Dreadhead

The guy from wavelength appears to be really helpful to all (not that I will buy his stuff). He seems to be honestly interested in helping anyone get the best out of their computer audio. Also it's possible that he has a patent on the tech and it was cheaper for him to let Ayre license vs going into patent litigation. Just a guess at best.

Elevate by Fiona Mackenzie Awesome recording and a wonderful voice

I knew something was different... not in the major details but in the micro-details and the timing of the page-loads

Hydrogenaudio already has some (not too complimentary) threads

Well at I own 3 usb hard drives I did not say error free I said error tolerant. USB does have some issues since it's asynchronous and this can certainly cause problems in that the music drops out. That said if they digital signal gets through the only thing I can see being an issue is the jitter in the digital signal. Jitter could be the cause but I'm not so convinced because some "amazing" transports have jitter problems and other so so transports have great jitter. Also tests on the audibility of jitter are very suspect. Another possible source is some kind of DSP going on in the transport which of course can make a difference. I'm not saying that they don't sound different but that I don't see why they should sound different. They are taking digital data and delivering it, there are lots of devices that do this very well ranging from digital cable to cell phones and I don't see why it will take 2 grand to do this with CDs.

One thing to remember is that if you paint the walls of a room a different color people will be in a different mood in it and this will effect what they hear. I'm tempted to think that much like hard disks digital audio is fairly error tolerant (could you imagine if the data came off the hard disk differently depending on what disk it was on).

I got my wife this print of a piece called critics that was a paintbrush filled with goblins, thought it was suitable.

I think that may be part of the problem. Honestly how is an ES-2 worth that much? Maybe Mikhail figures if he can charge what he wants then he can do whatever he wants too.

This whole thing is mind blowing. How he got this far in this business is beyond me.

Ok then send it to me

Wait Mikhail lies? .... I hope this works out Icarium

At least we're in agreement that it's the mix/playback mechanism, not that vinyl is superior. As far as your sample rate conundrum I can offer no advice as it does not at all match my experience. Maybe the digital or analog filter is different between the two sample rates in the DAC. I'm can only guess. If the sample rate conversion and bit depth truncation is done well then there should be no audible difference. I have a few masters that were done at 88.2 and 96 and I can't find a difference with them when I down sample either.

It's in the mix my friend it's in the mix. Hence the popularity of needle drops. If digital is responsible for the issues with how it sounds then why do many people (including you) love the digital representation of the analog recording that was made after playback? Digital just gives you back what it's given (if it does it right).

LOL. It always takes more money to hear what people want you to hear. That's my favorite part of this hobby. I will never ever own either of those and it's not a matter of money in either case. I have measured R10s and while they are fun (lovely even for classical) they are not detailed or transparent. K1000s just don't really fit me well thought I did enjoy them out of a 16gain balanced beta22 using my DAC3 as a source. Scratch that I may buy k1000s sometime.

Spacial positioning/sound stage is different for headphones I fully agree. That said I believe that there is nothing like them for judging the differences between two mixes (unless we're talking sound stage). I don't know how many times I've suddenly learned a track that I loved and thought was wonderfully recorded is utter crap once I listened to it on phones. Luckily in most cases I can still enjoy the music though. Anyway that's not the point I was trying to get across so I will drop it now.

Are you saying that speakers present more information than headphones? I'll have to heartily disagree. For the record: Bel Canto DAC3 (measured noise floor below 110 dB) Headamp GS-X HD650s,SA5000s,D5000s and Edition 9s. (I think we were mostly using the last 2 when he was over but I've done it by myself with the others)

I concur. People have finally started to take the data and rebuffer/reclock/resample it so you aren't dependent on the disc. That's the way it should be

Dusty I have done it. I took a digital track and set re-sampling and bit depths all over the range (44.1-96/ 16-14) and I or the other person couldn't hear any difference. This was using the SRC sinc interpolator (which is a brick wall filter btw). The reason you add dither is to make sure that the noise floor stays wide banded as you point out. I had oversimplified.

I didn't say worse I said different, the highs were higher after the sample rate switch if I remember right. If you're charging someone to have 24/96 it's always better if you can hear a clear difference which you can if they change the filter. Call it optimized or whatever you want. It shouldn't be there.

So do I! As I said in the DAC64 case. We switched sample rates and bit depths and the sound changed then did the same with my DAC3 and couldn't hear any difference. As I said the owner then sold it and it fell off my list of dacs to consider.

Much like some SACD's have a different mix on the CD layer than on the SACD layer. There is a difference but it's not the sample rate (if done well) or bit depth.

We are a low pass filter (with weird response and varying effectiveness). A low pass filter does not care what it's blocking out it just blocks it out. A lot of dacs have a brick wall filter on them because you don't want high frequency noise output into op-amps that have problems with them. Sample rate down-sampling has to be done exceedingly carefully but most just use a higher order interpolation and then a brick wall to prevent the noise leakage and of course noise shaping or dither.

Well then people were doing the bit depth conversion wrong (maybe the normalization?) because the noise floor on the LP is well above anything in that the 24to16 bit truncation should see.

True enough I didn't discuss noise shaping to prevent the harmoinc rounding but as Grawk pointed out it's on the inaudible LSB.

Yup. When stuff is below the noise floor it's below the noise floor and that's it.