Personal Audio Player

[Ciaran]

Bizarre decision to leave the Vault without WiFi in this day and age. That would be an immediate deal breaker for me.

I couldn't believe it, but there it is!

[Gerry D]

Hi All
Been absent for ages. But keep an eye on here and enjoy it a lot.
I hope everybody is safe and sound.

I’ve been using my Mac book to stream Tidal and Qobuz hi res through a Mytex Liberty DAC ((MQA inc. )
The Qobuz is a month free trial and its shading Tidal IMHO.
The Liberty is a pretty good headphone amp too.
Grado 1000’s and HiFi Man electroplanars nicely
Maybe the best streaming audio I’ve had so far.

I also run a Bluesound Vault through the DAC.
It’s good but I think the Mac and Audirvana outclasses it.

Stay safe everyone 🤞🏻

I’m not savvy enough for all the higher tech stuff the computer audio guys use with fantastic results.

[Diapason]

I'm also on a free month of Qobuz at the moment, and I agree that it's better than Tidal. Not sure I'll keep it, though...

Did you see this?

https://www.qobuz.com/ie-en/search?q=qobuz-music-gifts

[Georgi]

On that note, I do use my Bluesound in my Home Theater system, not in my main stereo one, but did try it out on few occasions, to compare Tidal MQA and Qobuz, and I do find Qobuz to be a touch better. But the main benefit was, not showing these RAP bullshit in your face like.
I was with Tidal for 3-4.years, and also I use Qobuz for the last 6 monts, but two weeks back I ended up cancel the services.
I do download the music I like, in hi-res, in my hard drive. I run a mini PC with Jriver in to my multybit DAC and get the same results, if not better.
I use Spotify to discover new music and when I'm on the road, very happy with them.

Sorry for that, was a bit long.

[james]

a) The Acoustic Research player is also available from French Amazon for 300 euros ..

https://www.amazon.fr/Acoustic-Resea ... 97&sr=8-1

b) Another option to consider is using a mobile phone for music. LG sell phones specially designed to give good sound. A friend has an LG V20 (no longer available) but there are later models.

c) List of mobile phones with good sound ..

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-be ... rtphone

[Ciaran]

THank you everyone for your insights. I drooled over the Sony DMP-Z1 and the Astell & Kern SP2000, toyed with changing tack and getting a Chord Hugo 2, but eventually decided to go for an Astell & Kern KANN, a bit of a Swiss Army knife of a player with all the formats it can take, and it can act as a USB DAC and has quite hefty output for headphones. Let's see how it works out, I might have it next week.

Next thing: I'll want to sign up to one or more classical-friendly streaming services: Idagio, Qobuz, Tidal?

And: work out how to rip CDs so they're useful on the player.

Advice please!!

[Fran]

Ciaran - make sure to give us your impressions when it lands!!

Can't help on the recommendation front, but I don't know about ripping CDs, you can get nearly everything streamed now so that saves a lot of work....

[Ciaran]

Ciaran - make sure to give us your impressions when it lands!!

Can't help on the recommendation front, but I don't know about ripping CDs, you can get nearly everything streamed now so that saves a lot of work....

I'll report back when I've had a go of it!

Interesting about streaming: any ripping I've done has been tiresome in the extreme as tagging classical music so that it's useable is a real chore! So any way to avoid it is very welcome. Downloads seem to come well-tagged too, so if the KANN works well, that might be the direction of future purchases.

[james]

And: work out how to rip CDs so they're useful on the player.

Advice please!!

I would recommend dbpoweramp. It is not free but it comes with a free 28 day trial so you can see if it's worth buying. It lets you look at the metadata from a few different database suppliers and choose the one you want (on an album by album basis). Make sure you set it for accurate (rather than fast) ripping. It produces flac files (as a default .. this can be changed).

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/

I just store by music by composer .. Each composer has his/her own folder. If I have lots of stuff by the composer I have sub-folders like Symphonies, Concertos, Quartets etc

Another option for ripping is the (free) exact audio copy but its harder to use (I think) than dbPoweramp.


http://exactaudiocopy.de/

[Derek]

I can second dB poweramp.
I’ve been using it for years, it’s very good.