Hiface Experience

[jkeny]

Ken ,you don't have to compare with expensive high end transports and cd players costing
thousands of euro, better find who have Squeezebo Transporter or Linn Akurate DS even Linn sneaky and then compare :)

I suspect it is beyond the Squeezebox Touch from what I've heard of my heavily modified Duet - do'n t know about the Linn stuff. I believe Ken's proposal is the best one - anybody want to test the limits of this JKHiface?

[Ken Moreland]

Modest, John asked do I consider the sound high-end territory now? I think so but better to compare to equipment which is already widely considered as having high-end sound quality. Very tricky of course for someone to invite comparison and find that something costing a few hundred euro equals or betters an expensive piece of kit and read all about it later! Somebody out there has a top class front end and may be willing to give it a try.
KM

[jkeny]

Modest, John asked do I consider the sound high-end territory now? I think so but better to compare to equipment which is already widely considered as having high-end sound quality. Very tricky of course for someone to invite comparison and find that something costing a few hundred euro equals or betters an expensive piece of kit and read all about it later! Somebody out there has a top class front end and may be willing to give it a try.
KM

I know, Ken, it's a delicate & touchy area but then again look at all the money they could save by selling the high-end whatever :) or just putting it alongside their CDP as PC playback device knowing they are losing nothing sonically!

Of course a JKHIface will never have the cachet of recognized names like Wadia, etc.

Sorry if all this sounds like self-promotion & selling but I think it's a great sounding product (I would, of course :))

[Modest]

One more Dac on the way. It means worth to wait and see, at the moment it's looking serious if you look at specification
The Rega DAC is a 24-bit 32 to 192K digital to analogue converter
incorporating an enhanced version of the Saturn digital to analogue
converter circuit using a pair of Wolfson WM8742 DAC IC’s with 5 user
selectable digital filters. It has two isolated Co-axial, and two
Toslink SPDIF 24bit 192K inputs and an isolated 32/44.1/48K 16bit USB
input for use with personal a computer. The USB input incorporates a
PLL based clock for low jitter signal recovery"

http://community.whathifi.com/forums/1/ ... hread.aspx

[jkeny]

Great Modest, would love to compare it to that, are you buying one?

[Modest]

Yes very interesting indeed. It's only hot news, no such thing on the market yet . Any way I'm just digging info from internet about different DAC's with hi sample rate capability
When I get something I definitely share it and we could do a test ,but I think some one shod have something good and nice to run comparison.
Hiface is very good no doubt it's worth money if you have high resolution DAC like Benchmark ect :)

[jkeny]

No high-res isn't needed for comparison - I'm talking about 16/44!

[Ken Moreland]

For comparison to current transport/dac or cd players 16/44 is appropriate but for future dacs high bit rate/sampling frequency opens up even more capability from Hiface.
KM

[Sydneyk]

Hi Modest, You might remember that I sold my Copland 288 a couple of months ago, it was preceded by a Teac VRDS 10 and Audiosyntheses DAC setup, I would just like to comment that I am still finding it difficult to believe that a cheap T amp can produce the power and stereo images from such a small device, but there it is I come into the room look at it in amazement. What I read about is one thing but what I have experienced is another, so may I make a suggestion to you and other forum members is try one. As I said on another tread I am now thinking of trying a p.c. to valve integrated dac. Long term my goal is to have a full solid state system using flash drive / pc amp/dac, it's just a matter of time, and the costs will push hard drives off the market. I respect that audiophiles consider technical factors when owning equipment, I just think that cd as a media brought issues that will never be resolved, where as streaming digital files offer a future prospect of having the magic of analogue return, without the need to discuss the mechanics of equipment, and we will be able to listen to the music.
Good luck I know you have good equipment maybe take a peep at pc/streaming as a start into the future?

[Fran]

The only thing that's missing here is some discussion of the DAC. I would be very interested to hear how different DACs sound with the hiface. For example: Will a DAC that sounds ok-ish with the digital out of the CDP sound as good as a wadia when fed from the hiface?

I know that's a provocative question, and a major over simplification, but I suppose what I'm driving at is... now that the stream from the transport is sooo much better, do we still need as high end a DAC, or would something more err, modest (apologies) do the trick?

jkeny - what have you heard wrt to this?

Fran