choosing a new transport and DAC!!!

sgozek -- Mon, 08/02/2010 - 08:54

Hi,
I have been building my hi fi stereo system since 2 years. From where I live, hi fi is not known and no shops sells these equipments, so far I need to travel to the big cities to audition. I will need a pre guide to my system.
I curently use;
Roksan rok dp 1 transport
reimyo dap 777 dac
ear 868 pre amplifier
ear 509 mk2 25th anniversary monoblocks
wilson audio sophia 1

My question is;
I am considering to get olive 4hd media server as my new transport and I will be considering to use the dac with it. Does anyone think that the olive 4hd is the right solution for future hi-fi component. What is the difference between the olive and a high resolution transporter.
And I am currently reading Mr. ROBERT HARLEY's complete guide to high end audio book. It mentiones that the digital transport and dac's work quality will start to fade out after a long time period of use. And my DAC is not so new, so should I get a new DAC with the transporter and if yes, what kind of transporter will be recomended better than reimyo quality. I love it when it is musical and accurate. Please help me out here, I will need everyones knowledge!

kindly regards,
serkan,

Robert Harley -- Mon, 08/02/2010 - 15:24

Serken,
Do you plan to listen to high-resolution downloads, or stick with CD? Is SACD playback important to you? Do you like the idea of a music server rather than a CD player and DAC?

With these answers I'll try to point you in the right direction.

sgozek -- Tue, 08/03/2010 - 03:21

Dear Mr. Harley,

I appreciate your interest. I will be planning to download flac. which is very convinient for me. Since all we aim is to connect deeply with the music and all its varieties, I like the idea of a music server. My experiences with i pod is that I am listening much more different varieties of music after by after regarding its convinience to find music in the library. But with the cd, to be honest, it's sometimes hard to search for different varieties of music from the whole hardware archieve since you feel relaxed and auditing beautiful music on the sofa! May be music server connected to a nice DAC will improve the results in musical and accurete way. I am considering an olive 4hd connected to a new dac, All the gadget websites mentiones about it but never heard a real review about it. Will you reccomend this product Mr. Harley? But if you believe from your experiences that a different transporter or cd player will bring out better results.I am OK with that. I am looking after the right equipment which is musical, lively, like velvet that brings out my senses.I believe that I have the right pre amp, amplifier and speakers for that, but the source is missing. Mr. Harley, people mostly try to sell the products in their stock and I really need an advice. By the way SACD is not important for me, it is hard to reach the albums from where I live! I appreciate your time and concern. After reading the first 100 pages of your book, me and my wife spend 3 hours to re locate the speakers. You are openning my horizon with that book, that's why I would like to thank you for sharing your wise informations with us.

kindly regards,
serkan,

Sam -- Tue, 08/03/2010 - 03:35

Robert very nice books for sure. I have the skinny black one and the fat one both are great. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Great reads your books...Ive read it a few times and off and on continue to skim through them and enjoy it every time. (Although some information is starting to get outdated due to sudden change in digital front end trends and sudden pop up of music servers as the up and coming thing and SACD and DVD-A as an outgoing format.)

Robert Harley -- Thu, 08/05/2010 - 21:28

Dear Serkan,
I have no experience with the Olive, but suspect that a server from one of the audiophile-oriented companies might deliver better sound quality. You might consider the PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport and Perfect Wave DAC. I have not yet had hands-on experience with these, but have seen and heard them at shows, and others who have used them are very positive.

If you can afford it, the ultimate system, in my view, would be the new one-box Meridian Sooloos music server (not the two-box unit we just reviewed) and a Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC. This gives you the best user interface and music-management system, along with the great sound quality and high-resolution capabilities of the Alpha DAC. This option is considerably more expensive than the Olive or PS Audio, but I don't know what your budget is. The new Sooloos is $7500 in the US and the Alpha DAC is $5000. If you give me an idea of your budget I'll try to make a recommendation that fits your budget.

Thanks so much for your comments about my book (and to Sam as well).

Sam -- Thu, 08/05/2010 - 22:36

Robert, a while back you mentioned somewhere on the blogs that the digital outputs of the Qsonix and Sooloos that you tested several years back were not that great. If you can, for the followup review of the new sooloos please address the digital output of the Sooloos in a reference system. Any changes or improvements and how it compares to a digital output of any other reference transport for digital playback.

sgozek -- Mon, 08/16/2010 - 13:40

Dear Mr. Harley,
Thanks for the recommendations and I have checked them all. One of my friend recommended to use a mac laptop with solid state disc just dedicated for music and connected to a usb dac (laptop will just deliver the music by usb) and he mentioned that it will do the same job. He recommended the antelope zodiac dac which already have a usb port and mentioned that he tried the antelope zodiac plus version and get really good results. He also mentioned that I may put the laptop to an other room and connect a wireless usb receiver in front of the dac and control everything with an i pod. (regarding not to have the fan noise effect the sound) Also the antelope zodiac gold is coming on the way. That was one thing I wanted to share with you. For the budget I may put $15K for both the transporter and the dac. Do you think that, it is a healthy way to choose the source as computer based or still I need to use a transporter and dac to have the best source?
thanks and regards,
serkan,

danielaparker -- Tue, 08/17/2010 - 07:40

Serkan,
Personally, I'd rather put my money into a better dac than a Sooloos, but at the same time I think it's unlikely that you'll find any music player on a MacBook Pro that will rival the Sooloos touchscreen for metadata support and library navigation. If you go the Macbook Pro route, I would suggest spending some time on the www.computeraudiophile.com site to familiarize yourself with the issues, particularly with regards to ripping strategies, music players, and hardware. The consensus seems to be that the Windows only dbpoweramp is the preferred ripping software, and Amarra or PureMusic are the preferred music players on the Mac.

At the same time, I'd rather put my money into a better dac than a dac+transport. I think you'll find today that many people have given up their CD players and don't really miss them. With a $15K budget, for example, you could consider the new dCS Debussy dac, see Alan Taffel's comment in my thread "Anyone heard the new dCS Debussy dac?" , in the D/A converters forum. With a USB connection, the Debussy is currently limited to sampling to 96, but you could, for example, use a Weiss Int202 to go MacBook Pro, firewire to Weiss Int202, dual AES cables from Int202 to Debussy, which will accept anything up to 192. I have a similar setup with a dCS Scarlatti dac, and it sounds suberb, I don't miss my once loved Esoteric X-03 player at all.

I haven't heard the antelope zodiac dac, so I can't comment, but the more important question is, have you? You need to audition some of these things before making up your mind. Different dacs have different house sounds, and you need to find something that you like.

-- Daniel

mribob -- Tue, 08/17/2010 - 13:23

The above posts refer to the expensive Meridian Sooloos music server as a great example of ease of use and quality. I'd also suggest that the new Qsonix 205; interfaced to a quality dac, such as the PSaudio perfect wave dac might surprise people with its quality; and I think it has a better, more sophisticated end user interface. The new product has digital out boards by Wadia; and is quiet; I heard this system recently; and was impressed that both redbook cd's and high res downloads from HD tracks sounded better than a straight transport thru a dac...Also a bit less expensive; there are other quality music servers beyond Sooloos; and Apple macbook..but they don't spend the big bucks for advertising...

mribob

sgozek -- Thu, 08/19/2010 - 12:46

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your time to comment on my case. It looks like the cdp will be out sooner or later and
Computer audio gets better reaction day by day. I have looked at www.computeraudiophile.com
a little bit and it's a new era for me at the moment. Do you think if the laptops inside mechanism movements or the heating factor by it self effects the quality of the sound? And I will mostly use flac.music, do you think it will be one of a right way to get the best sound?

Hope to hear from you soon
Regards
Serkan

danielaparker -- Thu, 08/19/2010 - 19:08

Hi Serkan,

computeraudiophile.com recommends FLAC for an archival copy of your downloads and ripped CDs - FLAC is lossess, so can be converted into any other format; it's a popular open standard, so it's a better bet for for future proofing your music collection than proprietary standards from Apple or Microsoft; and FLAC has good support for metadata. For playing music, note that Apple ITunes does not support FLAC, so your choices are to convert FLAC into the AIFF format which ITunes does understand, or to use a music player such as Amarra Ver 2 that can play FLAC. Personally, I can't be bothered to keep multiple formats around, I use Amarra and play mostly FLAC in the Amarra playlist. There are a few minor gliches (FLAC support is a new feature for Amarra), but I believe that they're being addressed, and a licensed user of Amarra can download new versions for two years, I'm confident the issues will be fixed. As far as the best sound goes, that depends on the music player and what it does with the format (it's lossless, all the information is there), but it sounds fine to me.

The MacBook Pro with a SSD seems pretty quiet to me, I can't hear anything. It's recommended to use a dedicated computer for music playback, and disable sleep, email, web browsers, screen sharing, backup software, etc.

For connecting the MacBook to the DAC, there are a variety of options, Firewire to AES/EBU interface, like the Weiss Int202; USB to DAC; firewire to DAC; a sound card installed in a PCI slot, with a cable to the DAC, etc. The different options have different implications for clocking. With the Weiss Int202, which I use, the Int202 becomes the master clock.

I agonized for some time whether to go completely with computer based source, and started a couple of threads on other forums to see how people made out, you may be interested in browsing them:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1277691270&&&/Who-has-foun...

http://forums.naimaudio.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/48019385/m/5762947237?r=5...

-- Daniel

rossop -- Tue, 08/17/2010 - 18:22

I have the PS Audio PWD and PWT and can tell you it sounds just great. When their bridge becomes available it will be a link to pc based audio. Also firmware updates can be downloaded easily keeping it up to date while it remains in your system...but its sonics on cd playback is the killer here. It rates very highly and is the best cd playback I have had and I cant say I have heard anything better. I look forward to reading forthcoming reviews with confidence the reviewers will agree.