hi rez music -- questions from a newbie

That is a good observation sflam. So manufacturers like Bryston and Electro Companiet are beginning to cater to one segment of the hifi enthusiasts who prefers to have a dedicated music server plus the convenience of the laptop. I remember there are a few others as well. Right from the beginning, this is one of the important things I have highlighted and that one must be sure of one's own preference and to do due diligence. Thereafter, the choice must be made by the person himself and herself and which is the correct choice - for THAT person.

It is important to understand that others have their own way. The important thing is to acknowledge the fact that there are different approaches, with new approaches coming up regularly and that each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. The only problem is to be so sure that one's choice is the best and only way.

There is a saying that it is not wrong to be ignorance but to be ignorant of one's ignorance, that is the saddest thing in life.

WongKN wrote:Mugen, welcome to the narrow minded dinosaur club !

Spoiler:

Thank you thank you ! ... I learned it from the besterest and most-longwinded forummer here, so all credit must go to that one guy.

So for those who feel the need to buy a "PURPOSE BUILT" Hi-Fi piece of equipment as part of their audio value chain, Perhaps a "best of both worlds" would be a Computer system to host the library and also do the digital manipulation, then feed the stream into an external USB DAC.

One could get the conveniences and versatility of a computer, while at the same time use a purpose-built DAC for that ever-important link as part of the Hi-Fi eco-system. There are many "high-end" (and even higher price DACs) that fulfill just this role. EMM Labs, Weiss, Ayre, Zodiac/Antelope, and even dCS.

As for real-world USB DACs that won't break the bank and still sound very good, would be Benchmark and HRT, etc. (just to name a few brands in no particular order or preference).

WongKN wrote:Right from the beginning, this is one of the important things I have highlighted and that one must be sure of one's own preference and to do due diligence. Thereafter, the choice must be made by the person himself and herself and which is the correct choice - for THAT person.

You guys make it so complicated. After all it is the music that counts. No matter what the carrier is.

CAS is not difficult to set up or operate. It is as easy as turning on a computer. I hv optimised many laptops, usually within the hour unless one wanted to use internal SSD.

Operating systems like JRivers is a breeze to use. A few minutes of messing around for a non computer guy is all one needs to fairly master it.

I think for a nice makan, MF cld setup a CAS system for whoever needs one.

Nothing to do with preference, most are just not exposed to it. so their only avenue is to buy CD Players.

i didn't know that Michael Fremer (MF) was such a CAS advocate !!! I thought he was that die-hard analog dude!

MF = Mugen Foo
Our very own Malaysian Analogue Sifu who is also Sifu in CAS.

Fuyoo.... Jinjang Foo = Malaysia Analogue and CAS Sifu. Jinjang Foo very humble fella. He would rather be 'off the radar'

CAS vs Dedicated Music server

Dedicated Music Server like the Bryston BDP-1 uses a low powered motherboard with low Mhz CPU, running linux. It is powered by a linear power supply. All these are designed to minimize noise.

A PC or MAC with a switch-mode power supply will still be very noisy electrically.

A note book running on battery still has an inverter to drive the LCD display fluorescent backlight which is noisy (unless you use a LED backlight display)

Everything in any electrical appliance is already noisy. A typical home electrical supply is already full of noise from fluorescent lights, fridge compressors, aircond compressors, your handphone charger, a MedKlinn ionizer, etc etc etc. Even a CD/DVD player itself has plenty of spurious noise from all those chips and power stages. So whats the big deal ?

The trick here is for a good implementation of the USB link, where there are aysnchronous methods for the DAC to act as the master device and the CAS as the slave in sending the digital stream. There are lots of articles and white papers re. this no need to repeat this here again. A USB link is robust enough to survive whatever noise in a computer environment so this is really a non-issue.

Again, the flexibility of your own choice of (USB) DAC is really the icing on the cake here in a CAS system.

MF, you're such an admirable fella ....





I'm running my Dell laptop via the Linn Magik DS, both wired to router. I can't hear anything I don't like right now. The laptop is in another room, I can choose tracks via the Linn's remote. The important thing is that I'm also still enjoying my turntable ... no connection, of course, but just thought I'd mention it anyway ...

VW GTi good !

Wah, suddenly you show up. So, got your GTi already ?

Actually if you read this thread right from beginning, there has never been any recommendation or opinion as to what is the best equipment or best approach to use. At least the majority of the people here. What the original questions were about are about where to get the music, all about the music. There were just sharing of opinions and experience and the intention had always been that forumers here are intelligent people and what they need are information. And that in the end, they and only they themselves will make the final decision of what to do. It is the process of what we call 'due diligence' that is what is happening here.

So, you still playing with a dinosaur format eh ? How come you never go to the regular haunt for more poison nowadays ?

VW GTi still a distant speck in distant horizon!

Getting bored with many things now! ... and extra busy at work and planning long-term future. Was at poison den last week. Gradually developing immunity.


And that MF, what a great guy he is, to be sure ...

Mugen ? He's always been a great guy la. If not for him, I would not have gotten my Proceed running. It's amazing how many dinosaurs he keeps in his room !

SJ, you see, the problem is you only -think- you are immune. But the truth is you never really are immune. All it takes is just the next trigger. You seen the newest speaker at the haunt yet ?

Waaaahhh I read this thread a few days too late. A lot of digital talk on PC based music.



I only use a 2TB WD NAS and the CLiC and happy with it. But of course, if I have the extra time on my hands, I too would like to explore more on PC based music.

Too late, you have become a dinosaur, joining mugen, me and others. BTW, great report on that CDT. I am just curious why you decided to test it but you did make it quite clear in your review.

WongKN wrote:Mugen ? He's always been a great guy la. If not for him, I would not have gotten my Proceed running. It's amazing how many dinosaurs he keeps in his room !

SJ, you see, the problem is you only -think- you are immune. But the truth is you never really are immune. All it takes is just the next trigger. You seen the newest speaker at the haunt yet ?

No speakers tempt me. Maggies for life ... ... or until they fall apart ...


Mugen - the answer to everything ...

Ah yes, mugen is da man !!

You sure about your speakers. There is a pair of Apogee Mini Grands for sale you know. Good price. Fantastic sound. Would work great with your monoblocs. I would have bought it except I couldn't work out the transportation logistics. Hmmm... maybe mugen can help me out here !

Nope, sticking with the Maggies. A little mod I designed and got someone to implement worked like magic. I figure I'll keep fine-tuning it.




Mugen - da man with da plan ...

Ah, until it falls apart as you said. IF it will ever fall apart (speakers by good manufacturers ever do fall apart ?)

Oh yes, mugen, he is THE BEST !!!

Nothing is made to last eternally!

Mugen is not just the best, he is the BESTEST ...!!!

I think the word he uses is BESTEREST !!!

thank you thank you ! Now you all can vote +1 for me already.
(Mana tau, kena all the -1 instead...)

WongKN wrote:I think the word he uses is BESTEREST !!!

Aiyo,Wong Suk. Yau mou gao chor by under rating Jinjang Foo!!!!

Should have been MOST BESTEREST lah.

How about Mosterest Besterest ...

Haa.. u all also salah .. it should be the Mosterestest Besterestest.

Let's crown MF the Emperor ...

*** In American slang, these are called "" Jerk each other off "" ***

All hail the great all conquering champion, the grand emperor Mugen Foo !!

To the OP and other forumers who are actually reading this thread to know about hi-res, I do apologise. It's just a bunch of good friends joking around. I promise I will revert back to the main topic in a moment. Right after the mugenfoo fan club's AGM finishes !!

Other matters pertaining to MFFC AGM - after crowning MF the Emperor, I am proposing Wikin as Regent ...

Now, back to the main topic shall we, after the brief distraction.

One of the most heavily discussed topic within the issue about 'hi-res' digital is about the option of up-sampling a music track. E.g. say the opinion held is that 24/96 is superior to 16/44.1. Thus if we love a particular song by a particular singer, if we can somehow use a magic software to change the original 16/44.1 music file into a 24/96 music file, then we would get a sudden increase in sound quality. Ecstasy !!

The process of doing this is called 'up-sampling' and in computer terms, it works by taking the existing data and use a technique called 'interpolating' (since we create new data in-between two existing data points, it is INTER-polating) to create the additional data needed for the higher sampling rate. E.g. from 24/48, from each pair of data, we interpolate to create a new data point in between. So now we get double the samples and the sampling rate increases to 96kHz. Interpolation works best if the new up-sampled rate is a multiple of the original, e.g. 48 to 96 or to 192. If it is 44.1 to 96, because of the incompatibility of the two sampling formats, we end up with more than 99.9% of the data being generated.

For the 'word size', or 'sample size', we simply transpose the value into a larger word size. E.g. if the 16 bit data is 0000000000001000 which is equal to +8 (I want to be more precise now since when I simplify in the past to make things easier to understand, some people thinks I don't know what I am talking about). To transpose it to a 24bit its simply add 8 bits in front. But that's useless isn't it ? Because the 8 extra bits are never used since the original signal was encoded within a 16bits constraint. So there is usually some form of gain adjustment when moving to 24 bit, in order to take advantage of the higher resolution. It also helps to keep the background noise down.

Previous discussions as expected eventually gravitated towards what software will give good results. I myself have tested a very limited number of software and in the end, favoured the Cirlinca HD-Solo Pro recommended in the Linn Records website. Unfortunately when I up-sampled Candy from the new Tom Petty MOJO album where the digital downloads are in 24/48 format and upsampled to 24/96, the resultant file did not play. It came out as white noise when fed from the TVX into the Proceed. I suspect there is an incompatibility in WAV file format between the HD Solo software and the TVX player. This happens in the I/T industry all the time, 'international standards' often changes and are never 'standard'. But I intend to try again and test.

HD Solo Pro -claims- to be using a 'professional grade' algorithm for their upsampling work.

However recently after I came across the hifitrack website, their 'hi-res' versions of popular artists like Paula Tsui, Sandy Lam, etc, are actually not native hi-res versions but rather re and up sampled from the original 16/44.1 masters to 24/96 'studio grade' hi-res. They always state that the upsampling was done by Weiss Sarabon, which is a professional software by Weiss. This software sells for a cool 2000 USD -on special discounted offer-. SO, I finally discovered how much a proper professional up-sampling software costs.

As I have not yet bought any songs from hifitrack, I do not know how their upsampled hires music sounds. An interesting experiment would be to start use the hifitrack upsampled 24/96 music, from say Sandy Lam, then get the same song in its original 16/44.1 format, then upsample that using softwares like HD-Solo Pro (which is going for around 100USD if I remember correctly). If we can't hear a difference, then we should rejoice because either we cannot hear or our system cannot differentiate. It also will tell us how good the consumer software like HD Solo Pro can be.

If anyone has already done this, please do share. Even if you have only heard or read of someone who has done this, also share, as the primary objective of this forum is open and courteous sharing of knowledge and experience.

This topic is now open up for discussion, for those who are interested to participate.

And now, I need to go back to the mugenfoo rah-rah fan club AGM. We decided we will honour him by upsampling the famous papa americano song form as his present as the new emperor !

WongKN is hereby appointed the Court-Jester, by Imperial Decree..


As for Upsampling from an original 16/44.1KHz source, don't expect the upsampling to miraculously generate any new information that was already lost in the 16/44.1 medium.

Any benefit would merely be in reducing digital artifacts such as spreading the quantization noise and and making it easier to filter out the harshness of D/A conversions (as illustrated in the youtube CD player test video).

Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced. It definitely changes the sound. But is it superlatively better than the original? I can't be certain of it.

Is it the case similar like DVD video of 480p being up-sampled to HD 720p by modern DVD player? Whereas its native resolution is only 480p, although improving the overall PQ, it is still incomparable to 720p original source.

Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic
presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that
dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced.

Was this the result when we tried with the Behringer, at one time (I forgot) ?

By virtue of the new power vested in me, I shall now appoint mugenfoo to also join me as the chief joker ! Maybe we need SJ to join us as well....

Or, it is not just a mere upsampling but involve remastering; where lower dynamic details has been rised couple of dB more to make it more audible. I just afraid this is what taking place on some revision of audio on higher "Remastering" rate. and very afraid that it is in fact heard as improvement by all of us; which we "jerk each other off" on how authentic hi res music going to be.. hehe, IMO saja..



Since the software is this expensive... it might has an auto mode on it

Mikapoh wrote:Is it the case similar like DVD video of 480p being up-sampled to HD 720p by modern DVD player? Whereas its native resolution is only 480p, although improving the overall PQ, it is still incomparable to 720p original source.

Mikapoh, yes it is similar in concept. The upsampled signal should by right never be as good as if the signal is originally in the higher format. However, whether it is better than the original lower format signal is perhaps a more open question.

For DVD, it is difficult for us to truly compare. This is because upsampling always happens if we are to be playing say a "FullHD" 1080p TV. So if the DVD player signal is not upsampled by the player, it still will be upsampled by the TV as the display is fixed at 1080p. It won't use less of the pixels if a lower resolution signal is input in. So when we compare, it often becomes a comparison of the upsampling mechanism between the TV and the player.

This is different from the case of digital audio as the DAC plays back whatever the signal's format is, without any changes.

adrian4454 wrote:Or, it is not just a mere upsampling but involve remastering; where lower dynamic details has been rised couple of dB more to make it more audible. I just afraid this is what taking place on some revision of audio on higher "Remastering" rate. and very afraid that it is in fact heard as improvement by all of us; which we "jerk each other off" on how authentic hi res music going to be.. hehe, IMO saja..



Since the software is this expensive... it might has an auto mode on it

In some softwares, there is a gain change option for re-sampling so I assume the software by default will upsample without changing the gain. In theory we need to remap the original signal so that it uses up all of the extra resolution if we are to move from 16bits to 24bits. Incidentally I was reading some articles on google that claims that audio engineers feels that higher resolution samples (like 24bits over 16bits) can be as important or more important than higher sampling rates. So 16/96 may or may not be better than 24/48 (that was the example given if I remember correctly).

For my case, I can check what sampling mode the processor is working in so I can clearly see if the input signal is in 96kHz or not. But I have not really done a very extensive test yet. I just thought with the distraction that have sidetracked us from the original topic of this thread, that this topic of up-sampling will be a good one to bring us back on track. Thereafter if more people are to participate in open sharing and honest discussion, I shall leave it to you guys and see where the discussion goes.

This is an interesting and very relevant topic especially when now some 'hi-res' music for sale are actually up-sampled ones, not natively in hi-res.

mugenfoo wrote:Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced. It definitely changes the sound. But is it superlatively better than the original? I can't be certain of it.

I do agree with the emperor here. Upsampling does not necessarily makes the music sound better but different. It may not be everyone's cup of tea.

elhefe wrote:

mugenfoo wrote:Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced. It definitely changes the sound. But is it superlatively better than the original? I can't be certain of it.

I do agree with the emperor here. Upsampling does not necessarily makes the music sound better but different. It may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Are you guys talking from experience??????or just heresay or worst....guessing....

Elhefe,

Actually so far, the results of up-sampling even using HD Solo Pro software by Cirlinca (recommended by Linn themselves) do not give 100% positive results. I tried up-sampling from 24/48 to 24/96 and also 16/44.1 to 24/96. Even the 16/44.1 to 24/96 added a bit of edginess to the sound and the images are less solid. In fact, the entire soundstage becomes less focussed and subjectively the music is less involving when compared to the original 16/44.1 version. So from this aspect, my own personal experience correlates with mugen.

However, I am also aware of truly professional software like the Weiss Sarabon which is used by the hifitrack website to upsample some of their music (as explained above). So myself, without at least trying those, I would not want to make a firm and conclusive decision at this point.

VS126 wrote:

elhefe wrote:

mugenfoo wrote:Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced. It definitely changes the sound. But is it superlatively better than the original? I can't be certain of it.

I do agree with the emperor here. Upsampling does not necessarily makes the music sound better but different. It may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Are you guys talking from experience??????or just heresay or worst....guessing....

From listening experience hence the agreement above is only true to my ears.

It's Weiss Saracon ye Court Jester!



Think I need a Saridon!

Ah, what a difference a b makes. I was remembering the name off the top of my head. Whatever it is, even the HD Solo Pro Ultra costs only USD75 while one website was selling the weiss at a special discounted price of USD2,000. So it would not be wise to judge state of the art up-sampling by what is available on the consumer market.

Did an foobarABX on wav and flac of the same track. Can't seem to detect any discernible differences between the two as shown by the results of 3 attempts.



Maybe it's my hearing.

Zooming in on the results.

Actually I seriously don't think anyone will hear any difference between WAV and FLAC. Their difference is only in the efficiency of the compression algorithm. In essence they are loseless meaning that after decompression, we get 100% of the original data. But a software telling you straight to your face "I am sure you are just guessing !", now that seems like fun !

Some of the algorithms used in I/T can be quite impressive. For e.g. things like Triple-DES. Data compression is common place in the professional industry nowadays, as are data encryption so lots of technology that can be transferred to the consumer market. I can see lots of people adopting FLAC nowadays. Makes sense as their files are smaller. I just hope the industry will settle on this and move on to advance the market proper. However there are now some newer and more efficient algorithms in the professional industry so we might yet see another new format in the not too distant future.

WongKN wrote:Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic
presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that
dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced.

Was this the result when we tried with the Behringer, at one time (I forgot) ?

On a serious note, yes. The Behringer was used strictly as a D/D converter only. Results were as reported.

There was another session with beemerman, nooddle88 & chua55 some time ago, also experimenting with resampling and the results were consistent. Taking an original 16/44.1 and resampling it to 24/96, made it all warmer, fuzzier sounding, an a tad more laid back. But dynamics was not as punchy and stereo imaging took on a slight vagueness. This was via a CAS and the media player was foobar2000, if i remember correctly. DAC was a Audio-GD unit that was 24/96 capable, if i remember correctly also.

VS126 wrote:

elhefe wrote:

mugenfoo wrote:Personally, all these D/A-side upsampling just makes the sonic presentation fuzzy and warmer sounding. But the downside is that dynamics would suffer some, and the rock solid imaging is also reduced. It definitely changes the sound. But is it superlatively better than the original? I can't be certain of it.

I do agree with the emperor here. Upsampling does not necessarily makes the music sound better but different. It may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Are you guys talking from experience??????or just heresay or worst....guessing....

Mine is from experience lah ... i dunno about the rest though and i can't speak for them.

But in trying to be a gracious and generous Emperor, everyone is free to latch on to this experience and use it as the absolute reference point. So it has been said. So it shall be done. Thy will be done. Amen.

tycham wrote:It's Weiss Saracon ye Court Jester!



Think I need a Saridon!

Actually a Weiss ADC2 looks pretty interesting as a method to play vinyl over a preamp-less setup and using a crazy nut-case extravagant DAC to directly feed into the power amp.

A Weiss ADC2 and an amp-driving capable DAC (like a dCS unit or PS-Audio PWD or Wadia DAC ) could make a killer front-end combo, and play records too! <--- yes, i know, This is total Heresy. But you guys voted me the Emperor.... LOL!!!

mugenfoo wrote:
This is total Heresy. But you guys voted me the Emperor.... LOL!!!

it's time to organise a revolution and overthrow the heretical emperor!

Pleaaassseee...not BERSIH 3.0

sflam wrote:

mugenfoo wrote:
This is total Heresy. But you guys voted me the Emperor.... LOL!!!

it's time to organise a revolution and overthrow the heretical emperor!