Best recommendation for vintage receiver?

Well I think I am finally getting somewhere, I uninstalled and reinstalled all of my soundcard drivers and changed a couple other windows settings and now I am getting a bit better quality. I am now able to use the build in Creative Labs equalizer to tune up the audio before it gets to the Schiit. Starting to get sound quality close to what I had before when I had the PC hooked up direct to my old Kenwood. Probably some further fine tuning and we're there.
 
That's awesome! Glad to see it's working for you.
I forgot to ask, what media player software are you using? How are you encoding your CD's and other digital audio stuff?
l store all my CD's and hi-rez files either in FLAC (older) or AIFF (newer, since disk space is cheap). No MP3's.
JRiver is configured to max volume and no output processing, so bit perfect to the DAC. Sounds wonderful.
 
Thanks, I switch between Foobar, VLC, and Itunes (yeah yeah I know). Predominantly my whole collection is stored as FLAC, ALAC, APE/ISO files (which consist of my CD and Super Audio CD rips I perform (well, my friend rips my SACD's with his PS3). I only have minimal mp3's. I still have to maintain control of the volume between the master Windows volume and each application's volume. Windows is outputting at 35% and each application is outputting at about 60%. I've heard of JRiver but have never taken the time to really check it out. I only use ALAC for my iPod Classics. I have a healthy mix of 16/44.1 and 24/48 ALAC files I've created. I've literally spent years on my digital collection...and a LOT of money. In recent years I've worked on "mastering" my own tracks to how I prefer which is why it was so important for me to get that "right" sound out of the DAC. I'm not quite there yet but hope to spend a bit more time in fine tuning this DAC so I can get back to what I enjoy in my spare time.
 
Sounds like you've got a great collection of digital music. Congrats!
JRiver will let you get rid of iTunes if that is of interest to you. I use it to manage music on my 160 GB iPod classic. I'm not an iTunes fan, so it was worth the price of admission for that alone.
I'm not sure how it stacks up with foobar and vlc. You can try it for free and see if it is worth buying.
 
No kidding? I was unaware that you could use JRiver with the iPod? I have been resisting updating itunes since about 2012 because of all the horror stories I've heard about the lack of "classic" support. I will definitely look into that thank you! I know someday I will be forced to get a new mobile player, the sony walkman has caught my eye but between now and then something newer might be available. :)
 
Yes, Media Center supports most legacy iPod devices natively. This includes all of the iPod Classics and earlier hard drive based iPods. It will not work with any of the newer iOS based devices (iPad, iPhone, etc) though. My 5th Gen classic was acting up, pausing in the middle of songs, so I did a rip and repave on the OS and then used JRiver after that.
This is one piece of software I don't mind supporting - I think the JRiver team has really done a good job with this program.
There is a companion app JRemote, that turns your iOS devices into a remote control, and also allows you to stream your library to them directly, meaning that you never have to touch iTunes again if you don't want to.
Tom
 
I have to say I have just about finally reigned in the sound quality with the Schiit. Believe it or not for a while I had to wear ear plugs because they highs are so much so that I thought my ears were going to bleed and my head was going to explode. Weird that I have to have the volume control of not just the PC but all my applications dropped to 20-25% for it all to sound "right." In any case I really finally starting to achieve some quality sound between the Pioneer beast and the Schiit. I was getting some solid lower frequencies coming through that I hadn't had before. The highs go without saying but all in all I am getting extremely satisfactory results (and I have the left the Schiit on for two weeks straight). It wasn't all really plug and play as I half expected but I am a believer in that good things come with a little effort.
 
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