Lyngdorf TDAI 3400

[tmallin]

RC22, I really don't want to follow the Menu steps you suggest for the simple reason that, at least in the App version of the Menu, I get a message suggesting that if I go any further into the Room Perfect Menu I risk deleting the existing Room Perfect calibration in favor of new data to be added with future measurements.

I do seem to recall that when I used Room Perfect on my old TDAI-2170 a few years ago, I did see a spec referring to Roomcorrection %. I have not seen that on either one of my current TDAI-3400 units. I am using software version 3.4.0 and before that used version 3.3.0.

In the App version of the Room Perfect set up menu, I do currently see the following message: "Room Perfect has data from 3 room measurements for a total room knowledge of 100%. You can improve the room knowledge by adding additional room measurements."

Obviously, once room knowledge reaches 100%, additional room measurements will not increase room knowledge. As I recall, Room Perfect actually automatically exited the program after I took one additional room measurement after it proclaimed I had reached 100% room knowledge.

You will recall that I "trick" Room Perfect into believing it quickly has 100% room knowledge by just not moving the measurement microphone from where it was initially as I make additional room measurements. See the description of this "trick" process in post #3 above. A few other people who have tried this "trick" also report excellent results, better sounding than they had ever before achieved from using Room Perfect. In neither one of my Room Perfect set ups did it take more than three total measurements for Room Perfect to announce that 100% room knowledge had been achieved.

I suspect that this "trick" works well for systems where you only care about correcting the frequency response for a single "hot spot" or "sweet spot" listener, rather than for two or more listeners at distributed locations within the room. When I listen there is only one person in the room, me, and I always sit in the sweet spot, so I could care less about the sound quality elsewhere in the room. Still, however, as I mentioned in post #3 above, this Room Perfect "trick" does not seem to degrade sound quality elsewhere in the room in any way inferior to what the Room Perfect Bypass modes sounds like in that position.

I will add that now having two different TDAI-3400 units correcting two different speakers in two different rooms, subjectively the differences between the Focus and Bypass modes are greater with my Watkins Generation 4 speakers in my "larger" room than with my AR-303a speakers in my smaller-yet blue room. The AR-303a corrections seem quite subtle on A/B comparison of the Focus and Bypass modes, whereas the Watkins corrections are immediately rather obvious. The AR-303a corrections seem significant only upon longer-term listening. Whether this subjective impression of the degree of change between Focus and Bypass modes of Room Perfect correlates well with the Roomcorrection % you see reported by the program is unknown.

 

[tmallin]

Orange55, Right You Are!! Amazing!!

Forget Tidal Connect and MConnect.

It took me no more than three seconds listening to a familiar streamed recording via JPLAY (Steve Martin/Edie Brickell "So Familiar" title cut) to know that this was a substantial sonic improvement over any other way I've heard this via my Watkins-based system. I really can't believe the improvement!

Is it worth the $50 per year subscription fee? Absolutely!! Run, do not walk, to the App Store and install this. You likely have never heard streaming music with this quality. It automatically played first time without a hitch through the UPnP input of the Lyngdorf TDAI-3400.

EDIT: Sorry, but I was far too enthusiastic about JPLAY when I first tried it yesterday. Yes, it sounds fine, at least as good as Roon playing Qobuz and Tidal. It also has an excellent GUI with lots of control features and information about what's playing on Qobuz and Tidal. But at least with my 3400, the Live Radio function is quite unstable--not nearly up to the radio functions of Roon, Lumin, TuneIn, vTuner, airable, etc.

So many things were happening yesterday around my house that I confused one audio change with another.

In the morning I had just discovered that my listening chair in the Watkins room had moved further from the speakers than it originally was when I had run Room Perfect. I then moved my chair in the Watkins system forward an inch, back into the position it was in when I ran Room Perfect months ago. The chair had apparently slipped backward an inch over time from getting in and out of it so much despite being careful about that. I measure the chair position, and thus my listening position, from the pinhead firmly stuck in the chair back to a piece of tape centered on the wall behind the speakers with my laser distance meter. That chair repositioning did cause a sonic change.

Then later in the day I installed JPLAY and heard what I thought was the JPLAY change as a big improvement on that one cut. But now that I've had a bit more experience with JPLAY, it was primarily the repositioning of the chair effects I'm hearing.

Acoustics--including speakers and physical system set up (speaker and listening position, as well as acoustic treatments) trumps everything else in terms of magnitude of subjective sonic quality changes. I mistakenly forgot about the acoustic change I had made before I evaluated JPLAY's sonics. Someone has said that moving speakers a fraction of an inch produces more sonic difference than the difference between any two amps. Believe it.

Just goes to show me: consider well before trumpeting huge improvements from new ways of manipulating zeros and ones.

 

[tmallin]

Here is a link to the JPLAY review by Audiophile Style/The Computer Audiophile. Whether there are sonic improvements is ignored/downplayed/fudged there in both the review and in the comments to the review. What is clear, however, is that the GUI is nice and a lot of information about recordings is provided if you know where to look--see the comments. One way to see some of the information displayed about a selected album (I don't think this is mentioned in the review) is to touch the icon near the bottom right of the screen which is made up of an arrow, horizontal lines, and a number.

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/jplay-for-ios-and-ipados-review-r1213/

I also note about JPLAY that its built-in volume control is much better than the ones in MConnect and Tidal Connect. It's still not as exact as the volume controls in Roon and the Lyngdorf App, but fine enough. The JPLAY volume control in my system seems to cross the Lyngdorf/Roon volume indication at 50; the volume numbers are different above and below JPLAY 50.

As to my chair movement, the upholstered skirt on my chair hid the fact that the chair had moved with respect to the carpet. Also, I had failed to mark the carpet with tape so I could see the backward movement. Now that I know the chair tends to move backward and not forward, I've put masking tape at the front of the back legs to mark where they should be so I can check for movement by lifting the skirt, bypassing the need to check with the laser measuring device.

 

[tmallin]

Finding the URL of an internet radio station used to be easy, but as streaming technology has evolved, the URL identity of a radio stream is more and more often "hidden" from plain view. You need the URL to create a custom radio station in Roon's Live Radio if the station isn't already listed in Roon or, if it ever starts working reliably, JPLAY.

I finally discovered a way to get the URL which seems to work most every time. I basically simplified some instructions I found in an online video and translated them into what I think is fairly clear text:

1. Right click anywhere on the home page of the radio station you want to listen to. By "home page" I mean the page which has a Listen button on it.

2.From the small menu which then appears, click on the last selection, Inspect

3. From the window which opens on the right side of the screen, click on the Network header; you may have to expand this window to the left to see the Network header

4. On the home page of the station, click on the Listen button or otherwise start up the radio station's live stream

5. Now in the right window, the Name field should be open with the name of the stream listed.

6. Click on the name of the stream. Now the Headers header will be highlighted and the first line under that header should read "Request URL"

7. The URL of the stream appears to the right of the "Request URL:" Highlight and select the URL. That is the URL of the stream. You can paste that into the URL bar of a new browser window to test it. The station should either play immediately or play when you click the play arrow.

 

[tmallin]

A prominent audio equipment reviewer lost his entire home including all his audio equipment, CDs, and LPs in a recent California wildfire. He is primarily interested in classical music and had long sought out recordings using simple quasi-single-point miking (such as Blumlein recordings) and recordings made with three spaced omnidirectional microphones for the more realistic concert hall perspective these recording techniques provide.

This reviewer had previously expressed strong reservations about using streaming sources, believing that the ease of access to and playback of such a vast library of material could devalue his appreciation for the music he treasures. Here is what I recently recommended to him. The Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 figures prominently in what I said about how he could "start over":

*********************

I know that you have expressed strong reservations about streaming sources in the past. If you do choose to continue to eschew streaming and go with just a CD player, I strongly urge you to get one which allows playback not only from discs but also from a USB-attached drive. This will add great playback flexibility for program material you don't have on CD or CD-R. Such new CD players are common at most price levels.

But the fire, despite the tragedy it caused, opens the opportunity for you to reconsider and follow a different path. The chances of replacing your library of physical CDs and LPs is slim to none even with insurance money. Many or most of the ones you want probably are no longer readily available and would take a lot of time and effort to reacquire in any case. If they are available new or used, it will mostly be at premium prices. Or, the programs are available new or used, but only as part of larger "bargain" CD sets which probably have been remastered with who-knows-what kind of resulting fidelity.

In hindsight, the fire tragedy demonstrates to all of us the wisdom of backing up one's music library to the cloud through, just for example, Google Drive. For a few hundred dollars a year, one can back up even a very large digital music library in a way impervious to local damage, theft, or other loss.

But there is no need to back up most recordings, even to the cloud. Most of the "mainstream" classical and other recordings are available through streaming from Qobuz and/or Tidal in CD or higher quality. A subscription to Qobuz costs $180 a year. Yes, there are classical discs you want to replace not available on those streaming services, but those are relatively few. You can concentrate your efforts and funds on reacquiring those physical CDs and LPs. The rest you can stream with no need to back up/make copies of what you stream.

There are certainly less expensive ways to get a working system back up and running, but for you I suggest the one-box Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 with the optional high end analog audio card. I'm sure you could get a new or mint used one for $7,500 or less. This "amplifier" provides 200 wpc into 8 ohms (400 wpc into 4 ohms), plus provides A/D, D/A, automatic and manual EQ, crossover, preamp, and very nice streaming functionality (for Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, and all internet radio stations), all in one reasonably sized and lightweight box. There are plenty of digital and analog inputs and outputs to accommodate an add-on CD player and outboard analog EQ devices. The Lyngdorf even has a decent LP phono preamp built in. Just add speakers and a control unit like an iPad or even iPhone and you'd have a complete streaming music system of what I consider to be quite "good enough" for all my purposes.

The one thing the Lyngdorf won't do very well if at all on its own is play local music files from USB-connected devices. To do this, I use the USB slots of a Roon Core (a music-specialized computer CPU) connected to my home network. A 1 TB USB thumb drive holds all my uncompressed WAV CD music files and I plug that into my Roon Core. Via Roon, I can play not only streaming sources from Tidal and Qobuz, but also all my CD music files. If I search for specific music in Roon, Roon retrieves all the Qobuz, Tidal, and local music file versions all in one integrated list for me to choose from. The Roon software costs about $150 a year or $830 for a lifetime plan. The Roon Core I use is this one for $600; I have used that unit for over a year now with zero issues.

You don't need Roon or a Roon Core to stream from Qobuz or Tidal. You can stream Tidal directly from the Tidal Connect app into the Lyngdorf. For both Qobuz and Tidal you can use either the $6 Mconnect app or the $50 JPLAY app. Both have nice GUIs for Tidal and Qobuz and allow full fidelity streaming from both right into the Lyngdorf via UPnP with better functionality than the free Tidal Connect app.

 

[tmallin]

Here are a few more operational notes about the Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 and using JPLAY, vTuner, and airable with it:

1. Following some recent app updates, the Live Radio function of JPLAY now appears to be working more stably. I can now reliably go back and forth between radio stations and Qobuz tracks, for example.

2. JPLAY also provides the easiest method I've seen of reliably finding all the releases on a given label in Qobuz or Tidal. This is handy for audiophiles looking for great-sounding recordings they may not yet be familiar with. If you like the house sound of a particular label, you can search for all recordings on that label. The Qobuz app on my Mac will do this fairly well also if you select the search by label function, but not as reliably as JPLAY. All you need to do this in JPLAY is type the label name into the search box. I have tried this with Reference Recordings, Telarc, Claves, and Chesky and it works very well and quickly.

3. The vTuner app does not appear to work any longer with the Lyngdorf vTuner input. It seems to work fine online on my Mac or via AirPlay through the Lyngdorf. Using AirPlay you can start with the vTuner Station List page and sort down through its menu. The Lyngdorf airable input works fine and will get you to most of the same stations as vTuner, plus others.

4. I have gone back and forth on whether to enable the Deep Sleep Standby Level (see page 40 of the English manual) function for turning off my two Lyngdorf 3400 units. At times I've felt that the sonics are just a tad diminished for an hour or more if the unit is awakened from Deep Sleep as opposed to being awakened from the Network Standby option. If you don't enable Deep Sleep, both units will appear at the ready via the Lyngdorf App which can sometimes cause operational confusion, especially when turning on the AirPlay function. If the unit is in Deep Sleep, it will not appear as available from the Lyngdorf App. I usually keep my Blue Room 3400 in Deep Sleep when it's not in use. I'm experimenting with keeping my Audio Room unit also in Deep Sleep when it is off. One obvious disadvantage of Deep Sleep is that it takes two or three pushes of the on/off button on the remote wand or front panel to turn on the Deep Sleeping unit.

5. The default maximum volume level for the main output of the TDAI-3400 is +12 dB. That seems very high to me. In Audio Settings I have mine set for a maximum volume of zero dB and have yet to run out of volume adjustment at the loud end to achieve the SPL levels I want even on the quietest of programs. I hear no sonic differences dependent on the setting of this control. My reasoning is that setting the maximum at 0 dB may prevent accidentally clipping the amp or blowing a speaker driver if I mistakenly increase the volume setting too much. Of course, in my small rooms I don't need that much power for my tastes in playback SPL.

 

[tmallin]

Building Your Qobuz/Tidal Library Via Roon Live Radio

I have mentioned this before in other threads, but since everyone I mention this to seems astounded, I want to keep mentioning it occasionally. This is one of the reasons I'm so keen on listening to internet radio, ESPECIALLY via the Live Radio function of Roon.

When listening to Live Radio channels via Roon you can sometimes (50% of the time?) go from the radio station playback directly to the Qobuz or Tidal playback of that same tune, then listen to it from Qobuz/Tidal and/or save it to your Roon library. Here's how:

For many stations, if you click on the title of what is playing in the lower left corner of the screen in the Roon App as displayed on an iPad, Roon will then show a blue link to the Qobuz/Tidal disc containing that song/program. Clicking on that link takes you to that album, with the song highlighted. You can then add that album or song to your library with a click. You can also start that song playing from Qobuz/Tidal to hear the higher resolution version of it, rather than the almost-always lower quality internet radio version. The sonic quality differences are usually quite obvious.

This function is very handy for building your music library. It doesn't work with all stations. For some stations it never works. Even with the stations it works with, it will not work all the time. Occasionally the provided link is to a different version of the song. But when this method works, it is a lot easier than other methods of adding that song/album to your library.

 

[audioholic_one]

I've been following this forum for a while. This review motivated me to buy one. Unfortunately there's no local dealer (PNW) that has one (or any TDAI's) to demo. They were all unfamiliar and wanted cash in advance to order one. So I decided to buy a TDAI-1120 to hear what the hub-bub is all about. Really enjoyed the 1120 so I'm trading it in on a 3400.