Getting best sound from 16/44: Laptop vs CD

[drewshifi]

Did a careful comparo the other day:

My Oppo transport is dying- skipping on most CDs.  I would like to use a quiet Win 7 laptop I have as a music server.

Test:
Ripped Patricia Barber Modern Cool CD to the laptop as wav, using Windows Media Player.  Burned new CD from the hard drive copy.

Played back from hard disk, via USB to my EE dac
At the same time, played the CD from the the dying Oppo player via SPDIF to the EE.

Same tracks, same level (output from the DAC was roughly equal from both inputs).

What I noticed:
- Transients were definitely blunted via the puter/USB
- High frequencies were not as extended via puter/USB

I'm not willing to lose the information that I hear straight from the CD.

What I have not done:
Optimized puter for music- no JRiver, no changes to operating system, running Windows 7 and Windows Media Player. 
No USB to SPDIF converter.

Do any of you guys have experience with this?  Am leaning towards the SPDIF converter, as I'm not sure my DAC has the latest USB receiving chips.

[richidoo]

The player you use on the PC makes a big difference. iTunes, foobar, Windows Media Player, JRiver, etc.

The sound output mode makes a big difference. Direct Sound, WASAPI, ASIO, MME, Kernel Streaming, etc. Each funnels audio through the computer in a different way, each sounds different.

The amount of CPU activity related to other PC chores makes a difference. The purpose of JPlay is to minimize other activities during audio playback. Basically the computer is asleep while playing music. But this won't affect FR or perception of treble too much.

The DSP applied to the audio in the player or OS makes a big difference. The DSP applied from player software should be high bit depth and good math. If not using an audiophile quality player, avoid using the built in volume control and other DSP effects and volume normalization.

A sense of loss of treble clarity and extension is often felt with poor quality digital upsampling, aka sample rate conversion or SRC. The different types of dithering used to smooth out the upsampling calculations varies in quality and processing power required. Make sure your player is not set for upsampling until you get the redbook files  (CDs) sounding good at 40.1k first.

Your USB connection is fast enough for redbook resolution files, which have plenty of resolution to play full treble to 20k, though maybe not as refined as high res. Although the routing of digital signal from USB input to DAC is different from the SPDIF input to DAC. The difference should only be in the amount and type of jitter added to the signal, which should affect refinement much more than FR.

I recommend that you download foobar or JRiver to eliminate the player variable. Both of these sound good. JRiver has 64 bit DSP, including the volume control, plus more DSP options and easier song selection, so it is my preference, but it costs $50 after 45 day free trial while foobar is always free.

Learn about the audio protocols in the PC to see what works best for your OS and your DAC. I think Win7 has WASAPI which is pretty good. ASIO4ALL is another option. Kernel Streaming is supposedly pretty good too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_legacy_audio_components
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/USB_Audio.htm
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd371455(v=vs.85).aspx
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Audio_Output_Modes

[jimbones]

I use a j Kenny cuinas and it is fantastic

[AcidJazz]

I use the open source VLC media player, cost =free
Found it superior to WMP.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

[jimbones]

Oh forgot. JRiver MC19 and JPLay. I have good experience when used together. However, MC20 is not compatible with JPlay so I won't upgrade past version 19.

[sleepyguy24]

The USB cable I use from my laptop is a premium one from Stereomatic and that is connected to the Schiit Wyrd before the signal goes to my DAC. That helped improving the sound from my old Dell Netbook. I have to find the post from Rich where he stated how to set the USB port on your Windows PC for music and the rate. I did that on an older laptop and it made a slight improvement.

[jimbones]

I also use the Ultrafi cable and filter that Lizard King recommended. It is quite nice.

[drewshifi]

Thanks for all the advice.

Looks like JRiver is a good starting place.
I might also try an SPDIF converter cause I'm not sure if Eastern Electric uses the latest USB receiver chips- its a year and half old, and is one of my most favorite sounding dacs, so that is definitely staying.

[sleepyguy24]

Here is the SPDIF converter I have used in the past with no problems on laptops with Windows 7.


FANMUSIC-FM-6011-COAX-USB-to-SPDIF-COAX-Converter-NEW

[Carlman]

Get Windows Media Player out of the mix completely.
What did it rip to? WMA files?
The Windows Media Player itself imparts a veil on whatever format it plays in my experience.  It's fine for background music, playing wma files and mp3's.. but not for critical listening.

You will need to rip using EAC or other good rip software that can create a .flac file or .wav if you want to compare directly to CD.  You will have to let EAC do some tests on your CD drive to determine the correct offset and such before you rip.  There is a little setup to be done but it's not bad.

For a player, Foobar is easy and my first choice.

EAC+Foobar = musical success in audio PC's.

[richidoo]

Drew's WMP ripped to wav, but WMP doesn't check to verify a perfect rip, and doesn't claim to make perfect rips.

Another good ripper is dbpoweramp. It maintains a database of ripped CDs to which it can compare your ripped file's checksum against other peoples' successfully ripped tracks to verify perfect rip even though it rips fast and loose. If it fails it rerips slow and tedious to reduce errors. t also has a useful mass filetype conversion program, and a tag editor built into windows explorer. Right click on any music file anywhere and edit the tag. But it's not free.

In doing a comparison to a CD (which is wav files) I would rip to wav format, so that you eliminate the flac to wav conversion during playback, which is audible on some gear.

Ripping the file from the CD to hard drive removes the error correction that is burned into most CDs. This is said by some to sound better, and by others to be impossible to affect sound quality. Robert Harley has written some good articles about this, but beware any techno-objectivist opinions. He also says the error correction ensures that every cheap CD player ever made emits a perfect data stream, with word jitter being the only possible problem.

Indeed the best jitter removers do make a sows ear into a silk purse.

[drewshifi]

Hi Guys,

Installed JRiver. 

First listen, all my highs were there.  Thought sound was slightly tipped up, not sure, though bass seemed unchanged.  Vocals seemed OK too.  Need to do a few more comparos.  Certainly, backdrop was dead silent.

First Challenge:
I want to keep my files as wav (don't care too much about wasting disc space).  JRiver wants to rip them (very slowly) as .ape lossless.  I was able to import a library on a USB drive into JRiver, but that seems really cludgey and I'd like to be able to add directly to the JRiver library.

Any way to get JRiver to rip files as wav?

[BobM]

next get one of these, or something similar.

http://hifimediy.com/DACs/ready-made-dacs

[richidoo]

wtg drew!
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Encoding_Settings

Nice little DACs there, Bob! Can't beat the price! Wonder how's the output stage? Opamp of course.

[machinehead]

Andy,
I use Audirvana but Im on a Mac. Ive heard good things about JRiver too. Def makes a big difference. What is the USB implementation for the DAC?
M