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Trying to get the most out of my digital audio, component suggestions please?

T

TallyTech

Member
I have recently ripped all my CDs to FLAC and have created a pretty extensive library of lossless tracks. That being said, I'm looking for a way to get the best sound out of them, right now I'm running an aux from my computer to a y adapter into my receiver.

Ideally I'd like to use a Sonos Connect to handle streaming wirelessly to the receiver(WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE INPUT FROM SONOS USERS), BUT does the sound degrade when it is sent wirelessly through the Sonos mesh network? Should I be looking at a USB adapter to run a toslink cable or something?

I'm open to any suggestions that will preserve the quality of my tracks. If you could substantiate a suggestion I would appreciate it because I'm new to all this and am trying to build a foundation of knowledge so I can make better decisions in the future.

Heres what I have to integrate at this point:
-B&W 802 Series 80
-Yamaha DSP-A1
-Mac Mini 500GB Internal Drive (Mid 2011)
-3TB External Drive
 
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I would get an external USB sound card and run the toslink/optical digital audio output to one of the toslink inputs on the Yamaha. Let the Yamaha do the DA conversion. When you get outside the computer cabinet with a good clean digital signal it makes all the difference. Some are going to tell you to use a nice DAC which is fine but it generally costs more. I use the Ext. sound card because I also convert vinyl and I use it for it's ADC. I have a Soundblaster X-Fi that works fine for me. Plus I would use J.Rivers Media Jukebox for playback the DSP modes and the EQ make for a great dynamicly enhanced sound even on FLAC files. Good Luck! Franksta
 
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IMO I would focus on the DAC first. That is the point at which the analog signal is created; everything is digital prior to that. It sounds like in your current config you are simply using the DAC inside your Mac Mini. I'm sure you can do much better.

If you have the option to run digital to your receiver, via a USB soundcard if your Mac lacks digital output, that would result in you using the DAC inside your receiver instead. Whether that is better than the DAC in your Mac, I can't say, but I'd guess that it probably is.

One thing to consider though is that many home theater receivers do all of their processing in the digital domain. They will take any signal on any analog input and reconvert it back into digital, and ultimately back into analog using the receiver's own DAC. In that situation there would be no benefit to using anything but a digital connection into the receiver, as you'd always be using the receiver's DAC no matter what, and feeding analog into the receiver would result in 3 conversions instead of 1 (D/A, A/D, D/A instead of just D/A). I'm not sure if your specific model handles analog inputs that way but many do and it's something to think about.
 
Franksta said:
I would get an external USB sound card and run the toslink/optical digital audio output to one of the toslink inputs on the Yamaha. Let the Yamaha do the DA conversion. When you get outside the computer cabinet with a good clean digital signal it makes all the difference. Some are going to tell you to use a nice DAC which is fine but it generally costs more. I use the Ext. sound card because I also convert vinyl and I use it for it's ADC. I have a Soundblaster X-Fi that works fine for me. Good Luck! Franksta
Click to expand...

That might be a good way to go, do you work off mac or PC with your external? Thanks for the suggestion.
 
Franksta said:
I would get an external USB sound card and run the toslink/optical digital audio output to one of the toslink inputs on the Yamaha. Let the Yamaha do the DA conversion. When you get outside the computer cabinet with a good clean digital signal it makes all the difference. Some are going to tell you to use a nice DAC which is fine but it generally costs more. I use the Ext. sound card because I also convert vinyl and I use it for it's ADC. I have a Soundblaster X-Fi that works fine for me. Plus I would use J.Rivers Media Jukebox for playback the DSP modes and the EQ make for a great dynamicly enhanced sound even on FLAC files. Good Luck! Franksta
Click to expand...

I was considering changing the FLAC files to Apple Lossless so I could put them (or some of them) on my iPhone and iPod, are there drawbacks to that from a quality or playback standpoint vs the J.Rivers Media Jukebox you use?
 
FWIW, I tried using a sound card, then a cheapie Behringer DAC then a Schiit modi then a Yamaha AVR with HDMI input and Burr Brown DACs. The best was the modi and the worst the sound card. The Yamaha was surprisingly pleasant as well. The Behringer was a little noisy due to it picking up EMI noise.

My system is very revealing as it has ML electrostats and good components.
 
Chris Brown said:
IMO I would focus on the DAC first. That is the point at which the analog signal is created; everything is digital prior to that. It sounds like in your current config you are simply using the DAC inside your Mac Mini. I'm sure you can do much better.

If you have the option to run digital to your receiver, via a USB soundcard if your Mac lacks digital output, that would result in you using the DAC inside your receiver instead. Whether that is better than the DAC in your Mac, I can't say, but I'd guess that it probably is.

One thing to consider though is that many home theater receivers do all of their processing in the digital domain. They will take any signal on any analog input and reconvert it back into digital, and ultimately back into analog using the receiver's own DAC. In that situation there would be no benefit to using anything but a digital connection into the receiver, as you'd always be using the receiver's DAC no matter what, and feeding analog into the receiver would result in 3 conversions instead of 1 (D/A, A/D, D/A instead of just D/A). I'm not sure if your specific model handles analog inputs that way but many do and it's something to think about.
Click to expand...

I'd agree with you that whatever is in the Mac Mini is probably just average. The Mac Mini has a HDMI out, but that is it (none of my components have HDMI in except for my computer monitor). I'll have to look through the manual or online and figure out what the DSP-A1 does internally. You're right, if it is just going to make it's own conversion on the input it won't be worthwhile to process it before it goes into the receiver.

Thanks for the feedback!
 
goldleaf said:
FWIW, I tried using a sound card, then a cheapie Behringer DAC then a Schiit modi then a Yamaha AVR with HDMI input and Burr Brown DACs. The best was the modi and the worst the sound card. The Yamaha was surprisingly pleasant as well. The Behringer was a little noisy due to it picking up EMI noise.

My system is very revealing as it has ML electrostats and good components.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the suggestion, the Schiit modi looks like a pretty affordable option. If it turns out that the receiver I'm using doesn't do its own digital to analog conversion internally I'll look into it.
 
TallyTech said:
I was considering changing the FLAC files to Apple Lossless so I could put them (or some of them) on my iPhone and iPod, are there drawbacks to that from a quality or playback standpoint vs the J.Rivers Media Jukebox you use?
Click to expand...

Lossless is lossless so there should be no loss from converting formats, only a difference in file size.

I am surprised that the apple devices don't play FLAC though. It's only been a standard for what, over a decade? I guess that's their way of pushing their own formats :rolleyes:
 
Do the headphone Jacks on the mac mini have optical out on it to like some of the other macs? If so the easiest would be to run optical to your receiver. If not get a $25 USB to spidf converter on ebay and do that. I agree with the above running a standalone DAC into an AVR is useless.
 
Chris Brown said:
Lossless is lossless so there should be no loss from converting formats, only a difference in file size.

I am surprised that the apple devices don't play FLAC though. It's only been a standard for what, over a decade? I guess that's their way of pushing their own formats :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I figured that was the case, just thought I'd ask

Based on my research Apple doesn't work with FLAC for several reasons:
-It is open source and hard to regulate, I assume because of the large files size and the fact that there are usually many files it would be easy to integrate a worm/virus into files causing issues for the OS.
-Apple wants to own a platform, this is Apple's hallmark at this point from their developer SDKs and beyond.
 
kahlfin1k said:
Do the headphone Jacks on the mac mini have optical out on it to like some of the other macs? If so the easiest would be to run optical to your receiver. If not get a $25 USB to spidf converter on ebay and do that. I agree with the above running a standalone DAC into an AVR is useless.
Click to expand...

Thats a good point, I know my MacBook Pro has that feature, but I am not sure about the Mini. It's built into my desk right now so I can't turn it around and look, but I'll take a look at the spec sheet online. If it does have optical out through the aux I assume that takes a special type of cable? Do you know what the formal name is so I can look it up?
 
I work from a PC. I don't know if an Ipad & Iphone have access to the Google Music App. If they do that is the best method I know of to access your own music anywhere on a portable device. The thing is the music must be in MP3 form. I have my entire CD library in MP3 form at 320kbs. Most people won't be able to tell much difference in them and FLAC or WAV files. I uploaded thousands of songs to Google Music and I can access them on my Android phone and my Nexus 7 Android tablet anywhere. I am not sure if those files stay in the same high quality MP3 form (320kbs) when they are uploaded to the cloud or if they are converted to a lower bit rate. Google Music says you can upload up to 20,000 songs! I have not reached my limit yet. I have it set so that when I rip a CD it automatically uploads to Google Music.

So in answer to your question I don't know of a way to access FLAC or WAV lossless files remotely to a portable device wirelessly. I guess you could just carry a portable HD with you. It will hook to a laptop and most new car units at least. Or subscribe to MOG and their mobile app @ $10.00 a month and have access remotely to almost any music you can imagine at 320kbs MP3's. Good Luck! Franksta
 
Franksta said:
I work from a PC. I don't know if an Ipad & Iphone have access to the Google Music App. If they do that is the best method I know of to access your own music anywhere on a portable device. The thing is the music must be in MP3 form. I have my entire CD library in MP3 form at 320kbs. Most people won't be able to tell much difference in them and FLAC or WAV files. I uploaded thousands of songs to Google Music and I can access them on my Android phone and my Nexus 7 Android tablet anywhere. I am not sure if those files stay in the same high quality MP3 form (320kbs) when they are uploaded to the cloud or if they are converted to a lower bit rate. Google Music says you can upload up to 20,000 songs! I have not reached my limit yet. I have it set so that when I rip a CD it automatically uploads to Google Music.

So in answer to your question I don't know of a way to access FLAC or WAV lossless files remotely to a portable device wirelessly. I guess you could just carry a portable HD with you. It will hook to a laptop and most new car units at least. Or subscribe to MOG and their mobile app @ $10.00 a month and have access remotely to almost any music you can imagine at 320kbs MP3's. Good Luck! Franksta
Click to expand...

For my purposes I'd be listening to music on the device hard drive, not over a 3G/4G network. When I referred to wireless streaming with Sonos it would be over a LAN (Local Area Network) which can handle significantly more data than a cellular signal. I'm sure that Google reduces the file quality in the cloud. My educational background is in Management Information Systems and that kind of data transfer (320 files that generally range from 5-15MB) at that price point isn't feasible in my opinion, to try and compare apples to apples as a paid subscriber to Pandora One I only get 192kbps. Free subscribers get 64k ACC+.
 
Here's my setup on the main system, in general terms and it works well:

Source (PC, Server, HD) <Ethernet> Streamer <AES/EBU cable> DAC <balanced XLR> Pre-amp/Processor <balanced XLR> Amp <speaker cable> Speakers

The biggest issue I've run into with Sonos (use it to stream Apple Lossless and some 16bit/44.1khz FLAC) is wireless interference. Once I got that sorted out it seems stable enough.

Since they are two completely different systems, and since I haven't tried the Sonos on the main system, I can't respond to the question regarding loss of quality. I do know, however, that many prefer the hard wired solution to wireless solution in many cases.

I believe Sonos cannot stream the higher resolution FLAC files (24bit/192khz) and I listen to a lot of that downstairs so that would be the only downside of the Sonos for the main system, IMHO.
 
McFool said:
Here's my setup on the main system, in general terms and it works well:

Source (PC, Server, HD) <Ethernet> Streamer <AES/EBU cable> DAC <balanced XLR> Pre-amp/Processor <balanced XLR> Amp <speaker cable> Speakers

The biggest issue I've run into with Sonos (use it to stream Apple Lossless and some 16bit/44.1khz FLAC) is wireless interference. Once I got that sorted out it seems stable enough.

Since they are two completely different systems, and since I haven't tried the Sonos on the main system, I can't respond to the question regarding loss of quality. I do know, however, that many prefer the hard wired solution to wireless solution in many cases.

I believe Sonos cannot stream the higher resolution FLAC files (24bit/192khz) and I listen to a lot of that downstairs so that would be the only downside of the Sonos for the main system, IMHO.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good set up, a server might be the way to go in the future for me, but I'm trying to keep it simpl(er) for now.

What kind of interference are you getting? From appliances or wiring?

By hardwired do you mean a direct ethernet connection from the computer to the Connect?

I looked up what you said about the 24bit and you're right, it looks like Sonos does support that and isn't planning on doing so in the future. Apple Lossless might be the way to go then since I have a good amount of 24bit.

Thank you for your input McFool!
 
TallyTech said:
Thats a good point, I know my MacBook Pro has that feature, but I am not sure about the Mini. It's built into my desk right now so I can't turn it around and look, but I'll take a look at the spec sheet online. If it does have optical out through the aux I assume that takes a special type of cable? Do you know what the formal name is so I can look it up?
Click to expand...

I have a Mac mini also, and it does in fact output a digital signal through the headphone jack. A better option...and you won't find this on the Mac spec sheet...is to use the USB out and send it to a DAC. The Mac Mini TOSlink output is limited to 24/96 while the USB can do 24/192.
 
prisoners said:
I have a Mac mini also, and it does in fact output a digital signal through the headphone jack. A better option...and you won't find this on the Mac spec sheet...is to use the USB out and send it to a DAC. The Mac Mini TOSlink output is limited to 24/96 while the USB can do 24/192.
Click to expand...

USB has no direct relation to digital output, it's simply another way to connect a device to a computer.

Also, using an external DAC would mean feeding an analog signal into the receiver. As has been said before, many digital home theater receivers convert everything on the analog inputs to digital to make their internal signal processing simpler, which means you will always be using the internal DAC no matter what. Assuming that is the case here, there would be little point to doing anything other than feeding the receiver a digital signal. The optical output being "limited" to 24/96 likely isn't an issue because I doubt the Yamaha supports anything higher anyway, not to mention that 99.9% of music is 16/44.1, where 24/96 is already considerably overkill.
 
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