Media player to DAC
 

"housetrained" wrote in message
...
Hi
Is this the newsgroup to advise on living room [quiet] media players -
basically a HDD containing my music files connected to my DAC by digital
coax [or optical] with a window where I can see what's playing and a
remote? Don't need visual [i.e. TV out or HDMI] at all.
Any recommendations?
TIA

Some of Cylone ( http://www.envizage.com/ ) players/NAS drives have digital
audio out as far as I can tell. They are aimed at the visual market and get
very mixed/poor reviews on AVforums but most of the problems seem to be with
playing different typres of video and syncronizing of video/audio.
I did ask there about the digital audio out but got no replies.
Loads of info on there though.
Might be worth a look for a very cheap remotely controlled NAS drive/ music
server.

Media player to DAC
 

"David" wrote in message
Some of Cylone ( http://www.envizage.com/ ) players/NAS drives have
digital audio out as far as I can tell. They are aimed at the visual
market and get very mixed/poor reviews on AVforums but most of the
problems seem to be with playing different typres of video and
syncronizing of video/audio.
I did ask there about the digital audio out but got no replies.
Loads of info on there though.
Might be worth a look for a very cheap remotely controlled NAS drive/
music server.

Oh and if you find out anything of use can you post up here please.

Thank you

Media player to DAC
 

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...


In the brief test I used two pairs of sample files downloaded from the
Naim website.

So I assume that you don't know how one was produced from the other in
each
case. (I am also assuming the 'pairs' were from the same source
recording.)

Yes, and I also made the same assumption.



IIRC At least one person has analysed versions of such recordings and
shown
that they have measurable differences that aren't due to a change of
sample
rate or sample depth. Instead due to the producers deciding to "not level
compress the 'hi rez' version as much as the 'cd' one" or similar.

Hence in such cases a difference can easily be measured, and may be
audible, but actually tell you nothing about the difference in sample rate
or resolution being a 'cause' for said differences.

I just asked my daughter if she could hear any difference, and then to
explain the difference that she heard.


Her description of the difference made me think that she was hearing a
difference in the bit rate.


This tells you that she thought she heard a difference. But it doesn't
give
you any clue to if there was any difference due to the difference in
sample
rates or bit-depths.

Are the Naim files you refer to available freely? If so I'd be interested
in examining them sometime.


Yes, freely available from http://www.naimlabel.com/

Let us know your thoughts!


--
Michael Chare

Media player to DAC
 

"Michael Chare" wrote in
message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article
,
Michael
Chare wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in
message ...
"Michael Chare" wrote


whilst few people old enough to be able to afford this
sort of kit can hear the full range of frequencies
present on a CD, let alone anything supposedly
"better".

Yes I have proved that point, as I found that my
daughter could quite easily distinguish between 16/44
and 24/96 flac music files when played via my hifi,
where as I struggle to do this.

How was one of the files produced from the other?

More to the point, how were the issues of time synch,
level match, and listener bias dealt with?

The two pairs of files that I used play at the same
level, and were played one after the other.

I did not explain what the difference might be or even
why there might be a difference in advance.

Sighted evaluations are well-known to be useless for this kind of
comparisons.

Doing blind tests like thos one is not rocket science - it can be done on
any PC with a audio interface capable of 24/96 using free software that is
on the web. I was just testing a software ABX/ABC/hr comparator that was
written in Java, and therefore can run on any machine that supports the Sun
R6 Java run time support - which is an enormous range of operating systems
from Win7 to Mac to *nix.

Media player to DAC
 

"Michael Chare" wrote in
message
o.uk
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article
,
Michael Chare wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in
message ...
"Michael Chare" wrote


whilst few people old enough to be able to afford this
sort of kit can hear the full range of frequencies
present on a CD, let alone anything supposedly
"better".

Yes I have proved that point, as I found that my
daughter could quite easily distinguish between 16/44
and 24/96 flac music files when played via my hifi,
where as I struggle to do this.

How was one of the files produced from the other?


In the brief test I used two pairs of sample files
downloaded from the Naim website.

I just asked my daughter if she could hear any
difference, and then to explain the difference that she
heard.

Using two files from the Naim website exposes your evaluation to a vast
array of issues that are irrelevant to the sample rate.

Rule number one is that when you do comparisons like this, you take the high
sample rate file and downsample it yourself, which is easy to do with free
software that can downloaded from the web.

Then you compare the two using a software ABX DBT comparator.

Media player to DAC
 

"Michael Chare" wrote in
message
o.uk
\
Are the Naim files you refer to available freely? If so
I'd be interested in examining them sometime.


Yes, freely available from http://www.naimlabel.com/

Let us know your thoughts!

Which files?

Media player to DAC
 

In article ,
Michael
Chare wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...


Hence in such cases a difference can easily be measured, and may be
audible, but actually tell you nothing about the difference in sample
rate or resolution being a 'cause' for said differences.

I just asked my daughter if she could hear any difference, and then
to explain the difference that she heard.


Her description of the difference made me think that she was hearing a
difference in the bit rate.

OK. The difficulty with that is that it is essentially basing your
conclusion on a series of assumptions. Could easily have been some other
factor.


Are the Naim files you refer to available freely? If so I'd be
interested in examining them sometime.


Yes, freely available from http://www.naimlabel.com/

Let us know your thoughts!

Well, don't hold you breath waiting as it may well be ages before my 'round
tuit' arrives! :-)

And as Arny has asked, can you say which particular files you (and your
daughter) compared? Might be best if I tried those if I can.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Media player to DAC
 

On 08/04/2010 12:45, Arny Krueger wrote:
"Michael wrote in
message
o.uk
"Jim wrote in message
...
In article
,
Michael wrote:
"David wrote in
message ...
"Michael wrote


whilst few people old enough to be able to afford this
sort of kit can hear the full range of frequencies
present on a CD, let alone anything supposedly
"better".

Yes I have proved that point, as I found that my
daughter could quite easily distinguish between 16/44
and 24/96 flac music files when played via my hifi,
where as I struggle to do this.

How was one of the files produced from the other?


In the brief test I used two pairs of sample files
downloaded from the Naim website.

I just asked my daughter if she could hear any
difference, and then to explain the difference that she
heard.

Using two files from the Naim website exposes your evaluation to a vast
array of issues that are irrelevant to the sample rate.

Rule number one is that when you do comparisons like this, you take the high
sample rate file and downsample it yourself, which is easy to do with free
software that can downloaded from the web.


Why's that - are Naim not to be trusted?

Then you compare the two using a software ABX DBT comparator.


Do you happen to know of a Mac variant?

Media player to DAC
 

On 08/04/2010 10:07, David wrote:
wrote in message
Some of Cylone ( http://www.envizage.com/ ) players/NAS drives have
digital audio out as far as I can tell. They are aimed at the visual
market and get very mixed/poor reviews on AVforums but most of the
problems seem to be with playing different typres of video and
syncronizing of video/audio.
I did ask there about the digital audio out but got no replies.
Loads of info on there though.
Might be worth a look for a very cheap remotely controlled NAS drive/
music server.

Oh and if you find out anything of use can you post up here please.

Thank you


Indeed!

Media player to DAC
 

In article , Rob
wrote:
On 08/04/2010 12:45, Arny Krueger wrote:


Rule number one is that when you do comparisons like this, you take
the high sample rate file and downsample it yourself, which is easy to
do with free software that can downloaded from the web.


Why's that - are Naim not to be trusted?

Erm... I've not checked, but I presume they are making the files available
for people to listen to rather than use as examples for assessing the
effect of *only* changing the sample rate and/or bit-depth.

Not sure what "trust" has to do with that *unless* Naim have stated that
the *only change* was to downsample one version. Even then I'd personally
want to know the details of the process to be able to understand what
effect that may or may not have.

However I would "trust" then to do their best to make good sounding
versions if their purpose is to produce material people want to listen to.
Without other evidence, though, I don't know what they'd think the best way
to do that. So don't know what they would do to make versions at different
sample rates, etc.

When doing such things on a scientific/academic basis you want to know all
the details as they may affect the results for reasons that differ from the
assumptions that otherwise might be made.

The context in such terms is that I think others have already found that
some dual format commercial releases show things like differences in level
compression, made because those producing the versions assumed something
different was 'better' for the different (assumed) target audiences for the
two versions.

There are also various choices that could be made when using one version to
create the other, that then vary the output. e.g. I understand that at one
time Tony Faulkner preferred a simplistic form of downsampling that doesn't
actually meet the sampling theorem. He preferred the results, presumably
because he thought it made a 'change' that he liked. Or because it
minimised in-band filtering at the expense of aliasing.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html