General purchase advice: Ask your questions/for advice here!

Past all these opinions - which I find valuable - is there a solution to my problem? Can I get 24/192 or 24/96 tracks to play via a digital-to-digital converter, I suppose?

Stu

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Sorry, @Sturosen, when I wrote earlier I was on my iPhone, so didn’t go into details. Yes, there are solutions. It all depends on how much money you want to throw at it and how much you want to do yourself. My first big warning: when you take something out or apart, if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, even if you get it back working, it will not be as tight or rattle-free as before. Unless you are working with sound deadening material (highly recommended).

Second warning: If you are going to insist on using factory head units, your options may be limited. You should find the service manual for the factory head unit you have in order to see if it is able to accept any additional line level inputs. If you have any tape capability (unlikely) forget using a device that will try to access the tape heads to input music.

If you do not have any AUX, and you do have a CD player, you may be able to pull the head unit, open it up, observe where the CD is connected, remove the CD player and solder leads to the place where the CD was connected. These should be line level Left and Right inputs, often marked on the motherboard with L-in and R-in. You’re can then run the lead to a mini jack. When the CD player is activated, you can use a blank CD (record it with nothing) and the CD player will think it’s working, but you can then use your phone or the Cobalt out… This hack is demoed on You Tube.

A more elegant solution is How To Add USB and Aux Inputs To Your Factory Car Radio - YouTube using an adapter, which works with many head units.

Probably the best idea is to find a high-end car stereo shop in your area and wave about $3000 under their noses. This should result in an upgrade from the factory head unit with professional AUX inputs.

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Hey, thanks for the additional detail. Wow, what a thorough answer which completely convinces me this is not worth worrying about on my end. I was hoping there was some sort of reverse 3.5 mm to USB cable that would feed in the Hi-Res into the system via CarPlay. I don’t care anywhere near enough to do anything you are proposing! But I really do appreciate understanding what an effort it would be to squeeze a little more performance out of a brand new car’s audio system.

I suppose there are people who are willing to crack open a brand new car and throw $3000 in to get just a little more performance out, but that ain’t me! Thanks for a real education on this - really appreciate it.

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Bingo ! That will work every time . Show me the money. :moneybag:

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There are a lot of ways to get more performance other than trying to feed a higher resolution signal. Probably the easiest is to upgrade your car speakers - even if they are placed in the factory locations. Companies like Focal make automotive replacement speakers. I have an Infiniti Q50s hybrid. I’m not going to find it worthwhile to make the changes. Years ago I did a lot improving the sound on a car I eventually wrecked in the aftermath of a blizzard.

I keep considering updating the auto sound in my wife’s '64 F-85 Deluxe Oldsmobile. It’s difficult to decide, based on that we don’t drive it much whether it’s worthwhile. The way to go would be to send the original radio to have the electronics changed. They even make kickplates that match the interior and will allow both the lower air vents and speakers.

So far, all I’ve done is when we redid the interior to run a speaker wire back so that we now have both front and rear mono speakers with the original radio (admittedly getting a bit deteriorated electronically).

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First recommendation is that you turn your CDs into digital files (and back up those files), even if your intention is to always keep spinning discs. Two reasons: (1) Physical media can always be lost to disaster, and (2) even barring disaster, CDs won’t last forever (despite the early claims of Sony and Phillips). Storage is really cheap these days – a 4TB SSD is under $500 and will easily hold over 5,000 CDs with lossless compression. And, yes, that SSD also won’t last forever, but you can keep copying digital files with no loss of information and pass your stuff on to your kids and grandkids (or whoever). So, a small portion of that budget can get you a lot of peace of mind.

There are potential audio advantages to playing files instead of discs as well – no moving parts required and a much more direct path from storage to bits being streamed into your DAC.

Best wishes for happy listening. – let us know what you get.

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I recently asked about recommendations for improving my chain: PC via Qobuz/iTunes/FLACs → Accurate Sound filters → Bifrost 2 → JotR → SR1a. The consensus was that I needed to cut out the PC. People like @Polygonhell , @Nuance, @monochromios, and @pennstac made some recommendations including the ZenStream, microRendu, a Pi, or products by Innuos, Auralic, etc.

The thing is that I am totally lost in figuring out all the different options and functionality. I am hoping you can help me sort it out. Here is my use case:

I live in a small apartment. I have no need of listening in multiple locations. My listening location is the same as where my noisy computer currently sits. That location is immediately next to the router, so I can use wifi or ethernet directly. I would like to continue to run Accurate Sound filters.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help.

p.s. I hate the looks of the ZenStream, so it’s probably out as an option

My comments were most likely about reducing the noise were you sit, and not about your chain directly. What’s the point of fancy-schmancy stuff if you’re listening in a crowd of fans blowing vuvuzelas? If you’re not going to change your listening position, they you should look for noise remediation where you can find it.

Back in the day of noisy printers - letterhead impact printers and dot-matrix printers - it was not uncommon to have a sound-reducing enclosure for the printer to reduce the racket. You might consider quieter fans for your computer, or moving the computer into it’s own space and run wires or wireless connections to your everyday hardware that you simply can’t escape.

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I think this is a very important observation, about the biggest improvement I’ve made to my listening chain recently was just swapping my Roon server over to passive cooling. I just really hadn’t noticed how loud it was, but doing so dramatically dropped the noise floor in my office, and improved everything.

Getting off a PC is a good thing to do, it doesn’t honestly at the entry level of spending for this really matter how you do it, the bit win is not connecting your DAC to the noisy PC USB.
Pi via USB is probably the cheapest way to do it, you can step up from there if you notice a difference.

I wouldn’t over think it, or try and find the bestest streamer Eva, I can tell you that higher end streamers do make a difference, but unless you have a lot more invested in your source chain, there are better ways to spend that money.

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I’m looking for something to replace the XD-05 BAL that I am returning. Two straight units failed in rapid succession in the same way. Either bad QC or bad product design/execution.

Needs:
-Bluetooth (LDACor at least AptX)+DAC+AMP
-Lots of power out, 750mW per channel into 32 ohms is probably my minimum.
-4.4mm pentaconn
-Portable

Wants:
-Available at a US retailer
-Decent battery life
-Built in robust EQ would have me wildly raising my budget I think

Will be going with me in a bag to and from work, when I travel and for use away from my desk at home. Powering DCA Aeon 2 Noire’s and sometimes

My price range is: preferably well under $500. This is a tall order but the XD-05 ticked all the needs and one of the wants at $430. Too bad it’s non functioning. I’ve considered iFi Gryphon and a few others but they’re all quite pricy. Nothing else in their line has all the features and power. It’s just too expensive.

I keep a very close eye on the portable amp space. I currently own the Fiio Q5s Type C. It meets all of your requirements except power and EQ. It does have a decent bass boost function though. Also Fiio output ratings tend to be conservative, so it probably puts out 600mw+. It will almost run my HiFiman Arya V2 to a decent level (almost ).

Which brings us to the ifi Gryphon. Which is the only one that checks all of my boxes and most of yours. I want to give one of these a try. I have found ifi bass boost and overall sound presentation to be very much to my liking, so I am pretty sure this will be great.

Which brIngs to us to EQ. I am only aware of a couple portable amps or even DAPs that offer EQ. With the DAPs, they are not usually system wide, so they only work with music stored on the the devices drive. So streaming to them via Tidal etc will not have EQ capability. For portable amps with EQ, I am only aware of two quality options (not counting bass boost or ‘space’ DSP etc) the Qudelix 5k and the Monoprice portable THX. The Qudelix is an amazing little device, but the power output is anemic (I had one) and the overall sound quality is just okay. The feature set though cannot be beat by anything not called RME ADI-2 DAC. The Monoprice has a little better power but the PEQ is only 3 band, so not super effective, flexible or enough power.

I would be shocked (and pleased) to learn I have over looked any better alternatives.

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Pick any two, but you can’t have them all:

  • Price
  • Quality
  • Features

It’s often true that you get what you pay for…at least in the budget and mainstream segments. Rules don’t apply to the luxury segment.

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Aint that the truth, especially in the speaker/2-channel audio industry!

I’m not very familiar with this specific product but as far as I’ve tried to understand I believe that if you want to keep using it you’ve to maintain your PC/Mac in your system.
If so keep using it and enjoy it.

Personally I believe that a quality, dedicated transport for digital music make the difference, more than filters, equalisation and similar.
That’s why I’ve chose Innuos Zen Mini Mk3 and I’m enjoying i for music not available on vinyl.

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Uhhhh…What if I kind of do have kind of a Bentley with a 1100w, 21 speaker Lexicon Reference 3D system? I’d like to eventually plug whatever decent quality portable DAC into it via USB and see if it would make it even more fab? Or would it not work?

If you had a Bentley with that kind of money you would take it Back to Bentley and let them configure your system the way you want it, money Nooo problem. :grin:

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Perhaps you meant DAP? If you are connecting via USB then it’s a digital signal - as in sending a flac file or streaming data without passing through the portable units dac.

If you want to use the dac in your portable unit then you would attach via an analog connection - something like a 3.5mm jack.

LOL It’s not quite a Bentley. Everyone thinks it is. Just curious if it would make a difference - even in the noisy-restricted environment of a vehicle.

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It doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack available. Just a USB input for data and music.

Your Hyundai Genesis G90 is not a Bentley.

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