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The TC Konnect 8 has arrived

Aug 24th, 2009
by Steve.
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I’ve been following the suggestions and informative comments of JS on the Naim Forum for a good while. JS appears to be very knowledgeable about digital audio and computer audio.  JS has been suggesting that the best way to get low jitter S/PDIF digital audio out of a PC or a MAC is to use the TC Konnect 8.

It’s around £200, if one shops around, so I decided to risk it.  I also purchased a cheap PC Express to IE1394 card to fit my HP2133 netbook.  Lots of fiddling around and finally all the drivers matched up and were running.

My best DAC, or at least the best that will do anything above 48kHz, at the moment is the Cambridge DacMagic so I tried it it with the output from the TC.

Very interesting, the combination delivers the best computer audio sound quality I’ve achieved so far.  It has a rightness and a feeling of grip that is so much better then the shiny chromium plated sound that it’s so easy to get.

Huge amounts of listening to do and many experiments to carry out and hopefully a Naim DAC to play the Konnect through in a month or so.

More as I get time to listen

What is that music playing please?

Aug 23rd, 2009
by Steve.
2 comments

It’s somewhat unfair to name check  Magico over this irritant at the Munich High End Show but theirs was the room that irritated me the most.

Why? Because they were playing some choral music that sounded fabulous, excepting a bit of room boom, and I wanted to find out what the music was.

I’m sure I’m not alone in being interested in finding new music.  The trend to music servers or music from laptops or memory sticks is great for the ease of the companies doing the demos, but there is a really strong tendency to hide what is playing.

In the case of the Magico demo the problem was exacerbated by the demo maestro being in the corner furthest from the entrance and the room was absolutely full.

It would have been to intrusive to cross the room in front of the audience so I asked the rest of the staff in the display area of the room.  Maybe too many people had asked, maybe it was a bad day.  Whatever, I left the room feeling irritated and still without the name of the track.

Totally unfair on Magico: had they been running a bad demo or using uninteresting music then I wouldn’t have commented.

So a plea to companies running demos at hi-fi shows: besides good systems, good choice of music and pleasant atmospheres can you please just make it easy for us music fans to find out what you are playing.

Naim XS Series

Jun 29th, 2009
by Steve.
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Naim Audio the UK’s leading manufacturer of high-end hi-fi products announced today the launch of the new XS Series. The XS series is the first slim-line series to carry a brushed anodised black fascia.  The new fascia signifies that the XS series is a step up from the i series.

More information here

My sentiments entirely

May 16th, 2009
by Steve.
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Very interested to read on Amarra’s website and I paraphrase ‘it’s easy to make music sound good on a computer but hard to make it sound fabulous’.  I think they have been listening to my conversations.

Next week I’m in Munich for the High End show and by coincidence will be sharing a booth (or to be more exact one of my clients Thorens is sharing a booth) themed Sources of the Future – as it’s vinyl and streaming – with Higoto who are Germany’s streaming experts.

The demos will be of Thoren’s new Tri-Balance turntable, the Logitech Transporter and a Macbook running iTunes with the Amarra software into a Weiss DAC.

Should be very interesting.  It’ll bring out all the digits is digits posts again, especially as Amarra is around $1500.  That means the price of Mac Book Pro , Amarra and DAC will be around £5-6k.  Cheaper than my CD player. But will it deliver as much?

Will it be fabulous hi-fi or fabulous music?

Don’t you just love iTunes not

May 13th, 2009
by Steve.
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For reasons mainly to do with a second interest after music/hi-fi, I’m often swapping computers and playing about. Nearly every application on this planet is easier to reinstall, without losing stuff, than iTunes.

I’ve just moved to the beta of Windows 7 because even in beta it’s more stable that Vista. To give it a fair chance I thought I should start with a clean install. Sorted everything out but bloody iTunes. Haven’t lost the apps for the iPhone but have lost all the music on the hard drive. Not the one I installed Win 7 on – I’m not that stupid yet, but a second drive used for miscellaneous data and iTunes.

Luckily the music is still on my iPhone but getting it back to my HD seems to be very difficult. I’ve done it before but that was when it seemed to be possible to tell the iPod it was a HD. Doesn’t seem possible with the iPhone.

I’m sure someone out there will tell me it’s easy. Hopefully.

ASIO v K Mixer v Kernel Streaming

May 6th, 2009
by Steve.
1 comment

Computer audio seems to generate emotions when discussing what products to use that really are odd. Why do people get  so wound up?  I’d be interested in your comments. Ideally one would take a computer, connect a good DAC and play one’s favourite music using one’s favourite app.

If only it were that simple to get a great sound from CA.  The more I experiment the more I realise that CA is absolutely similar to analog audio or indeed any audio when taken seriously.  Every change is audible. Assuming one has a good enough system.

Of course, just because a change is audible doesn’t mean it matters.

The expression bandied about on forums about Computer Audio is bit transparent.  The theory is simple: it’s getting the bits from the Hard Drive out of the computer without them being manipulated/changed in any way.

I’ve tried many music playing apps and they all seem to sound subtly different.  Even different releases of iTunes are reported to sort different.  Life is far to short to bother to try different releases.  As they say, I tried it once and didn’t like it.

For convenience for quick playback I tend to use VLC www.videolan.org.  It seems to play almost everything audio and video and can even stream stuff over  my network.  It works well for Radio Paradise too.

If I want to get serious say when I’m comparing DACs I tend to use Foobar.  It’s not my favourite user experience but it is easily configurable. For use under Win XP it’s possible to use the ASIO add in to bypass the K Mixer (assuming you have a suitable sound card). I use the M-Audio Transit. For Vista the WASAPI add in also bypasses the Windows (Kernel Mixer aka K Mixer) mixer.  With volumes set at 100% one should be achieving bit transparency and the sound should be just that little bit cleaner, less splashy and the space between notes will be greater somehow.

CA still never gets truly close to good CD playback.  Not yet for me anyway.  And it’s not ’cause I haven’t tried hard.

It’s a bit simpler with a Mac (the classic Mac and a DAC route) assuming you remember to set the right bit depth and bit rate in the Midi settings but I can’t say it sounds any better.

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