Morning and Merry Xmas.
Please have some Xmas spirit and cut me a little slack....
I'm long past collecting my pension so no doubt my hearing is not equivalent to a 20 year olds, my "hi-fi" kit consists of a Cambridge Azur 640H music server coupled to a Creek OBH 22 passive pre amp , a Quad 405 amp and a couple of Spendor BC 1's. The latter items owned for 40 odd years!
I was idly thinking of how I could change this system and found myself asking how to do it. My hi fi knowledge is limited, but in it's simplest, as I understand it with my present system the 640H rips a CD which is then stored on a internal hard drive and then played back though a DAC in the 640H to the Quad and speakers. I have the option to rip the CD losslessly, or other formats (320mps etc). If I elect the lossless option it does not affect the quality of the stored music and the only influence on quality is the DAC conversion before it reaches the amplifier and speakers?
My question - the 640H has a Wolfson WM8740 24/129kHz DAC which as I understand it was a pretty good DAC at the time, however if I junked the 640 H, bought one of todays best DAC's and simply used my PC to rip CD's losslessly to a external hard drive and then played this through the modern DAC to my Quad and Spendors - would I hear any improvement??
Really my second question is - if the answer to the above is "probably not", has hi-fi not really advanced in the past 40 years?
If I'm completely not understanding things, please explain.
Thanks
Alan C
Please have some Xmas spirit and cut me a little slack....
I'm long past collecting my pension so no doubt my hearing is not equivalent to a 20 year olds, my "hi-fi" kit consists of a Cambridge Azur 640H music server coupled to a Creek OBH 22 passive pre amp , a Quad 405 amp and a couple of Spendor BC 1's. The latter items owned for 40 odd years!
I was idly thinking of how I could change this system and found myself asking how to do it. My hi fi knowledge is limited, but in it's simplest, as I understand it with my present system the 640H rips a CD which is then stored on a internal hard drive and then played back though a DAC in the 640H to the Quad and speakers. I have the option to rip the CD losslessly, or other formats (320mps etc). If I elect the lossless option it does not affect the quality of the stored music and the only influence on quality is the DAC conversion before it reaches the amplifier and speakers?
My question - the 640H has a Wolfson WM8740 24/129kHz DAC which as I understand it was a pretty good DAC at the time, however if I junked the 640 H, bought one of todays best DAC's and simply used my PC to rip CD's losslessly to a external hard drive and then played this through the modern DAC to my Quad and Spendors - would I hear any improvement??
Really my second question is - if the answer to the above is "probably not", has hi-fi not really advanced in the past 40 years?
If I'm completely not understanding things, please explain.
Thanks
Alan C