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Post by fbczar on Oct 18, 2023 15:21:30 GMT -5
If two sources are playing the same audio information, through the same DAC, then the result should sound exactly the same... Yes- it should, but in my experience, it rarely does. And I mean rarely. My experience is that I normally get the best sounds directly from the source CDs. The more generations of the digits, the more streamers, or the more wireless conversions/deconversions, the audibly poorer the sound. You can "prove" that the digits coming off the streamer, wireless, or optical terminal are absolutely bit-perfect clones of the source CD, but I say they SOUND different. I'll take it even a step further - the more processing of the digits, the worse the sound. I contend that ANY CODEC applied to the bitstream degrades the sound. MP-anything, FLAC, ALAC, APE, optical encode-decode, wireless, you name it - ALL degrade the sound. Is it audible? To many, maybe not. But the better your system, and the better your ears, the more audible the deterioration. If any of the encode-decode processing sounds OK to you, then feel free to use it. It's a free country. I want uncompressed WAV if I've got to rip the source CD. But to my ears, the less you mess with the digits, the better the sound. Think about it - If a CD is your source, is ANYTHING else actually going to improve it? Boomzilla Boom, As usual, it is not so simple. I suspect different CD players are better or worse than other CD players at retrieving the information from a CD and sending it to a DAC. In addition, when you Rip a file to WAV it is quite possible the ripping software and computer, because of pure processing power, produce a file that is more accurate than the CD player is capable of extracting directly from the CD. Software like HQPlayer, Audirvana and even Roon have the ability to upsample so as to relieve the DAC of much of its own processing responsibilities, ultimately yielding a superior result. So it is not a matter of improving the CD, but getting all the information off the CD as accurately as possible and then processing that information as efficiently as possible so no as little as possible is lost. Of course, while all CD players are not the same, ripping software and computers likely differ to some degree in their accuracy. Then there is the question of the level of analog noise produced by the CD player vs that of the computer and streamer that must be considered relative to ultimate sound quality. All that said, I do love the sound of my old Adcom CD player connected by SPDIF cable to my Theta Gen, 5A DAC.I also like the simplicity. |
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