Gino wrote:Tested JRiver MC19 (wasapi) and Foobar2000 (default audio). Foobar2000 was more holographic, images are better defined, Plucks and percussion has more attack/bite, bass taught. There is more top sparkle and air. JRiver was less holographic, a bit dry on the metals, overall sound is fuller, bass has more low end punch.
Cosmetics and ease of use go to JRiver. The Gizmo remote for Android works the way I want it. JRiver settings are easy to understand, the interface is polished. Things like searching for album art is too easy. I can understand why people like this app.
That was a quick audition. I'll see how the two compare in the next few days.
Gino wrote:Tested JRiver MC19 (wasapi) and Foobar2000 (default audio). Foobar2000 was more holographic, images are better defined, Plucks and percussion has more attack/bite, bass taught. There is more top sparkle and air. JRiver was less holographic, a bit dry on the metals, overall sound is fuller, bass has more low end punch.
Cosmetics and ease of use go to JRiver. The Gizmo remote for Android works the way I want it. JRiver settings are easy to understand, the interface is polished. Things like searching for album art is too easy. I can understand why people like this app.
That was a quick audition. I'll see how the two compare in the next few days.
JackD201 wrote:I use Bitperfect only for convenience when listening to HR albums. Sonically it gets beat up by Pure Music. The latter being more refined, nuanced and dynamic resulting in being more expressive. The only downside of Pure Music is that it is not as responsive to control inputs even with memory play disabled. Both display zero xo distortion if you click between tracks abruptly, something that very rarely happens playing plain old iTunes. As stated before I am reliant on iTunes because to date I have about 10,000 songs from 128kbps in my early days to more recent 24/192. The thought of reordering all the metadata is something that is not what I want or will do not to mention recreating the playlists that have been compiled over the last decade.
I run both from a MAC via USB to two asynch DACs, the TechDAS D7 and the Light Harmonic Da Vinci. The former is a small unit that is very analog sounding from the smoothed camp revealing it's S-D architecture. The latter is a ladder type NOS DAC with analog filters that has more of analog's subtler textures and ambience but also top flight digital Macro dynamics. Choosing between the two can boil down to a matter of taste or system synergy. It is the latter in my opinion that is more flexible in terms of emotional delivery because of its dynamic envelope and greater portrayal of scale differences even if it is less forgiving of poor recordings. The latter ironically is closer to the TechDAS AirForce One table with a Graham Arm, Atlas Cart and Lamm PS. That said the D7 is a third of the price of the Da Vinci and one fourth of the Twin Engine Da Vinci Dual which has dedicated converters for PCM upto 32/384 and DSD. The D7 does "only" up to 24/192 and does DSD via DoP. The Da Vinci is also more sensitive to choice of USB cables. It will glitch with poor cables that don't strictly adhere to the 90ohm standard and fail bandwith tests while the D7 is neigh impreganable. Out of the box the D7 did great with very little improvement within the first 24 hours or so. The Da Vinci took almost 500 hours of break-in. I had no idea that the silk dielectric caps used in them would take longer than teflons. I always thought teflons took the longest time. Guess not.
hi-fidelity-4-all wrote:Hi Jack,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Light Harmonic has just released the 'DaVinci killer'.
The sub-$300 GEEKdac!
A very successful kickstarter project that closed over the weekend.
Maybe you will be "trading up"?
Regards,
Mark
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