Help! Digital Numpty

[_D_S_J_R_]

Yea, but it aint real hifi, is it......

Don't quite understand that Jammy. It is a joke isn't it?
Streaming high quality digital from a laptop USB port (which 'should' have pretty tight spec requirements?) opens up a whole raft of music availability that you possibly can't get on CD. Downloading FLACs and playing via Foobar (I'm a tight-wad skinflint, so won't pay for J-River or whatever) is also a wonderful thing to be able to do, as well as playing vinyl and CD/SA-Cd or whatever.

I heard some wonderful and totally unfamiliar music on You Tube of all places yesterday and was stunned at the musical 'High Fidelity' quality on offer and with absolutely no dropouts or glitching. All this for nothing. Yes, I know the Doc's DAC is special - my main CD player was special too back in the same period, so I'm used to what a properly unfettered Red Book player can do - but that's sort of beside the point - I've been notified that my £20 USB converter has been 'dispatched' (but hopefully not dead on arrival - geddit?).

As for DACs, I still like the original Rega one for its music making abilities and used, they're now around £300. I need to look at some cheaper 'pro' ones to see what they're like (Tascam seems a good place to start I think)..

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Asus Xonar is good.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Dave has now heard this little 20 squids wonder and is getting one. Mind it doesn't show up these modern horrible little chip dacs

I ordered one from the ebay seller (Japanbox) on Sunday 9th. As of today, no receipt of item. I messaged them a couple of days ago and the reply basically told me they don't track orders and can I send them my address again. Just this second, I've received a PayPal refund

What the fugg do I do now?

[selby]

I'm testing JRiver on my mac and the sound improvement over VLC even just when playing Radio Paradise is amazing.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Dave has now heard this little 20 squids wonder and is getting one. Mind it doesn't show up these modern horrible little chip dacs

I ordered one from the ebay seller (Japanbox) on Sunday 9th. As of today, no receipt of item. I messaged them a couple of days ago and the reply basically told me they don't track orders and can I send them my address again. Just this second, I've received a PayPal refund

What the fugg do I do now?

Order it again and if the first one turns up you have two. Do you want me to order it?

I have just had a similar situation, on-line companies selling Chinese stuff at low price find it cost more to deal with problems than just refund them. My big green garden parasol I bought in May has gone wrong, two screws have come loose and dropped out so the parasol wont close it just drops down the shaft. A frustrating morning trying to speak to some one to get two new screws or the size of them so I can mend it, they don't want to know, they only have people to sell things - so they refunded me

[selby]

I'm thinking about a Aune S16 en.auneaudio.com/html/en_products1/pc_hifi/189_8.html

As I'm not sure I can spend so much on a Hegel.

[Fretless]

The Aune S16 looks really good, 32-bit processing and native DSD. It is based around an AKM processor (AK4495S) - AKM's are used in many high-end audio systems and the Hegel also uses an AKM (AK4399) chip. Sound quality should be good to exceptional. It seems that it is about half the price of the Hegel HD12.

Could end up being fairly similar in performance - only difference is the Aune is a Chinese company and Hegels are built in Norway (would explain the price difference).

[_D_S_J_R_]

It's never the DAC chip itself that makes a sonic difference, but any filtering and audio output stage that comes after. Maybe some chips now have the filtering options built in, although some designers for domestic units might want to put a personal stamp on it.

[terrybooth]

The star of the show is definitely the Sony DAS R1, but I am told different computers sound different so my old cheap Toshiba must be doing the job. So this £20 thingy is just allowing the others to perform, which is bloody great for a £20 thingy.

The quality of musical reproduction I am getting from this computer audio set up far outperforms my last one which was the Jason TFS. BUT as I say now it has DAS R1 and *I think* that is the major difference, it wasn't there when I had the TFS, that was the TFS internal DAC.

I haven't heard the DAS R1 without the accompanying CD player but I've heard the TFS, and the Asus Xonar and I've heard a version of my Pi Player against it and I'm pretty sure that the difference is the DAS R1.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Like I said, I've NEVER heard You Tube sound so good. Clear, shedloads of atmosphere on live tracks and nothing like the weedy, thin tones of my early streaming attempts. I know the gap has closed in recent years, but those old classic bigger and better players were something else IMO and Sony really did know what they were doing. Most analogue to digital CD's were transferred through Sony DACs I think (1630 and earlier 1610).