PenguinMusic
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2019
- Messages
- 635
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Hi guys,
As a newcomer to the digital audio I got on this site and, after asking some questions, would like to introduce myself and the set-up I've decided to go for.
First, some rapid things about myself. I am 50 years old (almost), live in France and work as a law professor at University.
In the past year, my amount of work increased suddenly (several institutions asked me to teach for them...), so I have very little time to spend in the living room listen to the stereo system I've set-up with sweat and sweat over the years.
That system is following :
Sources : CD and SACD and DVD-A and BRD-A played over an Oppo BDP-105 player.
Pre-amp : Oppo BDP-105. I've listened to it as a pre-amp and compared to the Arcam AV-8. I liked the sound better than with AV-8.
Amps for front : 2 X Linn AV5125, so 10 channels at 125W (100W all channels driven).
Fronts : Linn Keltik speakers with active quad-amplification (1 amp per speaker => 8 channels for front !)
Centre : Linn AV5120, active bi-amped
Amps for rear : 3 X SMSL SE98
Rear speakers : Linn Kaber, active tri-amplified (so 1 SMSL for treble, 1 SMSL for mids and 1 SMSL for bass. Active cards to separate signal in so called "Tune Box").
The sound it produces is good enough for me. But as I said, I can't enjoy it that much at the moment. So I am mainly sitting at my desk in my room to work (preparing classes, lectures, conferences, writing the law books my editor asked for...) and as the little computer speakers produced a sound that got on my nerves after 10 or 15 minutes, I decided to go for music listening over headphones.
And I also decided to rip all my CD collection.
The computer used is one I've built myself. I wanted something that would not slow me down... So I got me an ASUS Z10PE-D16WS motherboard, fitted it with 2 Intel Xeon's ES computers (14 cores/28 threads each), doped it with 112GB of RAM and gave it a LOT of hard drives and ssd's, the whole thing packed in a ThermalTake View91 computer case.
The whole thing is driven by GNU/Linux. I've decided to go for an Arch based distro called MANJARO.
This being said, I had to decide several things at this point...
First, what to do to playback the files I am listening to.
It seems that Linux uses a thing called "Pulse Audio" that automatically downsamples music to 16/44.
If I listen to my encoded files, that is oK. But if I listen to the 24/96 files bought on french music site Qobuz, I'd like to get the most out of them.
So, after asking here, it seems ALSA is the way to go and I had to get the stream to directly output to ALSA.
There are several PlayBack software that allows you to do so... But I didn't liked the way they manage my library (it's going to be a decently huge one).
So, to use the software I like, I decided to use a bridge that links Pulse Audio to ALSA and that is called JACK.
It seems it is working quite decently, at least to my ears.
Second, what to use to playback my files.
I've tried a lot of software than can do this : Rhythmbox, gMusicbrowser, Lollypop, deadBeef, Strawberry, quodLibet... and then some others.
They all had pros, but also some cons.
So I ended up with Cantata, which is a front end for a MPD server (that needs no set-up as it runs purely locally).
What I like in Cantata is that you can have the music library displayed as a Mosaic (unfortunately, deadBeed and Strawberry do not offer that ; quodLibet has it, but is desperatly slow as soon as you have like 50 CD covers to display).
So that left me with basically 3 players... Rhythmbox, Lollypop and Cantata.
I liked the look and feel of Cantata and its ability to customize the library management better, so I decided to go for that one.
Third : how to rip my CD collection.
After asking here, I decided to encode the whole thing in .flac.
Even though it has been pointed taht I can set the compression level to max without loss, I decided to go for a minimum compression.
So everything is being ripped in .flac, no compression and no ReplayGain.
So now I am with my hardware and my music collection.
I now have to listen to music.
I listen to all kind of musics according to my mood. With the excpetion of "old-time" rap and "techno".
So I listen to classical music (great fan of Beethoven's symphonies, piano concertos, Mahler and Dvorak symphonies); Rock (Burce, U2, Melissa Ehteridge...) and "Jazz" (for what it's worth, as there are so many different "jazzes"... I love "Jazz fusion" between "jazz" and "electronic" : Jan Garbarel or John Surman...).
I found a nice used ASUS Xonar STU DAC + Headphone amp combo.
The guy was selling it for 100€, so I decided to go for it.
Again after asking here, I decided to plug the ASUS Xonar into the motherboard via a TosLink cable as the MoBo is fitted with Toslink output (so not over USB).
Sometimes, I plug a dedicated headphone amp (a Little Bear B4 that a friend gave me) and which is very nice and is a real bargain...
Then I plug-in my headphones into the ASUS Xonar.
The headphones used are : B&W P5 ; Philips Fidelio X2HR ; B&0 H9i ; Oppo PM-3 ; AudioQuest Nighthawk ; Sennheiser HD700.
I think that all of these headphones are more than decent. And I assume that the set-up I am using is insufficient to show the real potential of them all.
In other words, I think the differences between them are not really "night and day" as I experienced with loudspeakers...
But I must say that (I will probably get angry comments for this statement) the one I like most is the B&O H9i (probably not the most "hi-fi" and accurate, but really enjoyable) that I think is only overwhelmed by the AudioQuest NightHawk (a little more accurate and at least equally enjoyable).
The Fidelio X2HR comes next. It has "thinner" sound, but probably more "subtle" than the previous 2, less "dark" but with no sibbilance in the trebles. But it is a little less enjoyable to my ears.
The Oppo is the next one... It is great and I really like it, but after comparing it with the others, there's something that is not to my convenience... But I am so far unable to tell exactly what it is :-(
The B&W P5 is of course a little off the charts. It is not circum-auricular but simply over-ear. So It is indeed a totally different sound. Still really competent and pretty enjoyable especially if you can find one used for about 60€... which is about the price it goes for these days.
The real disappointment for me is the Sennheiser. It sounds like it is missing some room. As if music would be more "tiny" with it than it is with the others. It is not that bad if you're listening to big boomy sounds... But having no real explosion in Mahler's First (opening movement) with it is quite disturbing. When I am in the room, yes, that explodes, so why does it not in my headphone ?
Sorry for the long post...
It is just the conclusion after sopending a lot of time reading (and asking and getting super fast and accurate answers) here...
Have a nice day.
As a newcomer to the digital audio I got on this site and, after asking some questions, would like to introduce myself and the set-up I've decided to go for.
First, some rapid things about myself. I am 50 years old (almost), live in France and work as a law professor at University.
In the past year, my amount of work increased suddenly (several institutions asked me to teach for them...), so I have very little time to spend in the living room listen to the stereo system I've set-up with sweat and sweat over the years.
That system is following :
Sources : CD and SACD and DVD-A and BRD-A played over an Oppo BDP-105 player.
Pre-amp : Oppo BDP-105. I've listened to it as a pre-amp and compared to the Arcam AV-8. I liked the sound better than with AV-8.
Amps for front : 2 X Linn AV5125, so 10 channels at 125W (100W all channels driven).
Fronts : Linn Keltik speakers with active quad-amplification (1 amp per speaker => 8 channels for front !)
Centre : Linn AV5120, active bi-amped
Amps for rear : 3 X SMSL SE98
Rear speakers : Linn Kaber, active tri-amplified (so 1 SMSL for treble, 1 SMSL for mids and 1 SMSL for bass. Active cards to separate signal in so called "Tune Box").
The sound it produces is good enough for me. But as I said, I can't enjoy it that much at the moment. So I am mainly sitting at my desk in my room to work (preparing classes, lectures, conferences, writing the law books my editor asked for...) and as the little computer speakers produced a sound that got on my nerves after 10 or 15 minutes, I decided to go for music listening over headphones.
And I also decided to rip all my CD collection.
The computer used is one I've built myself. I wanted something that would not slow me down... So I got me an ASUS Z10PE-D16WS motherboard, fitted it with 2 Intel Xeon's ES computers (14 cores/28 threads each), doped it with 112GB of RAM and gave it a LOT of hard drives and ssd's, the whole thing packed in a ThermalTake View91 computer case.
The whole thing is driven by GNU/Linux. I've decided to go for an Arch based distro called MANJARO.
This being said, I had to decide several things at this point...
First, what to do to playback the files I am listening to.
It seems that Linux uses a thing called "Pulse Audio" that automatically downsamples music to 16/44.
If I listen to my encoded files, that is oK. But if I listen to the 24/96 files bought on french music site Qobuz, I'd like to get the most out of them.
So, after asking here, it seems ALSA is the way to go and I had to get the stream to directly output to ALSA.
There are several PlayBack software that allows you to do so... But I didn't liked the way they manage my library (it's going to be a decently huge one).
So, to use the software I like, I decided to use a bridge that links Pulse Audio to ALSA and that is called JACK.
It seems it is working quite decently, at least to my ears.
Second, what to use to playback my files.
I've tried a lot of software than can do this : Rhythmbox, gMusicbrowser, Lollypop, deadBeef, Strawberry, quodLibet... and then some others.
They all had pros, but also some cons.
So I ended up with Cantata, which is a front end for a MPD server (that needs no set-up as it runs purely locally).
What I like in Cantata is that you can have the music library displayed as a Mosaic (unfortunately, deadBeed and Strawberry do not offer that ; quodLibet has it, but is desperatly slow as soon as you have like 50 CD covers to display).
So that left me with basically 3 players... Rhythmbox, Lollypop and Cantata.
I liked the look and feel of Cantata and its ability to customize the library management better, so I decided to go for that one.
Third : how to rip my CD collection.
After asking here, I decided to encode the whole thing in .flac.
Even though it has been pointed taht I can set the compression level to max without loss, I decided to go for a minimum compression.
So everything is being ripped in .flac, no compression and no ReplayGain.
So now I am with my hardware and my music collection.
I now have to listen to music.
I listen to all kind of musics according to my mood. With the excpetion of "old-time" rap and "techno".
So I listen to classical music (great fan of Beethoven's symphonies, piano concertos, Mahler and Dvorak symphonies); Rock (Burce, U2, Melissa Ehteridge...) and "Jazz" (for what it's worth, as there are so many different "jazzes"... I love "Jazz fusion" between "jazz" and "electronic" : Jan Garbarel or John Surman...).
I found a nice used ASUS Xonar STU DAC + Headphone amp combo.
The guy was selling it for 100€, so I decided to go for it.
Again after asking here, I decided to plug the ASUS Xonar into the motherboard via a TosLink cable as the MoBo is fitted with Toslink output (so not over USB).
Sometimes, I plug a dedicated headphone amp (a Little Bear B4 that a friend gave me) and which is very nice and is a real bargain...
Then I plug-in my headphones into the ASUS Xonar.
The headphones used are : B&W P5 ; Philips Fidelio X2HR ; B&0 H9i ; Oppo PM-3 ; AudioQuest Nighthawk ; Sennheiser HD700.
I think that all of these headphones are more than decent. And I assume that the set-up I am using is insufficient to show the real potential of them all.
In other words, I think the differences between them are not really "night and day" as I experienced with loudspeakers...
But I must say that (I will probably get angry comments for this statement) the one I like most is the B&O H9i (probably not the most "hi-fi" and accurate, but really enjoyable) that I think is only overwhelmed by the AudioQuest NightHawk (a little more accurate and at least equally enjoyable).
The Fidelio X2HR comes next. It has "thinner" sound, but probably more "subtle" than the previous 2, less "dark" but with no sibbilance in the trebles. But it is a little less enjoyable to my ears.
The Oppo is the next one... It is great and I really like it, but after comparing it with the others, there's something that is not to my convenience... But I am so far unable to tell exactly what it is :-(
The B&W P5 is of course a little off the charts. It is not circum-auricular but simply over-ear. So It is indeed a totally different sound. Still really competent and pretty enjoyable especially if you can find one used for about 60€... which is about the price it goes for these days.
The real disappointment for me is the Sennheiser. It sounds like it is missing some room. As if music would be more "tiny" with it than it is with the others. It is not that bad if you're listening to big boomy sounds... But having no real explosion in Mahler's First (opening movement) with it is quite disturbing. When I am in the room, yes, that explodes, so why does it not in my headphone ?
Sorry for the long post...
It is just the conclusion after sopending a lot of time reading (and asking and getting super fast and accurate answers) here...
Have a nice day.
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