Good DAC in the $500 to $1,000 range

Old Listener

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Jul 18, 2010
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naturelover.smugmug.com
Nova and Sonos

Me too. It sounded like they wanted to appeal to people by the look of the tube, as opposed to the sound of the tube.

I think of it as a small artificial fireplace. You sit in front of the Nova and get a warm feeling from the rosy glow of the tube.

I am now a big fan of DACs with volume controls with balanced output driving pro active speakers.

I bought an NHT balanced volume control some time ago. For about $ 100 and one small extra box, it can provide the missing volume control function.

When I'm 8-9 feet from the speakers and the electronics, I need a remote volume control at my seat. Right now, I set a volume ceiling with my preamp volume control. Then I use the volume control in J. River media Center from my laptop for smaller adjustments. (I'm sending 24/44.1 audio to the soundcard. I decided its's OK for now.)

Unfortunately they have been stubborn and don't support WMA Lossless so for me personally, my Sonos is sitting gathering dust.

You could convert your files to Flac. (g)

For years, maintaining duplicate copies of files was regarded as a terrible thing. More recently, replication has become a reliable tool. I could see having an architecture where each room has a copy of my music collection. In your case, you could set up a scheduled batch operation that identifies changes and replicates them from your WMA Lossless library to a Flac library.

FYI, while at Microsoft we helped them port WMA Lossless to Sonos but they would refuse the ship it.

Sometimes I can admire a company for thinking out a viable strategy and then executing that strategy in a single minded manner even if it doesn't deliver what I need or they don't do what I would have done. The Sonos people did a major round of development and they just keep selling basically the same products for years. They don't raise seem to the limits of the nodes or remove many functional limitations. They haven't chased fickle audiophiles by supporting high resolution streaming.

They have worked on interfaces to streaming services such as Pandora and Rhapsody. New services will probably appear for some years and customers will want their Sonos to work with all the new services. Sonos made sensible choices in development priorities for their market.

Their products don't fit my needs but I think that Sonos has been smart and disciplined.

Indeed. Companies are so slow to see the trends here. The right functionality for PC playback is not always the same as standard transports. Fortunately there is progress being made.

Yes. I think the future will belong to companies like Peachtree, Sonos and Audioengine unless Apple gets the entire pie. However, Apple is working toward a future where PCs won't be needed at all. Customers can buy music and get it to an iGadget directly. Maybe it is just stored in the iCloud. Apple also seems to be headed toward a music service component for collecting revenue. (iWant all your money.)

Bill
 

amirm

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Apr 2, 2010
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OK, had a chance to test the built-in USB input of the Peachtree Nova against the audiophilleo USB to S/PDIF adapter. I must say, I was a bit surprised at the fidelity loss. Ambiance (i.e. low level detail) was lost. High frequencies become grittier. And soundstange flattened (as a result of the first factor).

Mind you, it still sounds "hi fi" but it is a clear step down without the converter.

Will try to get an iNova to test that has the new DAC to see if it does any better. But for now, the cost of entry is $1,100 for Nova plus $500 for the Audiophilleo.
 

Old Listener

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Jul 18, 2010
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naturelover.smugmug.com
That's what the tube is for

OK, had a chance to test the built-in USB input of the Peachtree Nova against the audiophilleo USB to S/PDIF adapter. I must say, I was a bit surprised at the fidelity loss. Ambiance (i.e. low level detail) was lost. High frequencies become grittier. And soundstange flattened (as a result of the first factor).

Are you sure you had the tube in the circuit? Surely, a tube would remove the grittiness and restore lost detail.

Lots of USB DACS around with a generic adaptive mode USB audio interface. In the long run, an async mode DAC should not cost much more for parts than a decent adaptive mode DAC.

The Stereophile review of the DacMagic and the follow ups showed that its performance with SPDIF input was much better than performance with USB input.

Bill
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Are you sure you had the tube in the circuit? Surely, a tube would remove the grittiness and restore lost detail.
I had left the tube on for a while as to "burn it in" as was mentioned. And when I turned it on the tube was indeed on. Alas, it still helps to deteriorate the sound. Maybe not as bad as before but still does. So I turned it off for the rest of the evaluation.

I assume you were being sarcastic in the above statement :). No tube can add detail in. And the type of distortion I heard in highs could be filtered but I suspect not eliminated.

Lots of USB DACS around with a generic adaptive mode USB audio interface. In the long run, an async mode DAC should not cost much more for parts than a decent adaptive mode DAC.
Yup. Alas it takes more than just an async mode to make quality output. It needs to also have good isolation from the PC and deploy good clock.
 

Old Listener

New Member
Jul 18, 2010
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naturelover.smugmug.com
I assume you were being sarcastic in the above statement :).

I was having a bit of fun. No offense intended.

Yup. Alas it takes more than just an async mode to make quality output. It needs to also have good isolation from the PC and deploy good isolation.

I agree. You need a good over/up sampling and digital filter section, clean power, a decent DAC chip and a good analog section too. We're starting to see async mode USB DACs at a variety of price points. Reviews with measurements are rather spotty though.

If the Nova has a good SPDIF based DAC section, it still represents a lot of function in one box at a reasonable price right now. In a year or two, Peachtree might need to put more effort into the USB interface.

The PC market is going more and more toward laptops. Macs have optical digital outputs but many Windows laptops don't. I don't think that Firewire is common on Windows laptops either. Audio output over USB will be a necessity to get past onboard sound.

Bill
 

Occam

[Industry Expert]
Dec 15, 2010
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amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Interesting. Wish it had a higher resolution filter that was programmable by the PC and it would be quite useful for some amount of room EQ!
 

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