MQN

[jesuscheung]

....
you still stuck with headphones?

kind of need headphones. wife may not be very happy with all these ugly looking hifi equipments in the house

[Aleg]

I'm lagging behind... too many versions, one after the other :-)

I did some listening of avx 3.73 - 3.79 in comparison with one of my references 3.72 with the result in ascending order:

3.79 wrong timing, switch off after 20 seconds
3.77 tonally balanced but somewhat muddled and timing slightly off
3.74 much too warm and dark
3.72 old reference
3.73 more detail, but bit too dark
3.78 good timing, but bit too light
3.76 pretty good, mids too prominent, attack & sound stage bit blurred
3.75 good overall balance, but some realism lost compared to 3.76

When I convert the tracks to 24/96 and play them with avx 2.99, or even better 3.39 (discovered today that take 2 of that version does work on my system), I get a significantly more realistic and overall better sound that sort of adopts the best of 3.75 and 3.76, and then some.

Missed the new versions from 2.80 onwards so will test those tomorrow, or whenever I have time again, whichever comes first. :-)

Satshanti

Thank you for your extensive comparison of the individual 3.7x versions, I'm pleased with and very much agree with your ordering of the most interesting among the recent versions.

I hope you find some time soon to give your view on the new direction taken with the 3.8x generation.

Cheers

Aleg

[Aleg]

he was right though, 3.81 onwards are a bit easier to listen to

No, he was not right, he just has a different opinion because of his personal preferences.

Gordon you work in IT, and know about architecture of systems.

What would you say is the function of a software player in the complete playback chain from digital file to speakers?
What is its purpose in reproducing music?

I'm very much interested in your answer on this!

Cheers

Aleg

[jesuscheung]

quickly tested with female vocal

3.81>3.82>3.80

3.82 is lean
didn't enjoy 3.80
3.81 vocal is about the same as 3.75/3.76. the mid and texture are different.

3.76/3.75 > 3.81. more energy/lifely

3.56 is most lifely.
3.56 is superior in Alphaville. energy/life/flow are all necessary elements.
but when it comes to texture/quantity. 3.56 struggles.

3.41 has good balance between quantity and quality.

my personal preference
3.56 > 3.14 > 3.41, 3.76, 3.75

[satshanti]

whats the fate of the DDDac then?

Don't want to go off-topic too much, but a resistor burned out, so would need to replace that first, then test and see if the dac chips are still alive. Because my new HiFimeDIY Sabre DAC 2 has inbuilt headphone output, which allows me to circumvent the headphone amp, the resulting sound is actually better than the previous combo of DDDAC and Xiang Sheng. Besides that, the old combo was limited to 16/44, while now I can upsample and output to 24/96, which makes a big difference.

you still stuck with headphones?

Not stuck exactly, but we're running a B&B here and when there are guests around, I cannot use the speakers at their realistic volume. Besides that, I don't feel that my headphone set is any worse than the speakers. There are aspects that are actually quite a bit better than with speakers. The binaural conversion I developed often allows me to hear things within the sound stage that I cannot through speakers.

The thing is, I could never get used to headphone listening in the past, because the music would all stay "between the ears". Stereo recordings are just not meant to be played through headphones, despite iPod world domination :-) With a good set of cans and front-end, binaural reproduction is a phenomenal experience. I tried a lot of headphones, finally having settled on a 30-year old silver-recabled AKG K240 Sextett.

If there's interest I could share my binaural Foobar plugin chain preset, but as I said, don't wanna go offtopic too much.

[nige2000]

If there's interest I could share my binaural Foobar plugin chain preset, but as I said, don't wanna go offtopic too much.

im sure theres loads of interest in that
maybe start another thread?
not that were strict on the off topic stuff

[Aleg]

...
If there's interest I could share my binaural Foobar plugin chain preset, but as I said, don't wanna go offtopic too much.

Satshanti

Certainly.
Can these settings also be applied offline so it is permanently part of the tracks?

I will lookup the binaural foobar plugin as well

[minionas]

If there's interest I could share my binaural Foobar plugin chain preset, but as I said, don't wanna go offtopic too much.

I would be very interested in that plugin and it's presets you use, as im listening only to headphones system and binaural is really fantastic
experience on headphones:) Maybe PM, not to go offtopic here:)

[satshanti]

Okay guys, as soon as I can find some time, I'll create a new thread and link to it from here. I can then explain a bit about the background.

I've tried many different plugins and software of the years, including Bauer's... and yes, I don't use it in real-time either. That would defy the purpose of all the BIOS settings, OS tweaking and the lot... I use Foobar conversion and save as wav files. Because I also use speakers I don't want to convert my whole library, but in theory you could. What I do is convert one album before I want to listen to it and then delete those files again afterwards. It's the modern equivalent of having to take the time to take a record carefully out of its sleeve, lovingly clean it, clean the needle, put the needle in the groove and then sit back and relax. :-)

To be continued...

[cvrle59]

Without going into details and list of different versions, I do prefer 3.14 avx version so far. It would be nice to have hirez versions based on 3.14, that would give me a real good tool to compare DSD played by JR (sounds excellent) vs PCM hirez played by MQn.
Thanks