too expensive for my taste. Only a couple years ago, did I even try computer audio. Of course, that only works for me with FLAC files and using FooBar to read them. Totally NOT using Windows anything. The result is great, but I get annoyed by my inexperience and sometimes the way some programmer thought when he assumed everybody already knew all there was to know about using a computer. I tend to like the CD player concept, but only if I have a decent player to begin with. As of now, I own Emotiva C-3? player, and also a Rega Apollo R player. Neither one is satisfactory on it's own, so an outboard DAC was the answer. Yah, I am still not totally in love with it either! Dam, I miss my Cayin CD player with tube output. One other thing worth mentioning is that I like the Dragonfly Red DAC over the other outboard DAC. The Dragonfly is only used with the computer though. 

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2 hours ago, Magnaryder said:

I prefer Vinyl but I borrow CDs from the local library and rip them to an SSD Drive create a mirror and press on. TheNewOfficeRig(tm) is a Carver rig but mostly driven from my PC through a Schiit Modi multibit DAC. My Schiit supports RedBook to 192k. I use VLC for hirez support and Media player for rips ‘cause it’s there/free and easy to use.

 

At home my rig is far more sophisticated. Storm Trooper PC to Schiit Yggdrasil to EAR Yoshino V20 to modded Spatial Audio M3s. Other owners and many reviewers claim Yggdrasil resolves music not recovered by any other DAC. I have found that to be true in my system. I whole heartedly suggest a listen if you get the chance. 

 

On the the Vinyl I use several tables and arms but use a Grado Statement Master1Cardas litz wire in front of a Fosgate Signature phono pre across each platform. 

 

The synergy of this rig is nothing short of amazing. Even with just 24watts a channel it brings a smile to my face every time I fire it up.

 

ray

 

Nothing personal Ray, but when your entire post is a laundry list of oddly named gear that most of us can't afford, I have to wonder about your priorities.

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7 hours ago, Magnaryder said:

I prefer Vinyl but I borrow CDs from the local library and rip them to an SSD Drive create a mirror and press on. TheNewOfficeRig(tm) is a Carver rig but mostly driven from my PC through a Schiit Modi multibit DAC. My Schiit supports RedBook to 192k. I use VLC for hirez support and Media player for rips ‘cause it’s there/free and easy to use.

 

At home my rig is far more sophisticated. Storm Trooper PC to Schiit Yggdrasil to EAR Yoshino V20 to modded Spatial Audio M3s. Other owners and many reviewers claim Yggdrasil resolves music not recovered by any other DAC. I have found that to be true in my system. I whole heartedly suggest a listen if you get the chance. 

 

On the the Vinyl I use several tables and arms but use a Grado Statement Master1Cardas litz wire in front of a Fosgate Signature phono pre across each platform. 

 

The synergy of this rig is nothing short of amazing. Even with just 24watts a channel it brings a smile to my face every time I fire it up.

 

ray

5 hours ago, zumbini said:

 

Nothing personal Ray, but when your entire post is a laundry list of oddly named gear that most of us can't afford, I have to wonder about your priorities.

 

I would love the chance to audition all of that gear in a system that has been assembled together like Ray has done. I think it would give insight into how he hears vs how I hear.

 

I think I may be able to afford a couple of those items but I'd never be able to pronounce the names or type them out to order them !!! :)

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Maybe I'm just jealous, but I know I enjoy listening to music more, and have more time to do so, now that I've left the pursuit of audio perfection behind. YMMV

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16 hours ago, Daddyjt said:

The iPad interface makes it MUCH better...

 

As does the Android app. Thank you for pointing me in that direction!

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13 hours ago, zumbini said:

 

Nothing personal Ray, but when your entire post is a laundry list of oddly named gear that most of us can't afford, I have to wonder about your priorities.

None taken. My gear selections are not for most people but I'd like to think it's come together quite well. Digital resolution through a variety of sources is very good, almost on par with analogue.  I knew I was on to something when this fellow raves over it

 

       

 

ray        

8 hours ago, B-Man said:

 

I would love the chance to audition all of that gear in a system that has been assembled together like Ray has done. I think it would give insight into how he hears vs how I hear.

 

I think I may be able to afford a couple of those items but I'd never be able to pronounce the names or type them out to order them !!! :)

That is what makes the Fest an event not to be missed. We hear a lot about what different folks say on the 'net about what they hear but on the mountain you can see and hear their ideas put into practice. Every year I bring something home someone has taught me that makes my listening experience all the better. There are a lot of ideas put forth I'd never thought of that have made me a better listener. Not to mention the exposure to tunes and artists I've not considered. My kind of learning experience.   

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