A while back I attempted to A/B/C compare vintage CD player playback, CD lossless rips, and contemporary lossless streaming. I found that several albums had been remastered or stealth remastered, and sometimes sounded very different. My old CD internal DACs were dated and weak. Furthermore, disc rips are subject to individual defects and/or read errors. As such, there was little point in continuing and the streamed editions were often technically superior and more detailed.
Still, I maintain archival lossless rips of my old CDs.
There are many CDs and vintage player technologies out there, so comparisons could be interesting or yield inconsistent results. It’s not worth my time at present.
If you have a capable DAC or intending on adding an upgraded DAC, it would be wise to find a CD transport with a decent mechanism. Audio lab has a solid option under $1k, then there are others that are on the $2k+ side.
It would put me to sleep or induce a migraine I reckon
Just regular red book, nothing fancy. Since I wasn’t sure about what I was getting in to I got the simple Audiolab transport that @Roark referenced. Relatively cheap, quiet in operation, good remote.
I was shocked by how good it sounds. I bought it as a what the heck kind of purchase out of curiosity and now I’m back into spinning discs. It bested all digital players I tried, even HQ player, which sounded less dynamic and veiled, no matter what options I used.
At some point I’ll upgrade it but I’ll let it spin for a while.
The whole digital audio situation reminds me of the quote
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is.
In theory all of the math is known to perfectly recreate the audio waveform from the digital samples. In practice there are many gotcha’s and potholes and it turns out “it just ain’t so”.
Combine that with the amazingly intricate and complicated mechanics of experiencing sound and you wind up with “Hey, this is supposed to sound the same but it doesn’t - what is going on?”.
In the end you just have to go with how the sound makes you feel.
Makes sense. From what I’m reading, SACD does seem to be a significant step up in terms of sound quality. Main gripe seems to be availability outside of jazz and classical, which happen to be the two genres I would buy most!
I think it’s excellent and, at least for my preferences, would be a great pairing with the BHSE/CRBN.
It easily makes it into my top 10 favorite DACs, coming in just below the dCS Bartok. Close enough, in fact, that depending on the setup, one’s music preferences, and how it was going to be driven, it might beat the Bartok.
If you’re not familiar with true NOS DACs and their behavior and native traits, be aware that there are artifacts in their replay when operated in NOS mode (generally early treble roll-off and aliasing), but there are also benefits. Regardless, you can run the Holo Audio May in OS mode which eliminates those “issues”. You can get an even better result still, by using something like HQPlayer (which can also be integrated into a Roon chain) to do the oversampling/upsampling and filtering and feed that to the May in NOS mode.
Tim, who runs Kitsune HiFi (which is also Holo Audio USA) is a great guy and very pleasant to work with. I know him personally, from back when I lived in Seattle. You might want to talk to him rather than just ordering online, to make sure you understand how the order process works. “In stock” on the website just means they’re accepting orders; actual delivery will be a few weeks after that.
New to even mid-fi vinyl playback myself. No idea about which tweaks are the good ones. @monochromios spins a lot of records, as does @Earmuffs I think.
Definitely yes.
Better stability in the contact between stylus and record, better tracking and reduced resonances.
I don’t like the “screw on” ones and prefer the simple weighty ones.
Also a simple piece of bamboo under the turntable with four rubber feet is a simple hack to decouple the turntable from the shelves and avoid unwanted resonances.
No need to spend crazy amounts of money: a simple bamboo chopper is more than sufficient.
Having a direct drive engine and a rubberised matt I believe advantages are lower than for a belt drive one.
Anyway you can give a try: you can find tons of them on online store for less than $15.
It’s definitely more important IMO to decouple it from resonances with a bamboo chopper, especially given the weight of your turntable.
If it’s one of the models that Vinyl Nirvana supports, there may be alternative springing and/or platters, some of which may be used with record weights.
I have a Linn LP12 and I’ve seen a few people use them but the company and most people say not to use a weight with it so I try not to mess around with mine.
