Dreadhead

opens checkbook... feels shovel hit head....

Really, the ADC's don't have build in compressors like nearly all of them do? When were these CD's made? It appears to be in the 90's, there is also a particularly annoying harshness that some of the older ADCs had that comes through a lot of the time. I haven't heard the Esoterics and I can entirely believe their players sound like crap. I'm just talking in general because what you describe falls squarely within what most people call the "digital sound".

What? I assumed you meant that the instruments compressed the music

That graphic is a crock of shit because that signal would have to be down in the -90db range to be that small. I don't own and DCC stuff but my impression is that lots of "well mastered" stuff has compression issues. All I'm saying is that it's very likely don't like the data that's on the CD not that it's more accurate to the original source. A whole lot of people hear what you hear and don't like it but it's not the CD players fault it's the mastering. If your player smooths this and you like it fine but it's not more accurate to the recorded media (I can't speak to the original source material). Compressors essentially are soft clipping systems that let you crank the volume without clipping hard but what they do is introduce some weird shit that generally annoys people. I wish the music business would just not use them but if given my pick I'd rather hear their effects and learn to ignore it than to not know they are there in the first place.

CBC Radio 2 online feed. OK but not great now they've gone more eclectic and are not pure classical anymore. I forgot my Creative Zen Vision M at home

No argument there

I thought he had patented wood and tools separately just to cover all the bases

Well it could be something else too. You can check and see if you have some well recorded and mastered stuff without any real compression (i.e. the disc is really quiet) going on then you can see if it's still there. It's part of the joys of the loudness wars. Maybe that DAC chip has a problem in the digital filter. I doubt it. It's my experience that most of the time it's in the recording and when it's made apparent by being correctly captured by the headphones or DAC or whatever people call it unrealistic (or etched or whatever) (which it very well might be).

I'm currently working on A Stranger in A Strange Land. The longer "original" version. I haven't been making much headway but I am enjoying it.

As Dusty pointed out that is the compression that's in the data on the disc. Annoying as hell sometimes? Yes. The CD players fault? No.

I am too. I use an Edirol FA-66 to get audio to my DEQ.

One issue to be aware of with the transit and many other of these devices is that if you are in a mode that puts out 96 then you can't directly send it 44.1 (using ASIO or WSAPI) and have to use an up sampler or let windows do it with DirectX (which apparently is a pretty good resampler). If you're doing Foobar I would recommend the SoX resampler that I have posted about before.

In vista I'm a big fan of WSAPI. It seems to work great and give good pass through with everything not just stuff with ASIO drivers.

I believe it's a Burr Brown 1792 but the digital filtering is off chip and done by a custom Weiss chip as I understand it. I told the guy from Vintage King all I cared about was absolute accuracy and that I was looking at the much more expensive reference DACs and he recommended that I get the DAC2 since it sounded just as good as the DAC1/Prism/Lavry Gold for a lot less money (though admittedly still quite a bit of money). I think the Bel Canto DAC3 I have is over smoothing the music and the Benchmark DAC1 I had before was overharsh and he said it should thread the needle for me. He also told me they are getting 8 in next week and 6 are already sold and that since it came out other "reference" DACs haven't really been selling as well. Also if you look over at Mytek they have a bunch of files that you can ABX for different converters and to be honest in a lot of them I can't differentiate one from another and other than in the other cases I though that both files sounded amazing just different. Though the high frequency distortion in the DAC1 is still there for me. The files are here: http://www.mytekdigital.com/compare/index.htm and I use the ABX built in Foobar2000.

I'm getting a Weiss DAC2 (most likely) I've got one heading my way for trial. I'm going to buy a Kramer VS-4X (4 way switch for stereo XLRs) so that I can do a proper A/B. Fun Fun.

Justin Wilson for City Council Go Justin go

Than 7-9.5k yes

OK. We have a deal. A pixied-out DAC is comming my way! screw maxing.. In actuality I'm going to have a Weiss DAC2 sent my way after the guy at Vintage King said it was as good as the DAC1/Prism/Lavry Gold for a lot less money.

Jeebus that a lot of rum.... I'll see what I can do. Special stuff I want: DSD input through HDMI Pixie Dust

Sorry if I came off upset. It has been a long day at work. I'm not upset at all and I understood what you were saying. That's why I'm up to nearly more posts here than HF and I've been a member here less than a third as long. In the end what AlanY said about delta-sigma DACs being DSD is basically true but there are some details different that lead to PCM like noise performance vs DSD noise performance. With a delta sigma DAC the difference is in the output filter and the digital/filtering setup before hand.

none... how much rum would do the trick?

Long story short you can get it in PCM for sure. DSD I wish you the best of luck.

True but you need something to get it out of the HDMI which is part of the problem. Also I would put money that the DAC then just converts the DSD to PCM for conversion anyway. You're not going to get those noise numbers for a DSD DAC. Just get a HDFury2 or the box above and you can just use SPIDIF into anything.

San Francisco CA and Alexandria VA (where I currently live). Both are on the insanely expensive side of things. I think my house was well over $450/sqft.

Oppo does output DSD across the HDMI (1.3) but not too many receivers take the data. I'm not sure what anyone would do with the DSD stream anyway though since very few DAC can take it in.