Guide to PC Audio

[santhosh]

^^ It seems the Bryston BDP-1 uses a modified ESI Juli@ inside it!
Source: Bryston BDP-1 digital audio player | Stereophile.com

That white colored board in pic below is indeed part of the ESI Juil@

I say part of the ESI Juli@ card because it comes in two parts - for flexibility. Based on whether one wants to use balanced, open ended, SPDIF - coaxial etc, the top portion of the card can be fitted. Here are some pics I took during my recent Media PC build:

You can see that the top portion has been fitted the other way round since I need RCA in my current setup

 

[venkatcr]

@venkatcr - I have been using JPlay and its good. Needs J River to run but kind of "betters" J River. Honestly... even J River improves over Foobar... not by much but you can "hear" the difference in terms of better imaging and soundstage. But coming to free players Foobar + WASAPI is still the best combo.

I am using Foobar and Wasapi now. Will add Jplay and see if it makes a change. if the change is substantial, I would not mind spending E99 or whatever the price is.

I do use JRiver on my laptop, but I am not very keen on installing it on my Audio PC. One of things I love about Foobar is that you can drop multiple songs form different genres, singers, and even languages and listen to all of them for an hour or so.

I hate the way JRiver grabs all your files and tries to make a playlist. Though the UI is superb, it makes me waste too much time trying to correct non-English albums. If JPlay + Foobar is close to 90% of the JRiver, I will be more than happy.

Cheers

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Venkat, have you personally noticed a significant difference between Foobar and J River? On the same machine?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I hate the way JRiver grabs all your files and tries to make a playlist. ...

Nice to have the option of some sort of media management, but, as previously stated, my main criteria are a simple, graphics-light interface, and the ability to use the simple directory/file system as it is.

Of course, there are command-line players --- but I have not quite that graphics-light yet!

Off-topic, but this media-managment business is even worse when it comes to images ... so I stick to navigating the directory trees with simple file-management software, and using the basic image viewers available in the operating system

 

[venkatcr]

Venkat, have you personally noticed a significant difference between Foobar and J River? On the same machine?

JRiver and Foobar are running on different machines, so I cannot honestly comment. I have not been able to install JRiver on my Audio PC.

Will try again this weekend.

Cheers

 

[matbhuvi]

I tried the trial version of JPlay for Foobar today. The sound stage was good and the bass was bit bit better than Foobar wasapi. But, for some strange reason, JPlay trial version can stop playback of song anytime. You need really long hours of listening to really judge this product as the difference is not day and night. Unfortunately, the trial version bans the user from listening long hours.

Quickly deleted them and back to foobar now. For the marginal benefits, it's not worth for me.

 

[hydra]

I was reading up on JPlay when I came across this free utility called Fidelizer. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/c...prioritymulti-coreservices-optimizations-Wind

Looks interesting!

 

[spirovious]

Try using lilith too.I sounds close to analog.
http://www.hifivision.com/my-audio-...llipse-8-esi-juli-computer-sound-card-16.html
Index of /download/uLilith/stable

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Has anyone tested / tried this? it makes tall claims about jitter elimination, but MF is a pedigreed name.
Musical Fidelity V-LPS Phono Stage

 

[venkatcr]

Try using lilith too.I sounds close to analog.
http://www.hifivision.com/my-audio-...llipse-8-esi-juli-computer-sound-card-16.html
Index of /download/uLilith/stable

Lilith is too immature a program to be used, at least in terms of UI. And I do not hear any significant improvements over Foobar. I have switched between the two quite extensively and decided to uninstall Lilith.

Cheers

 

[hydra]

Has anyone tested / tried this? it makes tall claims about jitter elimination, but MF is a pedigreed name.
Musical Fidelity V-LPS Phono Stage

I think Thad E Ginathom uses one of these.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes! I have! (or at least, I have the V-LPS II)

But what to compare it to? That is tough. My Cyrus amp has a phono input (TT used to be a much bigger part of my life) but that would mean shifting the TT over to the hifi. Currently it is connected to my PC. Sometimes I get the urge to digitise, do two or three records, and then get lazy again. That is the purpose I bought it for.

I can only talk about my results digitising...

1. I was using a small mixing board which has phono pre-amp selectable on one of its stereo input channels. Better than nothing.

2. I tried applying the RIAA Eq curve in software, using Audacity, and was surprised to find that it was much, much better.

3. Hoping for better still, I sought a "real" phono pre-amp, and bought the V-LPS II.

I tested by digitising a track on the mixer, in software, and with the V-LPS II. I loaded all three tracks into Audacity and compared them by soloing each track in turn.

The software was noticeably better than the mixer. The V-LPS track and the software track were surprisingly similar. I found it hard to justify the money I'd spent for my particular purpose.

Just happens that I had, years ago, really fancied Musical Fidelity among gear that I could not afford, I was quite charmed by the idea of owning something with their name on it. I still like that idea, and I like the concept of the V series, which is to put good components in a cheap box. The V II series boxes are actually quite smart.

Musical Fidelity may not be among the highest-priced manufacturers in the world, but they are also not mere mass producers of bland kit to fill living rooms. I think they are a company that interests, with products that have something different about them. I feel that they are also trustworthy --- but that might just mean that their particular PR worked for me!

I doubt that I have said anything useful to someone who wants to connect this amp bewteen a TT and their hifi. I'm sure I'd be happy with the result if I was to do that, but I am not a big vinyl fan any more (that's why I'd digitising) so it is unlikely that I will.

Wait... are we talking about the phono stage ...or the V DAC?

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

This is a product which connects to laptop USB port and outputs jitter corrected coax and optical to feed to Dac. Taking a USB out to Dac leaves you with jitter problem unresolved. So this product v-link supposedly adds to sonic quality. It is like a sound card but attached to USB port.

 

[jls001]

This is a product which connects to laptop USB port and outputs jitter corrected coax and optical to feed to Dac. Taking a USB out to Dac leaves you with jitter problem unresolved. So this product v-link supposedly adds to sonic quality. It is like a sound card but attached to USB port.

Unless one goes very high up in the audio hierarchy, USB implementation of DAC is still in its infancy. USB performance is limited by jitter, or limitation in sampling rate upto 96 kHz (which in itself is not a bad thing but seen in the light of the availability of 192 kHz sampled software, one imposes an avoidable limitation to what one can play).

USB is useful if one absolutely can't use a PC with a good sound card, and must make do with a laptop.

IMO, one is better off using digital coax input into a DAC. Or AES/EBU if source and DAC have it. I have never tried optical so can't comment.

 

[hydra]

I think Thad E Ginathom uses one of these.

This is a product which connects to laptop USB port and outputs jitter corrected coax and optical to feed to Dac. Taking a USB out to Dac leaves you with jitter problem unresolved. So this product v-link supposedly adds to sonic quality. It is like a sound card but attached to USB port.

My bad! MF needs to correct the description text attached to the webpage. The description text reads V-LPS Phono Stage, though the link you posted is actually to the V-Link. I didn't click through, and went by the description text

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

OK. Looks like M-F got the description wrong on their page. If/when you get a turntable, you can refer back to the V-LPS info!

V-DAC

V-LINK

It's a USB to S/PDIF converter. Claims are made that this reduces jitter. I'm yet to be convinced that jitter is much of a problem with modern equipment anyway, but if you believe it, then fair enough. but... how, then, can they guarantee that there is no jitter going to happen in the S/PDIF link to the DAC?

Not convinced by the prodoct or the arguments they are using to sell it. Sorry, M-F!

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Given that the best sound cards are meant for PCs, laptops may not be of much quality anyway. So I guess the v-link being a laptop targeted product may not truly be audiophile grade so perhaps pointless worrying about jitter.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

For all that I just said, it is a fact that some people report better sound by converting USB ---> S/PDIFF. This goes against my basic rule that, whether it's data or music or even plumbing, the fewer connections, joins, conversions, etc, the better, but if it is people's experience, then it is. There is one miniature converter, looks like a round pendrive, but I forget the name, that gets good reports.

Is there a reason why USB from a laptop should give results that are not as good as USB from a full-size machine? There are good interfaces available specifically for laptops, eg those that use PCMCIA cards, or the smaller, neater, more recent equivalent. Echo make a couple of these, but only analogue i/o, so you have to be happy with the Echo DAC.

There wasn't much wrong with the Genelec demo from a laptop the other day. The Genelecs won't take USB, so a Motu interface, with digital and analogue out, was being used, with digital to the speakers. Clifford showed me a PCMCIA device he also uses --- but it comes around 40,000

 

[hydra]

... There is one miniature converter, looks like a round pendrive, but I forget the name, that gets good reports.

...

You probably mean the M2Tech Hiface.

 

[jls001]

There is one miniature converter, looks like a round pendrive, but I forget the name, that gets good reports.

Centrance? CEntrance -> DACport