--- Simon Turner <simon (AT) brighton (DOT) co.uk> wrote:
> A few people (including me) are talking about buying
> rather expensive Dacs
> to achieve high end audio using PC's, Flacs and the
> Squeezebox.
>
> Is this realistic bearing in mind that we are
> replacing a dedicated CD
> player with a hard drive. Surely all the drawbacks
> that good CD players
> strive so hard to overcome are inherant (in spades)
> on a hard drive, i.e
> jitter, cheap power supply etc.
I don't claim to be an audiophile but I'm throwing my
two cents in anyway. Obviously if you get a DAC that
is significantly better than that in your CD player
then you can see some improvement. However, the
source of the improvement is going to be the DAC not
the server/Squeezebox setup. It shouldn't sound any
better than listening to the source CD through your
new DAC using your CD player's digital outputs
(assuming it has them) unless your CD player is really
crappy.
The reason to use the server/Squeezebox setup is
convenience rather than sound quality.
> In addition is it certain that the streaming process
> itself will not degrade
> the sound, or even that the digital-out on the
> Squeezebox outputs exactly
> the stream it receives?
Theoretically it shouldn't, however, there have been a
couple of people here or there who have posted
regarding a few problems with the digital outputs on
the Squeezebox. The problems that I've noticed seem
to be software/firmware related rather than hardware
related which means they can be fixed (if they haven't
been already.) You might take a look at the archives.
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> A few people (including me) are talking about buying
> rather expensive Dacs
> to achieve high end audio using PC's, Flacs and the
> Squeezebox.
>
> Is this realistic bearing in mind that we are
> replacing a dedicated CD
> player with a hard drive. Surely all the drawbacks
> that good CD players
> strive so hard to overcome are inherant (in spades)
> on a hard drive, i.e
> jitter, cheap power supply etc.
I don't claim to be an audiophile but I'm throwing my
two cents in anyway. Obviously if you get a DAC that
is significantly better than that in your CD player
then you can see some improvement. However, the
source of the improvement is going to be the DAC not
the server/Squeezebox setup. It shouldn't sound any
better than listening to the source CD through your
new DAC using your CD player's digital outputs
(assuming it has them) unless your CD player is really
crappy.
The reason to use the server/Squeezebox setup is
convenience rather than sound quality.
> In addition is it certain that the streaming process
> itself will not degrade
> the sound, or even that the digital-out on the
> Squeezebox outputs exactly
> the stream it receives?
Theoretically it shouldn't, however, there have been a
couple of people here or there who have posted
regarding a few problems with the digital outputs on
the Squeezebox. The problems that I've noticed seem
to be software/firmware related rather than hardware
related which means they can be fixed (if they haven't
been already.) You might take a look at the archives.
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