The two subjects of CD Ripping and Computer Audio seem to be the most contentious around in the world of audio now. Theory one, is that it’s possible to get good sound from a computer feeding a DAC. The debate tends to be as much around whether a Mac is better than a PC as a source as which DAC is ideal. The general feeling seems to be that a Mac Book with a DAC costing around a £1k is cable of delivering better sound that a serious or very serious CD Player. I agree a Mac and a DAC is cable of delivering a very good sound – but not a great one.
Now it seems that Mac owners downloading and installing pirate copies of iWork 09 and possibly Photoshop 4 are also installing some malware.
Yesterday, I decided to move the PS555 to a newly created spare level around 30cm lower. Unbelievable: the upper bass thickness that I had been trying to sort for a couple of months went away, the system opened up and became a real joy to listen to. But the change wasn’t just on playing from HDX it was on vinyl, FM and CD.
The experiment was to move the PC outside my listening room and then to use a 5m Chord HDMI and 5m USB cables to control and monitor the PC.
The worry was running a good monitor at 1920 by 1200 over a 5m HDMI cable. Would the image quality be reduced? The image was absolutely fine and so much so that I temporarily tried a 10 m cable which worked just as well.
Elbow’s award winning album The Seldom Seen Kid is available on vinyl. It’s heavy, split onto two records and is 45rpm.
Having found and downloaded FestivaLink presents Hot Tuna at MerleFest 4/28/06 and Rasing Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss both in 24/96 from www.hdtracks.com I started to look around for more Hot Tuna live material. I found www.hottunatunes.com.
The point of the blog of course is the performance. While I would never argue that the Ikea Lack delivered 100% of the dynamics of the specialist rack we were using, it wasn’t too shabby at all. The good part is that, what it didn’t do well – mainly dynamic contrasts – itdidn’t fail badly and horribly.
I enjoyed the fact that it was a quick survey with only a small number of questions. What I found so stupid was the need for both the serial number and the IMEI number of the phone to be included. Surely HTC don’t have so many complaints – maybe they do – that they can’t track a customer by name.
A couple of days ago I received the first reply from HTC Europe’s customer service department to a complaint I made six months ago. To be exact I emailed them on the 14th September 2008 and received a reply on the 6th March 2009.
So after keeping me waiting for six months for the reply, the answer is, we would be delighted to bring your phone (pretty well looked after even if I say it myself) back up to scratch – sorryabou the pun – but to expect a bill.
Performance from the Wadia 170iTransport using the Behringer was absolutely ideal for dinner parties and background music. There was absolutely no chance of anyone being dstracted by any emotion from the music. The best results were with the Behringer upsampling to 24Bit 88.2k before doing it’s D to A conversion.