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Computer sounds flat!

Macs are a little simpler to use than PC's I can't honestly say they sound any better if you have bit perfect output in both machines.
Keith.
 
The variables when playing music from a computer be it PC or a MAC are quite substantial. Windows does its own EQ. which you need to bypass, not something I have bothered trying as a load of hassle. I did some work around recording and mixing some years ago at a very low level whilst on a music course, and with a PC the best thing to do was to migrate the music processing off the sound processor of the MLB (logic board) and onto a dedicated external processor that is set up for the job. This gives best results.

With respect to digital music it is important to understand its limitations in relation to what you are listening to.

Lets start at the top, a FLAC file of an Album is about as close you can get to the original digital master recording, remember that if this has been created from an analogue tape there may already be some loss or introduction of change from the original. So replay of a FLAC file through the right set up will give the best result. Ignoring amplification and speakers etc.

The next step down is a CD, this is 16 bit and is compressed from the original FLAC and is somewhere between a quarter and a fifth the amount of digital data compared to FLAC.
CD's have there own issues, jitter being well known and the ability of the Laser to retrieve the information from the disc, and the DAC to be able to accurately convert to Analogue. Meridian over the years have extensively developed CD players that extract as much as possible and get the best out from a CD, as others have done. There are trade offs on the conversion process, where something that is very accurate and fast can sound too sharp or clinical, whereas a slightly different approach can sound softer and more musical (dare I say it more akin to vinyl), the reason for so many CD players and DACs out there.

The next step down is AAC lossless or MP3 hi-res, now you only have to look at the actual file size and compare with a CD to wonder what is going on. Lets say a average CD is about 600 megabytes, the same in lossless will be about 100mB a factor of 5 yet again. My understanding of the compression that is going on here is that it is actually removing aspects of the musical content, to gain the size, and obviously that lower the size the worse it is. I was told that the compression of MP3 and AAC and its reproduction actually relies one your brain filling in the holes that are missing using your musical experience, a bit of trickery the brain does.

So this for me this raises several issues. I in fact went through a process of digitising all my CD's a few years ago to my computer and creating a digital music library, putting it on a drive and hooking up to various media players and finally ending up with an Apple TV (not streaming). Then one day a friend recommended some music for me to try out, so I downloaded and started listening, and I was shocked. It sounded weird and horrid. I thought I had a download issue and repeated it, still the same. Then I checked my system and listened to some other music, all OK there. So initially I thought rubbish recording/music, then I was lent the CD and listened again and hey it was good, not muddled, and quite good. So what was going on?

Well here we come back to the brain trickery bit, the music I was recommended and downloaded was outside my previous musical experience and my brain had no terms off reference to fill in the missing gaps, new instruments and style and so on, so it sounded weird. I investigated this further, by listening to MP3 albums of artists I had not listened to for a long time and once again I sometimes felt it was lacking somehow. But when I played the CD it was as I remembered.

So have stopped playing CD's, I decided to stop the rot and go back to playing CD's and brought a secondhand Meridian 508. I have even thought of going one step further a back to vinyl, but there are issues when you already have a large CD collection and Vinyl is not without it's own compression issues, but not the same as CD.

So the answer is not simple, in fact I fear for current generations who are probably completely unaware of the impact on reproduction quality, and hear music not as it originally recorded or intended to be heard, and just believe that what comes out of a computer, MP3 or iPod is right.

I know this explanation is not technical, I do not intend it to be, more an insight and a thought provoker, and I am sure that it will raise or sorts of arguments. But I will say this, the less information you have to input into a processor(CPU) from the original then the less likely you are to be able to re-construct the original, no matter how good the algorithms and programming is.
 
Steven Toy said:
And if you are going to base your opinions on reading not listening, read properly: I hate everything that Apple stand for and I wouldn't give any Apple product house room (apart from for a few hours maybe.)

Do you think I wanted SQ's MAC to sound better than MY PC?

Yes the ears can be easily fooled, it doesn't mean they are always fooled. An automobile can easily be involved in a collision and thousands of automobile collisions occur every day. This does not mean that you are going to crash your car every time you go to Wallmart/Asda.

There is even an objective explanation as to why the MAC is better than the PC but let the facts not get in the way of the audiophobe propaganda.
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Funnily enough there isn't really any sense in why a mac should sound better. Macs may be simpler to operate, but that's because they make a lot of decisions for you based on who Apple thinks you are likely to be. And one thing is for certain, they don't think you are an audiophile

It has been necessary to buy (orginally) expensive, essentially foo programs merely in order to get a bit perfect output from a mac because of automated sample rate conversion.
You can get a bit perfect output from most pc music server programs quite easily.
If your machine is streaming bit perfect to a dac with asynch usb it's got a hell of a job to do to make the dac sound one way or the other.

If your machine is not streaming bit perfect, then it's a different story.
Talking about the sound of a PC or a mac is operating at a very high level of generality though. It is perfectly possible for either of them to do it right or do it wrong.
 
Basil said:
And you don't think Stereophile might just have their own adgenda?


Just a thought...
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Basil,

If you read all the article you will conclude they are selling nothing and this is just tech talk. I know very well they have a pretty well defined agenda ;) but not in this case they don't.

Cheers
 
CVentura said:
Basil,

If you read all the article you will conclude they are selling nothing and this is just tech talk. I know very well they have a pretty well defined agenda ;) but not in this case they don't.

Cheers
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There's nothing really wrong with it- but do bear in mind that it's state fo the art 1990.
If you get to page 2 of the article it is explained that a PLL will attenuate interface jitter by about 50x yielding the suggestion that all should eb fine providing that interface jitter is under 2ns. Nowadays jitter suppression should be better than that, and in the case of asych usb shouldn't be an issue at all, but in any event the interesting thing is that pretty much no one including Stereophile ever publish measurements of interface jitter. The typical way of measuring it just looks at the effect after dac conversion.

Nowadays most cheap dacs have very little jitter at all- you have to buy an expensive one or a shed-built audiophile one to get jitter.

All of which suggests that jitter is not the enemy of audiophiles, but the friend.
 
adamdea said:
Funnily enough there isn't really any sense in why a mac should sound better. Macs may be simpler to operate, but that's because they make a lot of decisions for you based on who Apple thinks you are likely to be. And one thing is for certain, they don't think you are an audiophile

It has been necessary to buy (orginally) expensive, essentially foo programs merely in order to get a bit perfect output from a mac because of automated sample rate conversion.
You can get a bit perfect output from most pc music server programs quite easily.
If your machine is streaming bit perfect to a dac with asynch usb it's got a hell of a job to do to make the dac sound one way or the other.

If your machine is not streaming bit perfect, then it's a different story.
Talking about the sound of a PC or a mac is operating at a very high level of generality though. It is perfectly possible for either of them to do it right or do it wrong.
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I have what I call a personal opinion about why Macs sound better. I have tried an old IBM T41 and at the time I compared it to my MacBook Pro Mid 2010. Windows media player on the PC and iTunes on the Mac, no Audiophile software involved. The difference was huge the Mac wins for 10 points. Now, they are both Intel and both were playing through their USB ports. I think the difference, like in any high end piece is circuit design and in the case of the Mac better/more recent clock.

Now, if you compare a new top of the line PC and a new Mac, my guess is that they will sound the same but to achieve the same quality you will have to spend a lot more on the PC. I am just guessing here, I haven't tried this at home :)

BTW, does anyone know way in 90% of the cases you see Mac's on stage/Studios or amongst DJ gear ? Because Fail in any of these cases is NOT an option !!! ;)
 
CVentura said:
I have what I call a personal opinion about why Macs sound better. I have tried an old IBM T41 and at the time I compared it to my MacBook Pro Mid 2010. Windows media player on the PC and iTunes on the Mac, no Audiophile software involved. The difference was huge the Mac wins for 10 points. Now, they are both Intel and both were playing through their USB ports. I think the difference, like in any high end piece is circuit design and in the case of the Mac better/more recent clock.

Now, if you compare a new top of the line PC and a new Mac, my guess is that they will sound the same but to achieve the same quality you will have to spend a lot more on the PC. I am just guessing here, I haven't tried this at home :)

BTW, does anyone know way in 90% of the cases you see Mac's on stage/Studios or amongst DJ gear ? Because Fail in any of these cases is NOT an option !!! ;)
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and the winning entry in today's fit-as-many-non-sequiturs-into-one-post competition is....
 
adamdea said:
There's nothing really wrong with it- but do bear in mind that it's state fo the art 1990.
If you get to page 2 of the article it is explained that a PLL will attenuate interface jitter by about 50x yielding the suggestion that all should eb fine providing that interface jitter is under 2ns. Nowadays jitter suppression should be better than that, and in the case of asych usb shouldn't be an issue at all, but in any event the interesting thing is that pretty much no one including Stereophile ever publish measurements of interface jitter. The typical way of measuring it just looks at the effect after dac conversion.

Nowadays most cheap dacs have very little jitter at all- you have to buy an expensive one or a shed-built audiophile one to get jitter.

All of which suggests that jitter is not the enemy of audiophiles, but the friend.
Click to expand...


In part you're right, nowadays, crystals used in the manufacture of the new DAC's Clock, are much better than the ones used in the past, making them a lot more precise. But, from there to no jitter it is still a long walk, even in asynchronous transmissions (try to exchange you USB cable and tell me you don't spot a difference), even so, in the case where the DAC buffers everything before conversion like the NDAC. Take this exercise, if you saw my video, you will find a M2Tech clock on the center frame bottom shelf, box on the left, If I put the clock closer to the power supply the sound stage looses depth as well as a substantial loss of micro dynamics. Now, that clock is there only to sync the USB to SPDIF converter. More, if you turn of the clock the difference is huge. I can only associate this to an increase in Jitter when you turn it off, or you put it closer to an EM source like the power supply.
 
CVentura, as has been said several times, jitter has stopped being a problem for many years. What you are hearing is in your imagination.

What I suggest is you head down to the pub, invite some nice lady back to your place and get her to swap thing around with you blindfolded. You won't hear any difference, but you never know how the evening may progress - and maybe you'll get over your hifi obsession, realise it's only ever been about the music, sell most of your gear and move forward in a deeply fufilling relationship.
 
CVentura said:
In part you're right, nowadays, crystals used
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For one glorious second I thought you were going to talk about how you'd used Reiki on your DAC to remove the ghost in the machine of jitter, but sadly not. Where is that Item guy, I foresee a long and (for one person) profitable friendship for you two ...
 
Macs possibly sound better because there's less RF on the USB signal lines and because they tend to have separate regulators for the 5v lines coming from the mainboard. Whenever I've trialled with and without a USB filter (galvanic decoupling) there was always appreciable improvement with the PC, but none I could hear with the Mac. draw your own conclusions.

I'm firmly in the camp that 'bits is bits' but there's an awful lot more to being 'in spec' than just the timing of the data.
 
CVentura said:
But, from there to no jitter it is still a long walk, even in asynchronous transmissions (try to exchange you USB cable and tell me you don't spot a difference),
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Well obviously- who could possibly suggest that USB cables sound the same?
But that's nothing to do with jitter it's because they make the 1s and the 0s differently shaped. I like audio quest silver ones which make them very italicised Times Roman, unlike the stock printer cable which makes them more faded arial subscript
 
sq225917 said:
Macs possibly sound better because there's less RF on the USB signal lines and because they tend to have separate regulators for the 5v lines coming from the mainboard. Whenever I've trialled with and without a USB filter (galvanic decoupling) there was always appreciable improvement with the PC, but none I could hear with the Mac. draw your own conclusions.
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Interesting- I've never heard that before. Either way A good argument for sticking to toslink Ethernet or wireless. Personally I've always thought that USB is a dumb thing to use for audio bearing in mind the unnecessary 5v connection.
 
I don't think it's dumb, I think the flexibility of the protocol can be a very good thing if utilized correctly. It's certainly not a panacea in the hands of lazy and incompetent designers. You don't after all have to use the 5v, or even have it connected if the dac doesn't require it. There are plenty of comms standards that send signal and power down adjacent lines, it's not an issue with a little thought and the correct filtering/termiantion at either end.
 
sq225917 said:
I don't think it's dumb, I think the flexibility of the protocol can be a very good thing if utilized correctly. It's certainly not a panacea in the hands of lazy and incompetent designers. You don't after all have to use the 5v, or even have it connected if the dac doesn't require it. There are plenty of comms standards that send signal and power down adjacent lines, it's not an issue with a little thought and the correct filtering/termiantion at either end.
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That's a perfectly valid point of view but it doesn't sit very comfortably with the suggestion that regulation of the 5v line in the computer affects the sound of the dac. Obviously the 5v is potentially useful for bus powered devices, but for most hifi dacs it doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all.

Curiously I have got the impression that most dac receivers do have the 5v line connected which just seems to be asking for trouble. I have a feeling that this is because stricty if the line isn't connected it doesn't comply with the USB standard. I asked PS audio whether they used galvanic isolation and they said no- because galvanic isolators will not cut off hf noise just low frequencies like mains hum and they tend to increase jitter in the signal (although it's not obvious why this should matter with asynch usb).

I'm not suggesting this lot is insurmountable, but it arguably raises more problems than S/PDIF has, bearing in mind that the whole interfaced jitter thing is a bit overblown. It seems pretty odd unnecessarily to connect a dac to the power line of a noisy device like a computer.
 
There's no logical disconnect between the two statements.

1. Cleaner 5v power is a good thing if it is used by the dac.
2. Cross contamination from adjacent wires during transmission probably isn't an issue that affects the data integrity.

There's nothing to say that noise on the 5v line might not make its way where you don't want it once inside the dac if it isn't correctly isolated/filtered.

Of the two dacs I've had that used async protocols, Young & a Weiss 202, both of them use galvanic isolation on their input and both of them couldn't give a rats ass what cables you connect up to the source with (assuming usb, firewire of spdif).

I do agree with you regarding attaching a dac to a pc, it's just crazy, that's why I think inline filters and things like the SoTA usb filter supply board can make a real difference. Much more so than **** wire and bullshit external clocks.
 
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