advertisement


Dac/streamer - not as involving as vinyl

The Bish

The Bish

pfm Member
Evening all,

I’m sure this is a hackneyed subject but always worth getting a few up to date opinions! I’m listening to various albums tonight on both streaming and vinyl. Vinyl setup is nothing exotic, a Rega turntable with 2M Black and EAR 834p, and the DAC is the RME ADI-2 with eq settings plumbed in after a few REW sessions streaming with Qobuz via an Allo signature streamer. The streaming setup does sound very good - cleaner and more precise for sure and has no boomy bass thanks to the EQ , but listening to the vinyl is more enjoyable and involving. Anyone else had a similar experience and subsequently found a dac that has given the same satisfaction as their turntable?

Cheers
 
Purité Audio said:
Have you tried the NOS filter option on the RME, you might find it more vinyl-like.
Keith
Click to expand...

I have Keith, thanks. Does make a little bit of difference vs the sharp and slow filters. I think @uncl_nigel is right, they are both good but different, probably need to reset my expectations on what a dac can sound like.
 
uncl_nigel said:
I have similarly priced (read expensive) digital and vinyl sources. I find they sound different but are equally involving.

It must be said, however, that I think local files sound more involving than the same music via Tidal through the digital front end.
Click to expand...

I agree regarding local files, my prime source for listening is vinyl which I prefer, however a lot of my listening is also Spotify which for me is OK but used more for convenience and to seek out new stuff, I've also got some 600 - 700 Cd's stored on a NAS drive and these sound very good when played through the DAC, far better SQ than Spotify in my opinion
 
I felt this way about CD until I bought a Rega Saturn-R. My RP10 still beats in some areas but I find the Saturn just as involving and enjoyable.

I've had some Naim CD players which I also found exiting but they were harsh on some disks and didn't play loud gracefully. The Rega is the first CD player that I really feel sounds like a turntable, not at all harsh but very involving. I'm sure it can't be the only digital source in the world that sounds that way.
 
I’ll not doubt get shouted down for this by the objectivalgelists, but try hooking up a half decent CD transport to the DAC, ideally via coax, and AB it with the same material (just be sure you are using the same mastering). You or may or may not find it interesting...
 
Tony L said:
I’ll not doubt get shouted down for this by the objectivalgelists, but try hooking up a half decent CD transport to the DAC, ideally via coax, and AB it with the same material (just be sure you are using the same mastering). You or may or may not find it interesting...
Click to expand...

Yep, good idea, will get a couple of copies on CD and report back.
 
Vinyl, hmmm........
I got rid of my turntable many years ago for many different reasons.
Nevertheless, my salesman back then at the hottest hi-fi shop in town told me not to get rid of my vinyl collection, which I did.
Many years later, a friend of mine wanted me to go help him buy a complete hi-fi kit in one of the most renowned hi-fi store we know.
Like me, back then, he was listening to CD’s but he was also streaming.
So we listened to many tracks back and forth on different equipment of various European brands but nothing really impressed me.
My friend asked me: what do you think ?
Sadly I told him and the salesman that nothing really got my attention and I wasn’t able to distinguish what was good or bad.
So, I asked if we could plug in a turntable to get a better idea of what’s going on.
We did and I personally did put a vinyl which is a direct disc with Bach cantatas recorded in a small church.
The 3 of us were breathless !
Sound was all over the place, we could feel the room, hear the breathing of the singers and the vibratos were from another world.
So my friend bought the whole kit (Copland integrated and French speakers) without the turntable so I asked him: what about the turntable, you don’t have any ?
And he replied to me : I don’t care, I know it sounds wonderful so when the time will come, I will just add a turntable and I’m done !
To me, a good digital source with a decent DAC might be very good but I still struggle to match what I heard back then.
 
The Bish said:
Anyone else had a similar experience and subsequently found a dac that has given the same satisfaction as their turntable?
Click to expand...

I ditched my Rega P5 turntable many years ago with all my LPs and settled with a Chord DAC. Have you tried a Chord DAC?
 
There are two good round-earth explanations for this:

- for older recordings, where the vinyl was out first, you are getting a mastering that was done when the source tape was newer and one that has not been digitally "improved" which in some cases may have made the sound worse
- for newer recordings, vinyl is often less compressed (brickwalled) so you are getting better dynamic range

There isn't any doubt in my mind that the best digital recordings and replay chains have better fidelity than vinyl but there are plenty of actual albums that sound best that way.

Tim
 
The Bish said:
I have Keith, thanks. Does make a little bit of difference vs the sharp and slow filters. I think @uncl_nigel is right, they are both good but different, probably need to reset my expectations on what a dac can sound like.
Click to expand...

Alex S used to own an RME DAC. He now uses an Audial S4 and did a nice write up here:

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/audial-s4-dac-subjective-review.237814/

I also had a lot of trouble finding a DAC that offers the same long term listening enjoyment that a good vinyl rig provides, but they are out there...
 
Del monaco said:
The material and production quality usually determine how involving my music is, regardless of the equipment I play it on. Some of my vinyl sounds glorious. Some just doesn’t.its the same for my cds etc.
Click to expand...

How true! I'm a big fan of 'modern' jazz, recorded, typically, 60 years ago. Because of how it was produced it simply sounds lovely to my ears.

I have most of my LP collection digitizd via a Roland/Edirol portable digital recorder. Even if I knew if I'm listening to something thats been originaly on vinyl or not, I'm hard to tell which ever it is!
Recently I'm sourcing more and more from the tube,and again, It's not obvious to my ears what is what.

And, no, I'm not in the 'digital is perfect and all amps sound the same' brigade. I once was in the 'flat earth' society, but left many years ago.
 
It's what I and many others have been saying for the last 30 years. If you compare an analogue recording on vinyl with the same digital copy, the vinyl in nearly all cases sounds better. I just don't get where this "digital is better than analogue" thing has come from. I am not saying digital can't be good, but it doesn't provide the convincing result that analogue does. There are reasons why electronically digital replay isn't as good, and the simplicity of analogue is certainly one of these...

As I posted on another thread a few months ago, one of my clients has a top digital front end that costs over £100k. He reports that out of all his digital sources (CD transport, top server & top streamer) CD sounds the best, followed by locally ripped music on his server, followed by streamed music from companies like Tidal.
 
RJohan said:
How true! I'm a big fan of 'modern' jazz, recorded, typically, 60 years ago. Because of how it was produced it simply sounds lovely to my ears.

I have most of my LP collection digitizd via a Roland/Edirol portable digital recorder. Even if I knew if I'm listening to something thats been originaly on vinyl or not, I'm hard to tell which ever it is!
Recently I'm sourcing more and more from the tube,and again, It's not obvious to my ears what is what.

And, no, I'm not in the 'digital is perfect and all amps sound the same' brigade. I once was in the 'flat earth' society, but left many years ago.
Click to expand...
A great deal of 50s/60s recorded jazz sounds phenomenal on vinyl and cd. I really like Jazz and need to explore further. Regarding listening to music, I’ve never really been a one format fan.I love the choice I have. I even play with my cassettes sometimes and recently enjoyed some Ormandy Tchaikovsky on an old newly cleaned Marantz Cassette deck. I was involved! To be honest, if the music is great, it transports me and I’m always involved.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top