Going Digital!

slippers-on

Music...let it move you!
Decided to go digi!

Spending time with a friend who has a Lampazator level 7 DAC I was taken back by how "natural" and "vinyl"sounding his system sounded. Of course every thing in his audio chain well over what I could afford....that DAC is every bit of $10k.

So I've asked around the audio world about DACs that have a more natural vinyl sound under $1000 that had a lot to offer. Those in the know told me after talking to people whom they know and/or have personal experience with such a DAC, told me the iFi micro iDSD DAC and its ifi micro iusb power supply. Sent my dealer a letter letting him know I also need a Wire World Silver Starlet 7 USB cable. And running it through a tubed amp/preamp....hoping I get a little bit of that magic of that $10k tubed Lampizator 7 DAC. Should be here in about 2 days. Got a lot of CD's to rip..thats the tuff part. The XRAY will then go to the wifes office.
 
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good luck with the new direction!

I have two DACs and will possibly get a third later this month.

I have a Yulong D18 and a Musical Fidelity M1DAC. I much prefer the warmer, richer tones of the Yulong unit.
 
There are some Lampizator kit clones on eBay for a few hundred. I was intrigued but never bit. They come complete sans chassis, but everything is there. Oh yeah, welcome to the dark side :D

http://www.ebay.com/itm/24bit-192KH..._Audio_Amplifiers_Preamps&hash=item3a9d40447a

http://www.ebay.com/itm/24bit-192KH..._Audio_Amplifiers_Preamps&hash=item3cee0a12aa

Yeah I saw those. I decided to try the iDSD and the iUSB PSU...those in the know dropped me a word saying these products where all that! Boy they never lied! I'd go so far as saying these products hit well above their asking price. I mean to listen to them, you'd think you where listing to some nice size boxes. Nope just to small boxes....but the have a lot of switches on them and they can do 256 DSD. So ima give it a shot...only 3 day with them.
 
good luck with the new direction!

I have two DACs and will possibly get a third later this month.

I have a Yulong D18 and a Musical Fidelity M1DAC. I much prefer the warmer, richer tones of the Yulong unit.

As mentioned before....the iFi products are very nice!

Just now letting her run in...first impressions are very positive.
 
Maybe check out this thread - especially towards the end.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=476545

IMO for 'natural' and 'vinyl sounding' you are definately on the right track with a decent DSD dac and since you've already decided which one, I'd suggest the most important part now is HQplayer software and streaming everything up-sampled to DSD128. I now do that will all my digital and it it right up there with my vinyl front-end, maybe even betters it at times.

It IS that good, but HQplayer is the key once you get past the dac.
 
I love the price point on the iDSD, but I don't understand the digital output. Why would one use that? Is it to convert DSD to PCM and plug into ANOTHER dac to convert the PCM to analog. Seem a little silly...
 
good luck with the new direction!

I have two DACs and will possibly get a third later this month.

I have a Yulong D18 and a Musical Fidelity M1DAC. I much prefer the warmer, richer tones of the Yulong unit.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a more analog sounding DAC than the yulong D18. Be sure to use the XLR out it sound much better and richer than the single ended out (I use xlr to rca cables). I love my D18 and have no desire to upgrade. . The d18 is very picky about the digital signal it is fed, it will only take a very low jitter source. It does not take the optical out from my flat screen. My old usb/spdif converter was cheap and the sinal would drop out a couple times a minute. Now I use the Yulong u18 usb/spdif converter and it works great. Not only did the drop outs stop after upgrading to the u18, but the sound improved noticeably in soundstage and imaging.
 
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I love the price point on the iDSD, but I don't understand the digital output. Why would one use that? Is it to convert DSD to PCM and plug into ANOTHER dac to convert the PCM to analog. Seem a little silly...

Some might want to use it as a usb>spdif converter with a higher-end PCM dac - especially those from a few years ago when USB wasn't so common. My Concero HD has this option and it's very effective plugged into an AudioNote dac - a really nice sounding combination. Not quite DSD128 nice, but nice. :)
 
Very cool, Slippers . I'm looking forward to reading more - as you know, I've been meaning to pick up the iDSD - I guess I'll also have to consider the iUSB. Oh, and probably for another threat the iPhono while I'm at it Perhaps I'll have an "iFi Stack"

Enjoy the music and keep us all posted!
 
Once you go digital, there is no turning back. The wealth of playback options, the gear, the software...it's virtually unlimited. I've been at this for nearly a decade, being an early adopter of FLAC and PC-based audio playback. Things are far better now than they ever have been in the past, and storage is dirt cheap. I remember back a decade ago, when most hard drives were ~100GB and a couple of hundred bucks a pop, you could shell out some cash on storage if you had a large enough CD collection. Things were rather archaic back in those days, as there were no tablets or smartphones to control playback. One had to get up and do the point and click thing. Now that things have come full circle, there really is no point in having a CD player, in my opinion of course. Even budget priced DAC's routinely outperform budget CD player offerings, plus the ability to sit back and have your music at your fingertips. Times are good my friends! :yes:
 
Maybe check out this thread - especially towards the end.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=476545

IMO for 'natural' and 'vinyl sounding' you are definately on the right track with a decent DSD dac and since you've already decided which one, I'd suggest the most important part now is HQplayer software and streaming everything up-sampled to DSD128. I now do that will all my digital and it it right up there with my vinyl front-end, maybe even betters it at times.

It IS that good, but HQplayer is the key once you get past the dac.

Bill...I've taken several peeks at your thread and love what I see and read! I thought long and hard about that CONCERO DAC and the next thing I know...you bought one! The guys at Resonessence Labs or the guys that left , ( conflicting stories) did wonders with that Saber Chip! Of course you know what chip the Lampizator DACs use. I would love to hear the Lampizator level 7 in a shoot out with the Invicta. The Level 5 won out over the PSAudio Direct Stream in a shootout...but the Direct Stream ain't no joke...it that the Lampizator is a beast if you ask me. I was a little disappointed that the folks at iDSD abandoned the Saber chip for the Burr Brown chip in the iDSD....until I heard it. One of the things that sold me was the IDSD versatility in being a bit of a hybrid in what it could do. It's portable with having a battery pack built in, or the option to bi pass the battery pack with the iUSB and just let it sit in a 2 channel system. This is my first rodeo with the digital stuff, so I'm learning on the fly. So far, after 6 hours the digital edge has worn off...and the DACs coming into its own...showing me what it really is. I can say this...The DAC is warm natured. And seeing I'm running tubes, I've had to abandon my copper cables for silver RCAs from the iDSD to the tubed preamp. I was wondering why they make cables for the ifi silver...now I know. This company seems to try and get a more analog sound from their gear...and it's working with the warmth. Things are natural sounding...and this is with only a trial version of JRiver and stock usb cables it came with. Once I get better cables, The main software for Jriver or HQ Player and a Mac mini and get started with hi Rez files, this is going to be on great digital rig. After hearing all those Lampizator DACs as well as the PS Audio DACs I'm well aware of how close to a good vinyl rig they can come....even at this price point. And the IUSB PSU makes a huge difference....cleans up the noise coming out the windows machine..and I suspect whatever one uses, a PC machine or Apple/ Mac... The iUSB will clean it up and give that solid dark background.
 
Very cool, Slippers . I'm looking forward to reading more - as you know, I've been meaning to pick up the iDSD - I guess I'll also have to consider the iUSB. Oh, and probably for another threat the iPhono while I'm at it Perhaps I'll have an "iFi Stack"

Enjoy the music and keep us all posted!

As far as the iDSD DAC and the iUSB PSU...you'd be glad you did!
 
Once you go digital, there is no turning back. The wealth of playback options, the gear, the software...it's virtually unlimited. I've been at this for nearly a decade, being an early adopter of FLAC and PC-based audio playback. Things are far better now than they ever have been in the past, and storage is dirt cheap. I remember back a decade ago, when most hard drives were ~100GB and a couple of hundred bucks a pop, you could shell out some cash on storage if you had a large enough CD collection. Things were rather archaic back in those days, as there were no tablets or smartphones to control playback. One had to get up and do the point and click thing. Now that things have come full circle, there really is no point in having a CD player, in my opinion of course. Even budget priced DAC's routinely outperform budget CD player offerings, plus the ability to sit back and have your music at your fingertips. Times are good my friends! :yes:

From my limited experience with digi files...I can see one who has a bunch of CDs and not wanting to put in the work to load them. Theres a few company's that will do it for you, but it's costly. So in that case one could still do it the old fashioned way, but man this is very convenient and the sound is terrific. I mean staging 3D sound it's all there. Even trying to sound vinyl like. But I'm not fooling my self...as much as the $10k Lampizator 2 box tubed DAC with the Saber chip sounded like vinyl...it's still not vinyl! That's not knocking the Lampizator or any DAC period, but there is a special tone...naturalness that's just right in vinyl...at least to my ears. The Lampizator comes close but still....it's missing something. Sorta like when a buddy got his new Pass amps/preamp and asked me to come over and take a listen. I was amazed at how much it sounded like tubes....and as time went on, it was still missing something. As I continue to learn digi...seems like I might have a digi/ vinyl system...the CDP is going in the family room or the wife's office.
 
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If you have JRiver - You can rip them and convert to FLAC pretty easily and it uses an internalized version of EAC (Exact Audio Copy) - it is load disc - rip and it automatically converts them.

I love this program.

This. Ripping CD's is easier than it has ever been. I remember the days of ripping, encoding, and tagging, all by hand. Not to mention that the CPU's of the day could take awhile to encode an album. Back in the day of single core CPU's, when your computer was encoding, you weren't touching it, as it could introduce issues within the final product. Ripping a large library of CD's is time consuming, but there isn't nearly as much fuss now as there was then. These days, you simply insert the disc, wait a few minutes, and you're done. Easy peasy.
 
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If you have JRiver - You can rip them and convert to FLAC pretty easily and it uses an internalized version of EAC (Exact Audio Copy) - it is load disc - rip and it automatically converts them.

I love this program.

EAC is truly awesome, as is JRiver.

With EAC, tho, I had to download some FLAC converter, if my memory serves me.

Seems digital/dac world is one wide-open terrain. I really wanna go bigger and better, but it can be confusing.
 
I plan on doing just that tomorrow. Thanks! So how much different is the trial version versus the purchased version? And I've heard that HQ player was fussy and difficult...how true?
 
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Brotha B,

I'm very happy to see that you've actually evolved, and will keep this simple.........., I'm proud of you.
 
I plan on doing just that tomorrow. Thanks! So how much different is the trial version versus the purchased version? And I've heard that HQ player was fussy and difficult...how true?

And, I'd be curious as to know you guys thoughts on Amarra HiFi - Audirvana Plus - BitPrefect - Fidelia Advance - HQ Player and JRiver myself.

Let the games and options begin, shall we?.

Great topic Brotha B, as I'm eager to learn as much as possible before committing to such items myself by next week, so I'm gonna sit back and allow you to do all the legwork........., as always - stay Black.

Salaam,
:thmbsp:_o scar
 
I would love to hear the Lampizator level 7 in a shoot out with the Invicta. The Level 5 won out over the PSAudio Direct Stream in a shootout...but the Direct Stream ain't no joke...it that the Lampizator is a beast if you ask me.

A DSD128 capable Lampi would probably be the ultimate dac for me; I am totally taken with what HQplayer can do with any format converted to DSD and I have no need for a PCM dac anymore - I'd love to hear one someday.

I think you made a great choice for a dac and I've seriously consider an iFi - I can't think of a better choice <1k...except for maybe the Canadian made Concero HD :). I know many will tell you bs on things like linear power supplies (iUSB) and cable like the Wireworld but I found with a USB powered dac that they can make a difference - I know you'll trust your ears.

Lots of software options and I love Jriver for ripping (to wav) and file management but give the free trial of HQplayer a try - it really is a different animal that is a step above for me and that's ALL about what it can do feeding a DSD capable dac. I bet an iDSD & HQplayer at around $400 (assuming you have a capable computer) is the best deal in digital right now bar none.

Enjoy! HQplayer and a DSD128 dac is the best I've heard my digital music.
 
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