NWR: Stereo Disorder Question

originally posted by BJ:
A 2nd hand Benchmark DAC could be cool
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pretty sure my next click will be for their LA4. You never know exactly how something is going to sound in your setup until you unpack the box and power it up, but every indication via linear interpolation is that it should be a great fit and that i won't do better in that range
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
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Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
 
originally posted by BJ:
Ian,

I can't tell if you've already bought the amp - but in that price range, I would definitely recommend ...
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Thanks for chiming in PJ ... er, BJ. Room dimensions are about 12' x 24'. My music library is very eclectic: Bach Partitias, Radio Head, Tellis Choral, Amadou & Miram, Chopin Nocturnes, Aretha Franklin, Chet Baker, Doc Watson, Bill Withers, Petula Clark ...

I've only purchased the speakers so far. I've listened to as many amps as I can get at first-hand (though not with the Elacs), and my favorite so far has been an Arcam PA410, which is priced a bit high for me.

My move towards the A2 is because I've heard that the upper register on the Elacs plays cool but gets more detailed & dynamic with near 100 watts per and, if I have a thing at this point, it would be detail. Plus they give me 'headroom' for future upgrades. I've also looked closely at the Akitika G102 Z4, which is less power but better quality for a little more $; but they are out of assembled kits until late May and my soldering skills are non-existent (they specialize in DIY kits).

My impression is that Emotiva is generally a better value proposition than NAD, partially because they are a direct-sales company. I've looked carefully at integrated amps, including the NAD C328 (as well as the comparably-priced Emotiva BasX TA1), but decided to go with a better power amp, instead, using a discrete DAC as preamp, because my medium-term plan is to stream-source exclusively. (Vinyl is a distinct possibility, eventually - sorry Keith).

I don't know anything about Brio or Rega and will have a look; ditto the Mojo and Benchmark DACs, tho $500 is more than I see myself paying for this component. I'm also wary of buying used equipment with zero prior knowledge of the hifi secondary market ecosystem - reputations, quality, provenance ... The Modius is my leading DAC candidate now, because of its good value proposition. It does seem a shame to have a DAC with balanced output ports together with an amp that doesn't have balanced input ports. Hm.

I've also had a close look at the Raspberry Pi streamer, but I'm seeing that the Aurora is not much more $ for no DIY, separate containment box, or multi-step software loading. Time is a scarce resource.

Thanks again for your thoughts, really appreciated. Please say more, if anything else comes to mind.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
Click to expand...

Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
Click to expand...
GNR is indeed represented among the 25,000 FLACs in my library! But it doesn't matter if you're Slash or Itzhak Perlman, digital is still higher fidelity than rubbing a needle on a piece of plastic, and it goes without saying that nobody ever would have proffered the phonograph as an improvement if digital had been invented first.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
Click to expand...

Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
Click to expand...

GNR is indeed represented among the 25,000 FLACs in my library! But it doesn't matter if you're Slash or Itzhak Perlman, digital is still higher fidelity than rubbing a needle on a piece of plastic, and it goes without saying that nobody ever would have proffered the phonograph as an improvement if digital had been invented first.
Click to expand...

I am not anti-digital, but I am very pro vinyl. It is a different experience. Digital can be like drinking a 100 point Napa cab...it has no flaws but also has no soul and is uninteresting to me in certain instances.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
Click to expand...

Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
Click to expand...
GNR is indeed represented among the 25,000 FLACs in my library! But it doesn't matter if you're Slash or Itzhak Perlman, digital is still higher fidelity than rubbing a needle on a piece of plastic, and it goes without saying that nobody ever would have proffered the phonograph as an improvement if digital had been invented first.
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That's totally ridiculous.
 
I'm old enough where there wasn't anything except vinyl! I was into higher fidelity vinyl. I started purchasing UK pressings of albums available on US labels. That started for me in 1972. Once half-speed masters and Japanese pressings became available, I was all over those. Berkeley was the record shopping mecca in the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s. I lived in Berkeley/Kensington from 1974-88.

My first trip overseas was to the UK in 1979. I came back with many UK pressed albums that I knew I'd never find here.

I sold all my vinyl years ago. I'm strictly CDs and FLACs now. I'm not anti-vinyl at all.

Sure, the fidelity quality of CDs mastered from analog material was real shitty when CDs first became available. Of course, that's changed.

I own somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 commercial recordings (a box set = one commercial recording) plus 3-4 times that many CDRs (live shows). I haven't burned a CDR in years now that pretty much everything is available on line. There wouldn't be room in my house for the equivalent amount of music on vinyl. I'm trying to imagine how much physical space the 16 CD Thelonious Monk Complete Riverside Recordings box would take on vinyl.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
Click to expand...

Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
Click to expand...

GNR is indeed represented among the 25,000 FLACs in my library! But it doesn't matter if you're Slash or Itzhak Perlman, digital is still higher fidelity than rubbing a needle on a piece of plastic, and it goes without saying that nobody ever would have proffered the phonograph as an improvement if digital had been invented first.
Click to expand...

I am not anti-digital, but I am very pro vinyl. It is a different experience. Digital can be like drinking a 100 point Napa cab...it has no flaws but also has no soul and is uninteresting to me in certain instances.
Click to expand...
This is just a psychological trick being played on your mind by the nostalgia associated with vinyl, perhaps the beauty of your gear, and the persistence of bad metaphors that misunderstand how digital audio works like Neil Young talking about a warm mist vs. a million little ice cubes. The soul is in the music. The analogy to the 100 point Napa cab is the wrong one. It's not two different wines, it's the same wine in two vessels. The only thing the media does is reproduce the music more or less faithfully. Digital does it more faithfully (or is at least capable of doing so - not all audio engineers are created equal), so the soul you think you're hearing on vinyl is just distortion. Lots of the LPs selling like hotcakes these days on account of the current fad actually come from digital masters.
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by mark e:
I wonder if you have used Roon.
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Yep. A sensible choice.
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I am largely an idiot in this stuff (my old stereo system fell victim to a cat that enjoyed pulling on wires and some blown fuses) and I have managed to hook up a Roon Nucleus to Qobuz to a speaker (Naim Mu-So) and I am quite pleased.

I get a zillion albums (plus all my CDs uploaded to a hard drive) with loads of data about the artists and music. I have a smaller Naim in another room (connected by wifi) that is controlled by the Roon app and the whole thing is reasonably stable (though Roon on the iphone can be a bit flaky at times).
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

This is just a psychological trick being played on your mind by the nostalgia associated with vinyl, perhaps the beauty of your gear, and the persistence of bad metaphors that misunderstand how digital audio works like Neil Young talking about a warm mist vs. a million little ice cubes. The soul is in the music. The analogy to the 100 point Napa cab is the wrong one. It's not two different wines, it's the same wine in two vessels. The only thing the media does is reproduce the music more or less faithfully. Digital does it more faithfully (or is at least capable of doing so - not all audio engineers are created equal), so the soul you think you're hearing on vinyl is just distortion. Lots of the LPs selling like hotcakes these days on account of the current fad actually come from digital masters.
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Then why do musicians spend so much money on vintage music instruments and recording gear? I know musicians who spend millions and I mean millions on vintage recording gear because they like the sound better.

And distortion can be beautiful!

Your analogy of not producing the sound faithfully reminds me of a winemaker who insisted he had to use commercial yeast because his job was to translate Terrior and if a wine had any flaws it would obliterate the Terrior and commercial yeasts ensured no flaws.

Again I am not anti-digital.

Also many rare records are not available in high quality digital format.
 
One virtue of vinyl is that most traditional of virtues: it was there first. There are artists who never produced a digital master and there are artists who remixed the work when making the digital master. To hear these performers and versions, one has no choice for source (even if intermediated by a flac file).
 
Ian, another option I think very highly of for you would be a 2nd hand Naim Unitiqute 2. I have one in my office. It is a very high quality all in one (amp, DAC, streamer), built like a tank in Salisbury, England, and sounds great. With a little patience you should be able to find one for less than $1,000, which makes it an awesome deal. https://www.tonepublications.com/review/naim-unitiqute-2-all-in-one-player/ You would have to add a phono stage when you add a TT but that's not a huge deal and lets you stretch the whole thing out.

Looking at your room dimensions again - depending on preferred listening volumes, 30 wpc might be a little light - Live at Leeds at 11 might not be the thing - but if you're mostly about "normal" listening will be fine.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

This is just a psychological trick being played on your mind by the nostalgia associated with vinyl, perhaps the beauty of your gear, and the persistence of bad metaphors that misunderstand how digital audio works like Neil Young talking about a warm mist vs. a million little ice cubes. The soul is in the music. The analogy to the 100 point Napa cab is the wrong one. It's not two different wines, it's the same wine in two vessels. The only thing the media does is reproduce the music more or less faithfully. Digital does it more faithfully (or is at least capable of doing so - not all audio engineers are created equal), so the soul you think you're hearing on vinyl is just distortion. Lots of the LPs selling like hotcakes these days on account of the current fad actually come from digital masters.
Click to expand...

Then why do musicians spend so much money on vintage music instruments and recording gear? I know musicians who spend millions and I mean millions on vintage recording gear because they like the sound better.

And distortion can be beautiful!

Your analogy of not producing the sound faithfully reminds me of a winemaker who insisted he had to use commercial yeast because his job was to translate Terrior and if a wine had any flaws it would obliterate the Terrior and commercial yeasts ensured no flaws.

Again I am not anti-digital.

Also many rare records are not available in high quality digital format.
Click to expand...
I dunno, why do musicians get tattoos and wear sunglasses at night? just kidding. Instruments and recording gear are a different story obviously. Making a sound and recording a sound are very different exercises. And there's a whole lot of tech that goes into the recording before the point at which it migrates into an analogue or digital storage medium. It's very likely the vintage equipment is better but that has nothing to do with whether it ends up on an analogue or digital tape.

The availability of old rarities on vinyl but not digital is the only justification I can appreciate for having vinyl gear. But, if you're investing in good vinyl gear I don't understand why you wouldn't also invest in doing a good 24 bit digital transfer of those old rarities. Remember... that needle friction is going to degrade the sound... ever-so-slightly... every single time you play it.

Again, the yeast thing doesn't work for the same reason as the Napa cab. We're talking about the same wine. The better analogy is whether you want to drink it out of a clean glass or a dirty one.
 
To me it's just all in the listening. Analog and digital reproductions are simply that - reproductions. Generally speaking, to me vinyl sounds more real and natural and "better" than digital. They are both reproductions, so who really cares about the nature of the technology used? Digital does have many benefits, without a doubt, especially at the more budget end of the spectrum (a carefully selected $2k digital based system will sound much better than a $2k analogue one in my experience). I don't think unilateral statements here about what is good or bad make any sense at all. And if old technologies that have been replaced by new technologies were a priori obsolete, why do we still have so many new internal combustion cars, etc. (strange for me to use that analogy given my background but whatever). If it all just comes down to measured accuracy of reproduction, we should all just go back to reading Stereo Review of the 1980s and buy relatively cheap systems with "perfect reproduction"...whether it be digital or analogue. But that's not what it's about.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:


(and thank god we haven't lost another one to the pathetic vinyl fad).
Click to expand...

Ouch! Well I guess if your music tastes are still the same, I remember you being a Guns N' Roses fan, it does not matter : )
Click to expand...

He must be. Last time he and I discussed Mozart in great depth, he asked whether he had trashed his hotel room during one of the opera premieres in Prague.
 
I am 100% on board with the analogy of ICE cars to vinyl records. Okay if you're a hobbyist keeping a '57 Chevy or something as a museum piece, but otherwise the sooner we can scrap those obsolete jalopies, the better.
 
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