I was thinking there was more to patās system that was posted. Clearly we have a couple of great pieces, the Meitner DAC, the Baetis server and Rockport Atrias ā but only the Baetis was posted in patās first post. Still scratching my head here.
Sorry, donāt get your confusion. Iām impressed by his commitment to his hobby and the choices he made. Not being snarky, but Iām missing your point.
Understood, I also wasnāt trying to be snarky either. You said, āBTW - I am in awe of your setup. What speakers do you have?ā
I just assumed you saw a post of his that laid out his system so I became curious about what his system is thatās all. I think weāre all looking at otherās systems for ideas (or just dreaming because we canāt afford theirs and hey, why not look? haha).
Baetis Ref>Meitner MA-1>VTL 6.5II>VTLMB450 Sig III>Atriasā¦ Plan to audition T+A DAC 8, Nagra Classic DAC and DCS Rossini for the final upgrade before I retire and canāt afford this upgradeitis anymore. HQPlayer has been recommended by several people so weāll give it a try tonight. I bet your system is a rocker, keep up the good work.
@pat_bannan - I love that VTL 450 amp. Itās the sweet-spot in the VTL lineup. Of course if you got the room need the power the Siegfried IIās arenāt shabby either Iāve heard them vs the ARC Ref 250 Special Edās and itās VTL every time to my ears. Great speed for a tube amp. Only drawback is warmup and wear of tubes ā and going nuts with trying out every brand of tubes. I settled on Svetlanas, but GLās came in close 2nd. Itās crazy how just changing tubes can have such an impact in dynamics and harmonics. I bet they sound great with those Rockports. I am surprise you donāt have a phono setup ā most tube folks do.
In the end, I didnāt have the patience for my Siegfrieds (series 1ās) to warm up every evening after coming home from work so I went solid state. The Boulder 2000 (and up) amps are pure class-A and have some of that tube goodness, but are very pure and powerful. I also got rid of phono at that point and went straight digital.
As for your DAC quest, Iāll be interested to learn your choice. You should also listen to the Chord Dave, and the Berkeley Alpha Reference 2 (itās supposed be rolling out MQA support in the coming months just like the Rossini). Both are great DACās and highly competitive with the Rossini (Iāve heard all 3), just not the T+A or the Nagra Classic.
Iām thinking about punting on the whole Roon thing until I decide on a DAC. I had no idea that there was so much to getting it to sound good and unlike most people on this site I donāt like fiddling around with settings. As for DACās, Iāve heard the Berkeley Ref 1 and 2 a total of three times and each time I like it a little less, I think it is just a bit analytical for me which is probably the reason I went with Rockport instead of Magico. I need to look into the DAVE, I also considered the EMM DA2 but I can get the other 3 shipped to me to audition in my system at the same time. Tube rolling? nothing better than having a $60 vintage input tube act like a component upgrade!
I used JRiver before and happy with its sound. My set up of Jriver is in bit-perfect mode. When I heard about Roon, I tried and find that sound quality is same as Jriver in bit-perfect mode but its user interface is better but decide not to buy because it cost a lot more and I think Jriver is good enough.
However, I have bought Roon because I really like its user interface and some of its features.
As for sound quality, if both are set up in bit-perfect mode, it should sound the same as there is no reason why they are different. But if DSP is used, then it can be different.
I am from Thailand and I am a happy user of both JRiver and Roon.
@pat_bannan: I donāt get the whole separate clock as an upgrade in the DCS lineup. Especially if your source is USB ā We all know that asynch DACās are the clock, not the source. So why not just make the clock in the DAC up to standards? Further, the output of the separate clock is two BNC connectors, which are clocking information, that feed two inputs on the Rossini DAC. It would seem that the length of the cable and quality could affect timing accuracy/jitter. Putting the clock in the DAC seems to be the more elegant design. Is DCS being greedy, or overplaying their hand? The separate clock is like $4K. It would seem to me that they put an inferior clock in the Rossini just to market a separate clock that is ābetter and improvedā. I kinda get it for the full Vivaldi stack as there are synchronous sources that can end up feeding this stack. But even the DAC alone has a USB input, yet they sell a separate clock.
What kind of music do you listen to? Iām curious because you said you found the Berkeley too analytical. To me that might imply you listen to Classical and Jazz. Some genres like Pop and Electronic/EDM thrive off from analytic sound. I see what youāre talking about esp when you lay out your system ā youāre into tubes and thatās a very different sound. Iām actually surprised you picked the Meitner DAC at all. I found it and the EMM DACās to be too analytical compared to the Debussy or anything DCS. With that in mind, I think youāll like the Rossini a lot, but the DAVE is going to throw you for a loop; I and many good friends agree that itās highly addictive, lush and non-fatiguing.
As far as all the settings in Digital Playback software, you should definitely avoid HQ Player ā itās highly confusing and configurable and without someone who knows it in and out, itās very hard to get it setup right. The filter selection alone is mind boggling. Iām not bashing it; itās an incredible piece of software. But itās something that you could get optimized for a certain genre/album/source only to find you have to go through the whole customization exercise again for a different input type (soure/genre, etc). J. River takes all that off your plate and sounds good out of the box. Roon does a great job as well, but like you, I do find them different sounding. I do give Roon credit in that the playback quality has improved with every release. The recent addition of the DSP functionality made it an order of magnitude more capable.I donāt see those kinds of changes being made by J.River; they appear to keep adding functionality that I didnāt care about. In the end youāre best to keep apples-to-apples when you do your DAC evaluations and use the same player with the same settings across each DAC; at least initially. As I said in my earlier post, upsampling everything to DSD made an audible improvement to the sound quality my Debussy produced. I suppose if you were to look at a DAC that had internal upsampling and another that didnāt, you might want to try enabling this feature and see if they sound the same as before the change. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Too had JRiver MC22 and Roon but have since abandoned the JRiver and concentrating on Roon as i find its far more flexible and easier to configure - plus the Tidal integration is great too.
Nice to know another in my part of the worldā¦I travel to BKK a lotā¦living in Singapore.
This cannot be overstated. A 0.5 decibel difference means your preference leans one way or the other.
Time and time again blind testing done properly and measurements have debunked audio myths and snakeoil products from speaker cables to USB āpurifiersā.
I donāt understand this statement at all. When you buy a DAC you often get one filter and you canāt change it for source/genre etc. Because the filter choices are vast in HQPlayer doesnāt mean you have to start switching them for every genre, album etc.
Personally I use one filter, usually a variation of poly-sinc (linear phase). If a DAC is dry poly-sinc-xtr is a good choice it gives you that Chord Dave like euphoric lushness with all the similar pre and post ringing.
Fortunately Roon doesnāt let you change HQ filter settings on the fly so it forces you to find the best filter for your DAC and leave it.
Itās been my experience that some hi-end DACās have the ability to switch between filters while listening because they realize the exact thing Iām saying. My Debussy has the ability to switch between filters with the press of a button on the remote, and so does almost every DCS DAC. Esoteric DACās tend to have multiple filters - the D02x has four that are user selectable. The Chord Dave has two filters (PCM Plus or DSD Plus), the Ayre QB-9 DSD has a switch called āListen and Measureā that selects between two filters (Iāll submit this isnāt the most straightforward/elegant method of switching between the two filters on the QB-9)ā¦ I could go on and on, but you get my point. Most hi-end DACS now have user selectable filters. Those within DCSās lineup are somewhat different than otherās, but nonetheless they are selectable digital filters that deal with how the DAC will process the signal; typical are a). sharp, linear phase w/pre-ringing or b). non-linear phase and no pre-ringing.
Finally, hereās a snippet From the DCS Debussy Manual: āThe choice of filter may depend on the type of music you are listening to.The DAC remembers the last filter selection for every sample rate.ā
I appreciate you sharing your favorite settings in HQPlayer, Jeff; Iāll give that one a try and reinstall HQPlayer. Iāve never really gave it a lot of time when I switched to Roon. I previously used it with J River. Iām surprised you canāt go into the settings of HQPlayer and change the filters in-between songs. I wouldnāt really want to do it in the middle of a song; maybe if Iām experimenting with filters I would, but if Iāve got a few down to what I like then Iād likely just do it between albums or listening sessions (I donāt go from Choral to Electronic/EDM in the same session ) ! What specifically prevents you from changing those settings on the fly? Anyway, thanks for the info.
Filter changes in HQPlayer require a transport stop and new load of a filter which isnāt seamless or quick. Most run HQPlayer headless and Roon has no interface to change HQPlayer filters.
I understand allot of DACs have multiple filters, Iāve owned 3 different ones with mulriple filters. My current DAC has 7 different filters.
Anyway, telling someone not to use HQPlayer because you need to change filters constantly isnāt good advice.
I donāt disagree with you Jeff. HQPlayer is very powerful and can do a lot of good things. But my advice was tailored to Pat. If you read Patās post, he said, āā¦unlike most people on this site I donāt like fiddling around with settings.ā He also said he was going to punt on the whole Roon thing because there are a lot of things to take into consideration. IMHO, if heās intimidated/dismayed/āor just doesnāt like fiddling with settingsā, then HQPlayer is gonna make him run for the hills. Itās all settings and fiddling.
The more I think about it, the better advice would be to tell him to use JRiver as a playback source and feed it with Roon (you can select JRiver as an output device in Roon). At least he would get the same results heās getting from JRiver ā if he hears a difference he likes with JRiver, this would essentially be using all the great features of Roon, with the playback of JRiver. So perhaps thereās an even better piece of advice for him. I hope youāre still following this thread @pat_bannan and try this out.
So we did the DSP Engine thing and it might have made a slight difference but the Roon and everything else is going away until I settle on a DAC. Many years ago I bought an Audiomeca DAC that I dearly loved but when I decided to make the leap from CD I went back to the guy I had bought the Audiomeca from and he suggested the Meitner which is a good DAC if you like that clean analytical sound. Hence the reason I am looking to replace it. Due to more research on my part Iāll be doing a shoot out next month between the Rossini and the NagraClassic. Thanks for your detailed feedback and I appreciate your toneā¦Blind test? Pshaw , 5 for 5 I picked JRiverā¦ Roon has so much going for it, I wish it wasāt so.
Good luck with your DAC search Pat. Iād love to hear what you choose. Please let us all know how it goes. And FWIW, the features, flexibility, and ease of use (plus Tidal integration, etc. etc.) of Roon blow anything else out of the water. When you do get your DAC, Iām confident you can get the same performance from Roon vs what youāre getting out of JRiver; itās just going to involve a few tweaks and settings changes.
And when that time comes, you should ask for a trial again and ask the group here for help in getting it setup so it performs to your liking. In my experience, everyone here, especially the staff, are the most helpful people Iāve dealt with anywhere. Iāll of course help you however I can, but as you can see Iām limited in my HQPlayer expertise! Anything else is open.
Hi, I currently have JRiver 23 installed. I was hesitant to make the Roon leap, Boy am I glad I did!! Its not even a contest!! Roon is absolutely superior in sound quality and for me, its still all about the sound!!