In another thread a discussion of measured differences between audio players broke out. I thought it should have its own thread.
I have documented the same in one of my articles: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...puter-activity-can-impact-dac-performance.22/
Here is the Windows Media Player output of the DAC:
And the same file being played by Media Player Classic:
The difference was traced to hard disk activity bleeding out of the computer into DAC and then its analog output.
This however did NOT make a case for using different audio players. The problem was poor DAC implementation by Shiit, providing so little isolation between its USB input and analog DAC output. While I did not test that, my son had observed that he could "hear" his computer activity while playing games through this DAC.
This brings us to a problem with the argument with using "audiophile players." Namely the fact that it is the high-end audio users that resort to them. Yet the same user is likely to have a high-end DAC with proper isolation/async USB input, in no need of using a different audio player.
Using alternative audio players may forces you often to use more convoluted audio paths and/or less usable players. So their value needs to be there before I would jump on them.
I have documented the same in one of my articles: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/f...puter-activity-can-impact-dac-performance.22/
Here is the Windows Media Player output of the DAC:
And the same file being played by Media Player Classic:
The difference was traced to hard disk activity bleeding out of the computer into DAC and then its analog output.
This however did NOT make a case for using different audio players. The problem was poor DAC implementation by Shiit, providing so little isolation between its USB input and analog DAC output. While I did not test that, my son had observed that he could "hear" his computer activity while playing games through this DAC.
This brings us to a problem with the argument with using "audiophile players." Namely the fact that it is the high-end audio users that resort to them. Yet the same user is likely to have a high-end DAC with proper isolation/async USB input, in no need of using a different audio player.
Using alternative audio players may forces you often to use more convoluted audio paths and/or less usable players. So their value needs to be there before I would jump on them.