What do you use as a source for your music with a DAC

[Count Arthur]

For when-I'm-paying-attention listening it's always CDs.

You may be missing a trick there.

I had an expensive CD player, a Cyrus CD8X with it's optional Cyrus outboard power supply, the PSX-R, a set-up that cost around £1,500 at the time. I "upgraded" to an old PC and an HRT Music Streamer II+ DAC, a set up that cost around £500-ish.

I use a PC at home, so I put together a "music player" PC from old parts when I upgraded my main one, so that only cost me a couple of hundred pounds by the time I'd bought a case and a large hard drive and the music player software; I use JRiver Media Player: https://jriver.com/. The HRT DAC was about £300, so all together the new set-up cost less than half what the CD player did. When I compared the PC + DAC to my CD player, I found that the PC + DAC easily equalled it, so I sold the CD player and I've never replaced it.

It took a long time ripping a thousand or so CDs to a hard drive, but once I'd done it, my entire music collection was available via JRiver Media Centre and there's even an Android App that allows you to control it via a phone or tablet, or, when the "music player" PC is on, you can play the music on it on your phone, or tablet. There is an Apple version of the App as well.

I recently replaced the HRT DAC and my pre-amp with an RME ADI-2 DAC and it sounds even better and although I can no longer compare it to my CD player, I've no doubt it would sound signficantly better and it's still a less expensive set-up.


The Theory - as I understand it.

When you play a CD, it is read and converted from digital to audio in real time, much like playing a vinyl record, any read errors have to be corrected effectively "guessed" and interpolated by the player. However, when you rip a CD to a hard drive, it's not real time and the drive can make several re-read attempts. This is necessary because when you install software from a CD or DVD, you can't guess/interpolate bits, otherwise your software wouldn't work. So in the process of ripping the CD to a hard drive, you've created an accurate copy of the CD, more accurate than you might get with real-time playback from a CD drive/player.

Similarly, when you play musuc from a hard drive this is not in real time. Consider that a typical 40 minute CD might hold about 400Mb of data and a typical 7,200rpm hard drive can read data at 100Mb or more a second, so it could read an entire 40 minute CDs worth of data in about 4 seconds.

When you play an uncompressed music file from a hard drive, it's read into memory, a buffer, and "played" from there, so the software/firmware has plenty of time to make re-attempts at reading the data until it gets it right. This is also crucial for the working of a computer, because if your loading programs or reading data from a hard drive, it has to be exactly right, it can't guess bits, as CD error correction does, otherwise all your programs would be buggy, or not work at all, and your documents would be screwy, with random characters etc., basically computers wouldn't work.

So, in theory, playing music from a hard drive could deliver a more accurate music data to the DAC than a real-time read from a CD drive.


Your results may vary

This might all be bunkham, and it's simply the case that my CD player was an overpriced piece of garbage and all the improvements I heard were purely down to a better sounding DAC. However, there's no denying that having all my CDs available in one place, searchable and sortable, is far more convenient than messing about swapping CDs.

Try it, you might like it.

 

[Jimbob54]

Sorry. This is still unclear to me. So, if you hook your smartphone to the DAC how does the phone know to not do digital conversion? Is it automatically NOT converted if the signal is output through the USB of the phone? I have only used the headphone jack for audio and obviously that is already a converted signal. How do you get the phone to send an unconverted digital signal?

The simplest route from phone to DAC is buying what is called an OTG (on the go) cable. This needs the same fitting as your phone charger on one end (for new android will be USB c) and a letterbox shape USB female socket at the other end (the same slot as will be on any pc). Then you need a cable to go from that to the dac (so letter box female to squarish male ). An old printer cable will do this.

That's it. You are done. No idea about apple devices.

Life gets more complex if you want to get into bit perfect output from your phone

 

[SIY]

Y
The Theory - as I understand it.

When you play a CD, it is read and converted from digital to audio in real time, much like playing a vinyl record, any read errors have to be corrected effectively "guessed" and interpolated by the player. However, when you rip a CD to a hard drive, it's not real time and the drive can make several re-read attempts. This is necessary because when you install software from a CD or DVD, you can't guess/interpolate bits, otherwise your software wouldn't work. So in the process of ripping the CD to a hard drive, you've created an accurate copy of the CD, more accurate than you might get with real-time playback from a CD drive/player.

Not exactly correct. Errors requiring interpolation are exceedingly rare on CD playback, and because it's literally over in 1/44,100 seconds and happens in isolation, the audibility is... questionable. Error correction is common, but is is indeed correction, not "guessing" or "interpolation." The correction is bit-perfect, and is a rather clever and robust system.

If you blind/level match playback between CD and hard drive, I will bet large portions of my net worth that you won't hear a difference unless something is badly broken.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Sorry for being an obvious NOOB but I am old and grew up with analog. I get how a headphone amp works. And I get that you need a DAC to convert digital to Audio. What I don't get is what people use as a source for their high quality digital audio files. If you hook your phone to the DAC don't you use the bad phone DAC to send signal to the analog headphone jack. So can digital signal be sent to the USB port on the phone? If you want high quality audio into a DAC what portable device can you use? I don't want to hook into a computer USB.

I mainly use a CD transport. If I am playing file based music I have an old iMac computer connected by USB, it gives me a nice big screen for the artwork but software updates are making it slower and slower, irritatingly.
If I listen from my phone I use the supplied dongle (Apple) or blutooth noise cancelling headphones, but I only do that on bus/train/plane where top SQ is pointless anyway.

 

[Milesian]

If you like to tinker , I highly recommend a Raspberry Pi as a value for money front end music server. Lots of options for digital outputs ranging from USB to dedicated spdif and DAC boards. Several android or ios controllable software options including airplay. You can even add a combination dac/amplifier board to drive a set of speakers. Great ROON endpoints too.

 

[blueone]

You may be missing a trick there.

I had an expensive CD player, a Cyrus CD8X with it's optional Cyrus outboard power supply, the PSX-R, a set-up that cost around £1,500 at the time. I "upgraded" to an old PC and an HRT Music Streamer II+ DAC, a set up that cost around £500-ish.

I use a PC at home, so I put together a "music player" PC from old parts when I upgraded my main one, so that only cost me a couple of hundred pounds by the time I'd bought a case and a large hard drive and the music player software; I use JRiver Media Player: https://jriver.com/. The HRT DAC was about £300, so all together the new set-up cost less than half what the CD player did. When I compared the PC + DAC to my CD player, I found that the PC + DAC easily equalled it, so I sold the CD player and I've never replaced it.

It took a long time ripping a thousand or so CDs to a hard drive, but once I'd done it, my entire music collection was available via JRiver Media Centre and there's even an Android App that allows you to control it via a phone or tablet, or, when the "music player" PC is on, you can play the music on it on your phone, or tablet. There is an Apple version of the App as well.

I recently replaced the HRT DAC and my pre-amp with an RME ADI-2 DAC and it sounds even better and although I can no longer compare it to my CD player, I've no doubt it would sound signficantly better and it's still a less expensive set-up.


The Theory - as I understand it.

When you play a CD, it is read and converted from digital to audio in real time, much like playing a vinyl record, any read errors have to be corrected effectively "guessed" and interpolated by the player. However, when you rip a CD to a hard drive, it's not real time and the drive can make several re-read attempts. This is necessary because when you install software from a CD or DVD, you can't guess/interpolate bits, otherwise your software wouldn't work. So in the process of ripping the CD to a hard drive, you've created an accurate copy of the CD, more accurate than you might get with real-time playback from a CD drive/player.

Similarly, when you play musuc from a hard drive this is not in real time. Consider that a typical 40 minute CD might hold about 400Mb of data and a typical 7,200rpm hard drive can read data at 100Mb or more a second, so it could read an entire 40 minute CDs worth of data in about 4 seconds.

When you play an uncompressed music file from a hard drive, it's read into memory, a buffer, and "played" from there, so the software/firmware has plenty of time to make re-attempts at reading the data until it gets it right. This is also crucial for the working of a computer, because if your loading programs or reading data from a hard drive, it has to be exactly right, it can't guess bits, as CD error correction does, otherwise all your programs would be buggy, or not work at all, and your documents would be screwy, with random characters etc., basically computers wouldn't work.

So, in theory, playing music from a hard drive could deliver a more accurate music data to the DAC than a real-time read from a CD drive.


Your results may vary

This might all be bunkham, and it's simply the case that my CD player was an overpriced piece of garbage and all the improvements I heard were purely down to a better sounding DAC. However, there's no denying that having all my CDs available in one place, searchable and sortable, is far more convenient than messing about swapping CDs.

Try it, you might like it.

I'm not missing any tricks. I am not assuming there are any audible or even measurable differences between a physical CD and lossless streaming. I just prefer the physical media. I do not have a desktop system in my primary listening room, I do not want to be saddled with a laptop computer nearby to listen either. I do not want to rip thousands of CDs to the cloud, nor pay a monthly fee for their storage. I have considered using Amazon Music Unlimited, but that would require a computer. I also prefer my view of a wall of CDs as a search tool for listening material selection to the more limited view of a search criteria screen window. Finally, buying CDs in boxed sets keeps the acquisition price down to $1 to $2 per CD, sometimes even less.

My CD player was $300, does a passable job loading and playing music, and digitally feeds a Benchmark DAC3L, which drives the amps directly. No expensive CD player is necessary to get the best digital performance available. I'm also not a believer that high-res digital (24/96 or 24/192) provides audible benefits, so Redbook CDs are sufficient forever, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm not missing any tricks. I am not assuming there are any audible or even measurable differences between a physical CD and lossless streaming. I just prefer the physical media. I do not have a desktop system in my primary listening room, I do not want to be saddled with a laptop computer nearby to listen either. I do not want to rip thousands of CDs to the cloud, nor pay a monthly fee for their storage. I have considered using Amazon Music Unlimited, but that would require a computer. I also prefer my view of a wall of CDs as a search tool for listening material selection to the more limited view of a search criteria screen window. Finally, buying CDs in boxed sets keeps the acquisition price down to $1 to $2 per CD, sometimes even less.

My CD player was $300, does a passable job loading and playing music, and digitally feeds a Benchmark DAC3L, which drives the amps directly. No expensive CD player is necessary to get the best digital performance available. I'm also not a believer that high-res digital (24/96 or 24/192) provides audible benefits, so Redbook CDs are sufficient forever, as far as I'm concerned.

My experience too.
Though my CD transport was quite pricey it is 25 years old now and still going strong.

 

[Count Arthur]

I do not want to rip thousands of CDs to the cloud, nor pay a monthly fee for their storage. I have considered using Amazon Music Unlimited, but that would require a computer.

I'm not streaming or storing copies of my CDs in the cloud, although I do have backups there and elsewhere, I'm using a hard drive. I still buy CDs, but then immediately rip them to my PC to play them, then store them away in boxes. I find it odd that buying a physical CD is often better value and that lower bit rate MP3 downloads of albums are often more expesive than buying a CD and having it posted to you - how does that work?

I've tried some higher resolution/bit rate recordings, but like you, I'm not convinced there's much to be gained beyond CD quality. Where I've heard recordings that sound particularly nice, I suspect that's because more care has been taken througout the whole recording, engineering and mastering process than anything to do with the intrinsic qualities of "high-res". Certainly I have some CDs that sound really nice, whilst I have others that sound little better than something recorded on a portable cassette player.

I liked the convenience when I switched from vinyl to CD and liked it even more when I moved to storing everything on hard drive. I reckon I listen more widely throughout my collection than I did when I had my CDs on shelves, where I might overlook things. Incidentally, JRiver does a pretty good job of finding all the CD information and artwork for you when you import a CD, so that when browsing your collection you aren't just looking a sterile list of file names:

 

[Hypnotoad]

An old AMD CPU Hewlett Packard PC that I had laying around. Using Ubuntu with Audacious, it's a basic player with all the features I need to play the files on my hard drive, the SQ is amazing IMO.

 

[raistlin65]

I do not want to rip thousands of CDs to the cloud, nor pay a monthly fee for their storage.

That is understandable. I would imagine many of us who have a thousand CDs or more ripped to flac started years ago. It is a long process and several computer CD drives later.

Although you do not have to put them in the cloud. External SSDs have gotten so cheap, easy enough to do offsite backup storage by leaving a portable drive with a family member, neighbor, or in your desk at work.

 

[Hypnotoad]

Although you do not have to put them in the cloud. External SSDs have gotten so cheap, easy enough to do offsite backup storage by leaving a portable drive with a family member, neighbor, or in your desk at work.

I have an external HDD in one of those external USB enclosures, I also keep a copy on my regular desktop PC, so with my music server I have two independent backups.

 

[Murrfk]

I'm old. LG V30 has a great internal ESS DAC and uses a micro SD card. I have 400GB (1000 albums) on mine. Using USB Audio Player Pro. Sounds great on iem/headphones or plugged into the car. Paid $148 for it because it's a 2 year old phone. Add $50 for 400gb SD card. Do that.

Okay. Just did! I just ordered a used LG v30+ with 128gb of storage for $130US.

I appreciate all the helpful responses and I am still interested in further thoughts. I was going to buy a Hidizs AP80 DAP a DAC and an Atom headphone amp. Would there have been any advantages to any of those over the V30?

I am also interested in the processes people use to get high quality audio files into a disk. Just rip the CD? Any particular programs? I use OSX. Can they be bought in high quality digital format?

 

[Jmudrick]

Okay. Just did! I just ordered a used LG v30+ with 128gb of storage for $130US.

I appreciate all the helpful responses and I am still interested in further thoughts. I was going to buy a Hidizs AP80 DAP a DAC and an Atom headphone amp. Would there have been any advantages to any of those over the V30?

Unlikely. Obviously some headphones may require an outboard amp so if yours is particularly hard to drive that might serve well. As I indicated I have an Atom but don't find I need it. Get a year subscription to Qobuz or a 400GB + sd card instead . Of course there are better DACs (like my RME) but for the investment in a dedicated player+DAC the LGs can't be beat .

 

[tmtomh]

Okay. Just did! I just ordered a used LG v30+ with 128gb of storage for $130US.

I appreciate all the helpful responses and I am still interested in further thoughts. I was going to buy a Hidizs AP80 DAP a DAC and an Atom headphone amp. Would there have been any advantages to any of those over the V30?

I can't comment on the specific gear mentioned here, but I can tell you that you don't need a DAP unless you want a small, portable piece of equipment that you are going to use with high-quality headphones. If you want a small, portable solution to use with regular earbuds or for everyday commuting, at the gym, or whatever, there are a lot of modern smartphones (and some older ones as noted above) that will produce high-fidelity sound for you.

If you are looking to use a separate DAC unit for in-home listening (aka not portable), then you do not need to feed it with a DAP, although of course you can do so. All you need is anything with a digital output that matches the kind of digital input your DAC has. Almost all DACs have USB inputs, and many others also have coax and/or optical inputs.

So you can use a DAP, a phone, a tablet, a laptop, or a desktop computer - as long as it has a digital output. The digital-source device you use is not going to impact sound quality unless it has some kind of design flaw or high electrical noise that gets into its digital output and your DAC also has poor noise rejection. Most modern DACs - including almost all the ones Amir has tested here - have very good noise rejection over USB.

Hope this helps!

 

[Murrfk]

My Drop HD 6xx are in the mail which is why I was looking into this. I have a small home recording studio, which is primarily why I got the HD6xx but I was looking into he I could also use them in my living room to listen to music that wasn't recorded by me.

 

[blueone]

That is understandable. I would imagine many of us who have a thousand CDs or more ripped to flac started years ago. It is a long process and several computer CD drives later.

Although you do not have to put them in the cloud. External SSDs have gotten so cheap, easy enough to do offsite backup storage by leaving a portable drive with a family member, neighbor, or in your desk at work.

Many, many hours of ripping and managing home hardware for, say, 20 years for someone in their 60s? Not this someone.

 

[Asylum Seeker]

Mobile Android 9 devices. Period.

 

[drew.woz]

Sorry for being an obvious NOOB but I am old and grew up with analog. I get how a headphone amp works. And I get that you need a DAC to convert digital to Audio. What I don't get is what people use as a source for their high quality digital audio files. If you hook your phone to the DAC don't you use the bad phone DAC to send signal to the analog headphone jack. So can digital signal be sent to the USB port on the phone? If you want high quality audio into a DAC what portable device can you use? I don't want to hook into a computer USB.

General view:

 

[French_guy]

How to know it the DAC of a specific device (phone or tablet) is good enough (quality wise) to feed a headphone amp thru the 3.5mm jack, or if I should instead use an OTG cable to feed an external DAC that will itself feed the amp?
I currently have a Samsung S10+, and also an "old" Samsung tablet (SM-T320 - Galaxy tab Pro 8.4")
Are they both equiped with good DAC? Or any external DAC will be vastly better anyway?
I was considering to get a DAC/Amp stack (in the $200/$250 price range), but don't want to invest in a $100 DAC if it won't be better than what my phone or tablet can do......
Thanks

 

[cscottrun4it]

The front end of this post is the funniest bit of Three's Company shtick I've read in a long time, and I'm still not convinced the question got answered. Let's try again...

If I have a smart phone, and I want to run its audio to a DAC, how do I do that?

• Is the phone's DAC processing a digital signal to analog and then that analog signal goes to the outboard DAC via USB C? This makes having an outboard DAC useless, I think.
• Does the phone know there's a digital receiver on the other end of the USB C and, thus, passes a digital signal to the DAC, bypassing its own DAC?
• Is there an app that needs to be used to disable the phone's DAC to pass a digital signal via USB C to the outboard DAC?
• At this point, is Bluetooth 5.0 the only option for actually getting a digital signal out of a phone and to the DAC?

One of these, or something like one of these, has to be the answer. Give the brother a break.