Tír Na HiFi

I thought I'd pull together my experiences with the Hiface USB digital transport (as modified by John Kenny of this parish) for those of us who were unable to attend Fran's meet last night. I have the Hiface a couple of weeks now and it has opened up a lot of new music for me, largely free at the moment but it won't stay that way. I read a lot of posts on this and other forums before taking the plunge ordering the Hiface from John and the battery and charger from batteryspace.com. I am currently running it from a small Sony laptop and into a Benchmark DAC1. The photo below shows the Hiface docked in the USB port of the Sony and the Benchmark beneath. Beside the Teac transport you can see the little battery charger.Installation was all straightforward and easy.



So far I've been listening to various formats of music ,comparing ripped CD's in wav format, the original CD's, 24bit/96khz and 24 bit/192khz files. With redbook CD's ripped in .wav format the sound through the Hiface is excellent and is an improvement on the regular transport.In the case of Hi-res files I don't think I could differentiate between 96khz and 192khz and I think it depends on what format it was in previously and how it was transferred. I've been using a site called 24bit96khz.org where uploads have been done from vinyl and I've compared a couple to the original CD's and I found one upload was lifeless and the other smooth and an improvement on the CD with lots of detail and subtlety. Material originally on SACD was excellent as was material from Blu-ray at 192khz (Neil Young Archive) and Studio Masters from Linn and Chesky. This site has around 900 titles for download, legal or not I don't know.
Once this mine is exhausted there is Wolfgang's Vault for relatively cheap downloads and HDTracks.com at higher cost.

Overall the Hiface has been a great addition to my set-up and I'd be interested in hearing other's experiences with it especially sources of hi-resmusic.

That's great, Ken, thanks for posting your impressions & delighted that you are enjoying the JKHiface. Just as a point of reference can you say what your CD playback system is - CDP, DAC, amp, speakers, etc?

John

Hi John, yes delighted so far and waiting for the attenuator in the next couple of weeks. My equipment in addition to the Hiface is a Teac VRDS 10 Cd player which I use as a transport into the Benchmark DAC1 via an LAT International cable then from the dac to a Unison Research S2K single ended KT88 amp using Acrotec 8N interconnects (still have the Nanotec's too Ivor) and then to JMLab Focal 927Be speakers via Nanotec cable.You can see it in the photo below.The cameraman is at an angle not the stand.

The bottom box is a Marantz SA8400 SACD player and anyone interested can make me an offer which will help pay for the external hard drive now needed and on the way from Amazon.

Nice picture shots Ken :)
Mad to hear it

Nice system, Ken & great to see the JKHiface able to acquit itself well in this company, considering it is cheaper than most of your cables :)

Start saving Modest , you'll be buying one. As soon as you're free we'll spend the day listening.

John, you can blame Ivor and Modest for the price of the cables. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy the Acrotec secondhand from Audiogon and they are really good. The Hiface is well able to hold up but because it opens up so much more new music the old collection is currently looking tired. I've been downloading every morning before the US wakes up and download speed is down by 90%.

Ken ,you can blame the Acrotec company for discontinued rare cable as 8N not me :)

Ken Moreland wrote:John, you can blame Ivor and Modest for the price of the cables. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy the Acrotec secondhand from Audiogon and they are really good. The Hiface is well able to hold up but because it opens up so much more new music the old collection is currently looking tired. I've been downloading every morning before the US wakes up and download speed is down by 90%.

Have you listened to 16/44.1KHz audio with the Hiface? It should also open this up to reveal some more inner detail! Maybe when the attenuators arrive you will be re-awakened to your existing CDs (ripped to disk, of course, using EAC)