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MDAC first listen (part V)

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Bluedroog said:
A couple of questions for you users of this DAC is you don’t mind…
Does anyone use this DAC and a pre-amp to good effect?
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Yes, me. Its excellent, it replaced a Naim 82 and all its PSUs and although I cant assess the preamp as a separate item, the overall leap in quality convinces me that adding ANY preamp after the MDAC will not "improve" the sound.

Bluedroog said:
lso just to confirm, the volume is digital? Does it do this without any degradation of the signal?
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Yes, its digital, no audible degradation as long as you dont need to use massive amounts of attenuation to get a sensible level, if you do, you need to attenuate (at the power amp end of the wire) the analogue output. Ideally the MDAC should be running in the -10dB zone, but even in my relatively hi-res system I cannot hear any degradation way down in the -20s.
 
3dit0r said:
I actually found a link on the benchmark website after googling that the iPad should indeed be bit perfect, and even over wi-fi- they had some readings showing no *apparent* difference between that and a MBP over optical or USB with one of their DACs. I'm not by my home computer but will send the link later for you ;)

A full featured clock-locked transport would be great. I still like spinning CDs. Wonder if the drive will be optimised for re-reads and buffered to ensure all the data is retrieved...?
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Ah yes got the link bookmarked totally forgotten about that ..thks for reminding me

http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/discu.../06/1/ipad-streams-high-resolution-audio-dac1
 
I am running my mdac fron an ipad with flac player. It passes the bit perfect test files witout a problem.

Feeding the mdac output into an ncc200 power amp and IBLs.....very happy with result
 
JemHayward said:
Some stuff is actually mastered at 16/44.1 so that's the best we'll ever get, but if hi-res ever catches on, I'm sure we'll get some of the lower bit recordings being upsampled and offered at a premium.
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It already is happening Jem, HiFi News and Record Review magasine did some tests on some "24bit" albums being sold by HDTracks and found them to be 16bit upsamples. They wrote an article on it about 6 months ago and have sworn to oust all sellers that try the same thing. I'll see if I can dig out the article.
 
JemHayward said:
Yes, me. Its excellent, it replaced a Naim 82 and all its PSUs and although I cant assess the preamp as a separate item, the overall leap in quality convinces me that adding ANY preamp after the MDAC will not "improve" the sound.


Yes, its digital, no audible degradation as long as you dont need to use massive amounts of attenuation to get a sensible level, if you do, you need to attenuate (at the power amp end of the wire) the analogue output. Ideally the MDAC should be running in the -10dB zone, but even in my relatively hi-res system I cannot hear any degradation way down in the -20s.
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How does one attenuate? Is it just a couple of resistors? If so what spec and how do you wire them in?
 
Jo Sharp said:
I am running my mdac fron an ipad with flac player. It passes the bit perfect test files witout a problem.

Feeding the mdac output into an ncc200 power amp and IBLs.....very happy with result
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How do you stream to the iPad? I was assuming you'd put the music on the iPad itself...
 
Bluedroog said:
I'd imagine he means something like these:

http://goldenjacks.com/

http://www.rothwellaudioproducts.co.uk/html/attenuators.html
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Yeah I used to have an attenuated lead from RAA, but run Select interconnects now so it's not possible to fit them in the leads. I self built my amp, so the best solution for me would be to do it inside the amp inputs, with some very high quality resistors, if someone knows how? If not I'll ask on the DIY boards ;)

That's all assuming I go down this road anyway- looking forward to dem at weekend...
 
therixonator said:
It already is happening Jem, HiFi News and Record Review magasine did some tests on some "24bit" albums being sold by HDTracks and found them to be 16bit upsamples. They wrote an article on it about 6 months ago and have sworn to oust all sellers that try the same thing. I'll see if I can dig out the article.
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Couldn't find the actual article, but here's one that refers to it...

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Scandal-Brewing-High-Resolution-Downloads
 
Hi

Im from Denmark so my english is properly not perfect.

I recived my MDAC today and i have 1 problem/question.

When i play music from Spotify and disable "Set the same volume level for all tracks" in spotify preferences, the bitrate is jumping a lot between 16 and 24?

Why is this happening ? It does not seem to have impact on sound quality

I have recorded a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aUedEPdRvI&feature=youtu.be

BR
Peter Storgaard
 
Hi Peter

Your English is very good, a lot better than my Danish :D

I also noticed this with spotify but if you reduce the volume in spotify just very very slightly it doesn't do it :)

Cheers, Carl

P.Storgaard said:
Hi

Im from Denmark so my english is properly not perfect.

I recived my MDAC today and i have 1 problem/question.

When i play music from Spotify and disable "Set the same volume level for all tracks" in spotify preferences, the bitrate is jumping a lot between 16 and 24?

Why is this happening ? It does not seem to have impact on sound quality

I have recorded a video of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aUedEPdRvI&feature=youtu.be

BR
Peter Storgaard
Click to expand...
 
Carlos68 said:
Hi Peter

Your English is very good, a lot better than my Danish :D

I also noticed this with spotify but if you reduce the volume in spotify just very very slightly it doesn't do it :)

Cheers, Carl
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Hi Carlos

Well that seems to work.

Still a bit strange! Spotify is properly doing somthing weird.

Thanks!

BR
Peter Storgaard
 
3dit0r said:
How do you stream to the iPad? I was assuming you'd put the music on the iPad itself...
Click to expand...

You can't..as far as I know. You have to load the FLAC files onto the Ipad and the flacplayer app will then either play analogue to the headphone socket of the Ipad, or using the Apple camera connector kit thingy, out over USB cable to the MDAC.

Jo
 
P.Storgaard said:
When i play music from Spotify and disable "Set the same volume level for all tracks" in spotify preferences, the bitrate is jumping a lot between 16 and 24?
Click to expand...

Anything based on a lossy compressed format is likely to be of indeterminate bit depth. Forget about it :)
 
klipschman70,

Dominik believes he has found the issue with very rapid locking / unlocking events at higher sample rates (Oppo player) - I've Emailed you the update file if you would not mind to check it out before "Official" release..

Thank you once again for your feedback,

John
 
kevinwong said:
John,

Am I missed you and Dominik's reply for the 24/192 bug?
Sorry that so many pages need to trace your replies.

Thanks,
Kevin
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Hi Kevin,

Pls. PM me your Email address we have a Beta test software update which we hope will solve the issue with OPPO players which very rapidly unlock / Lock at higher sampling rates (192kHz) and can cause the MDAC to "Hang"...

John
 
P.Storgaard said:
Hi Carlos

Well that seems to work.

Still a bit strange! Spotify is properly doing somthing weird.

Thanks!

BR
Peter Storgaard
Click to expand...

It sounds like a "limiter" coming into action - data is 16 bits until processed by the limiter - during limitation, output data is 24Bits... Windows 7 also has this nasty feature and cannot be bypassed.

John
 
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