MQN

[cvrle59]

Oh well that certainly got some opinions out!

Horses for courses of course. I have had v expensive separates myself over the years (not NAIM) and currently have Bow Technologies ZZ-Eight and ZZ-One.

For digital play back, one has to rethink one's long held views. Keeping the signal digital all the way to the last stage connected to the speakers makes sense. Avoiding USB/SPDIF conversion/cables/receiver chips all doing their worst to destroy your signal purity makes sense. Doing away with the need for a pre-amp makes sense (the DDA does that lossless digitally by varying the output voltage).Keeping PCM without the need for a DAC (DDA) makes sense. Connecting the parts of the chain together hardwired makes sense. Of course the implementation of all of it is critical and some will be good and others not so good. I have no affiliation with NAD but all those who bought the M Series are glowing about the SQ and build quality (for eye candy look at the M Series).

Lastly, re streaming, Gordon himself says that there is less going on versus a PC transport render loop and Direct Memory Access (DMA) can be achieved without the need for CPU involvement. That's inherently a 'better way' of doing it.

I doubt anyone will agree with me and that's fine. However, I will certainly not change my view that both Windows and a PC is definitely a bad solution to digital audio and I have spent too much of my life trying to make it acceptable.

I can't say I spent enough time to experiment with Windows, but something is still untouched on this forum, and I would like to hear any opinion. I am learning that "Naim people" are mostly Mac users, particularly Mac Mini is very popular. I am connected to Win through my profession, and PC's are always around me, so I've never played with Mac's. Has anybody here compared these two worlds at all?

[nige2000]

Oh well that certainly got some opinions out!

Horses for courses of course. I have had v expensive separates myself over the years (not NAIM) and currently have Bow Technologies ZZ-Eight and ZZ-One.

For digital play back, one has to rethink one's long held views. Keeping the signal digital all the way to the last stage connected to the speakers makes sense. Avoiding USB/SPDIF conversion/cables/receiver chips all doing their worst to destroy your signal purity makes sense. Doing away with the need for a pre-amp makes sense (the DDA does that lossless digitally by varying the output voltage).Keeping PCM without the need for a DAC (DDA) makes sense. Connecting the parts of the chain together hardwired makes sense. Of course the implementation of all of it is critical and some will be good and others not so good. I have no affiliation with NAD but all those who bought the M Series are glowing about the SQ and build quality (for eye candy look at the M Series).

Lastly, re streaming, Gordon himself says that there is less going on versus a PC transport render loop and Direct Memory Access (DMA) can be achieved without the need for CPU involvement. That's inherently a 'better way' of doing it.

I doubt anyone will agree with me and that's fine. However, I will certainly not change my view that both Windows and a PC is definitely a bad solution to digital audio and I have spent too much of my life trying to make it acceptable.

I can't say I spent enough time to experiment with Windows, but something is still untouched on this forum, and I would like to hear any opinion. I am learning that "Naim people" are mostly Mac users, particularly Mac Mini is very popular. I am connected to Win through my profession, and PC's are always around me, so I've never played with Mac's. Has anybody here compared these two worlds at all?

I've tested audivarna and ammara vs jplay on my laptop bout 10 months ago jplay was much much better

I retested a few weeks ago by hacking the Msi b85m g43 to but mac os 10.9 mavericks on it with audivarna and it didn't even sound as good as vlc player on win server r2
mac isn't at the races at all im afraid
shame it's a lovely os

[jkeny]

I've tested audivarna and ammara vs jplay on my laptop bout 10 months ago jplay was much much better

I retested a few weeks ago by hacking the Msi b85m g43 to but mac os 10.9 mavericks on it with audivarna and it didn't even sound as good as vlc player on win server r2
mac isn't at the races at all im afraid
shame it's a lovely os

I had a similar experience a while ago on a Macbook Air (Haswell CPU so should/maybe be an advantage?)
Tried Amarra, Audirvana & Fidelia - preferred Amarra at that time but it still wasn't as good as Jplay single instance (non streaming)!
But I think the Naim users here are using Windows with MQN so they could better answer the SQ differences they have found??

[cvrle59]

I am extremely happy user of MQn and only missing part is 24-container version to let me experiment with 24/192 versions of recordings. I would like to know if it's worth to buy more expensive and space hungry music, compared to 16/44. It is probably, but only for real good recordings, well mastered. Otherwise, 16/44 well done will kill it. Up-sampling of bad recordings will only lure people who think more bits and samples, better the music.

[Aleg]

I am extremely happy user of MQn and only missing part is 24-container version to let me experiment with 24/192 versions of recordings. I would like to know if it's worth to buy more expensive and space hungry music, compared to 16/44. It is probably, but only for real good recordings, well mastered. Otherwise, 16/44 well done will kill it. Up-sampling of bad recordings will only lure people who think more bits and samples, better the music.

24-bit is in my opinion more important than the sample frequency.
I won't buy higher than 96kHz as I don't think that makes much sense.

Having the same mastering (and that is difficult to establish with the usual lack of provenance) 24-bit is definitely better sounding than 16-bit.
----------------------------
Edit:

I think this is only true for newly recorded materials. Digitising old analog recordings in high sample rate doesn't make much sense as there isn't even enough dynamic range to fill 16-bits.

----------------------------

You could also go on the look out for a DDC that supports 32-bit containers. Luckily my Sonicweld Diverter does support it.

Wrt Apple questions, I'm a Windows user and not a Mac user.
But what I've read is that only the latetest Mac-models from 2012 onwards have with the optical output a quality level that comes near the ordinary Windows players, but not near the best Windows players.

Cheers

Aleg

[jkeny]

BTW, just to round off our implementation discussion - here's someone who has done a lot of work in this area & produced a SD card player which tries to address all we discussed http://www.ecdesigns.nl/?p=87

[Fran]

I too would love a 24 bit compatible version of mqn, but other than that, I love what I'm hearing. Perhaps a Linux based system would sound as good, or better though - who knows. One thing though to keep in mind is the availability of drivers for the various usb dacs out there.


Fran

[nige2000]

drivers is probably whats going to stick us to linux/mac or windows, other than that were building a streamer type device from scratch
So i don't think that's going to happen

[cvrle59]

BTW, just to round off our implementation discussion - here's someone who has done a lot of work in this area & produced a SD card player which tries to address all we discussed http://www.ecdesigns.nl/?p=87

Very interesting concept, but I would like to hear it first to judge about. It seems to be available only in Netherlands, for now.

[jrling]

I too would love a 24 bit compatible version of mqn, but other than that, I love what I'm hearing. Perhaps a Linux based system would sound as good, or better though - who knows. One thing though to keep in mind is the availability of drivers for the various usb dacs out there.


Fran

Actually, moving to Linux improves the driver position; if your DAC is UAC Class 2 compatible, and most are, Linux's ALSA built-in USB output driver in the Linux kernel does not require a proprietary driver at all. I can verify that when I used MPD connected to my WaveIO USB-S/PDIF converter.

If only Microsoft had built in UAC2 compatibility into Windows. It's not difficult - they must have chosen deliberately not to do so for some perverse reason. Apple did it with OS/X years ago, but of course OS/X is basically Linux under the hood and that's one reason it produces good SQ.