Good to hear you’re making progress toward building your chain and enjoying the music.
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It’s a start and I’m glad you got that important take away re headphones. Dont worry about whether the Elegia is “phenomenal” you are going to hear great things through it.
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Have received the Raspberry PI, but not the PIE2AES yet. Looking at the “How To Set Up + Configure” thread, they recommend loading up the Volumino Player into the PI, but the Volumino site says it does not support Amazon Music HD, which is what I am using. Do you know if there is a work around to be able to stream Amazon through the PIE2AES via Volumino, pretty important for me at this point? Looked at the Volumino forums and they are trying to get Amazon to work with them so if can be supported, like Roon I guess, but Amazon is not responding… Volumino sounds like it will support Airplay, but I want to stream higher resolution files than Airplay allows. Volumino does do Qobuz and Tidal, but want to do Amazon if possible. Other alternatives other than Volumino that work with this setup?
I only plan on streaming for now, I do not plan on using a computer, just my iPhone and iPad (if i can figure out how to get the iPad to get into Exclusive Mode with Amazon) - iPhone works great, but the iPad dumbs down everything to to the resolution it downloaded the CDs I bought from Amazon to (Standard/MP3) or what the iPad max resolution is onboard. When clicking the HD or Ultra HD tag it shows it sees my Modius, but Redbook is about the best I can get out of it, sometimes 24/44.1. Tag can show 24/192, but shows the “Currently Playing At” resolution as Standard or sometimes 16/44.1. Cannot find the “Available Devices” icon to on the iPad, shows up on my PC.
iPhone/Pad are going from the iPhone/Pad (lightning to micro USB) to the Modius micro USB in. Modius is powered by the micro USB to wall wart.
From what I can tell, the Amazon HD service specifically requires the Amazon HD application to access the HiRes side of things. Otherwise, it gives you the normal lossy lower res Amazon Music version.
I don’t see a Linux version of the HD application.
I’ve been reading repeatedly on Roon’s forum that Amazon has been very reluctant to open the APIs of the HD service up to external entities, which is why you don’t see integration with Roon or other services.
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That is too bad Amazon is dropping the ball like that, pretty much the same thing I have been able to gather. They are losing business, which does not seem like Amazon’s usual modus operandi. May have to switch to Qobuz, if I can’t figure out a way to stream Amazon HD through the PI.
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It seems to me they are more intersted in an ecosystem of hardware vendors than we lowly audiophiles, at least at this point…
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I also thought Amazon seemed to be following the Apple closed ecosystem playbook here. Time will tell what/who prevails.
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I don’t think Amazon is worried about losing a few music subscribers. After all this is just a new venture, testing the waters so to speak. . Their 1st qtr 2020 sales figures are $75.5 billion throughout their company so a few music failures is not going to impact their business. PS; i think you will really like Qobuz…
Amazon has allowed companies to use their Alexa API. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/amazons-free-alexa-api-is-a-boon-for-developers/
Amazon is selling HD music for $13 to Prime members. With Qobuz at $15 and Tidal at $20 per month, they offer a discount over the specialists. This is how monopolies operate and why similar patterns led to ‘trust buster’ federal action in the past. My guess is that over the next generation online retail will be regulated like cell phones are today (i.e., AT&T’s split-up eventually resulted in 3 major national firms that are never allowed to merge). Similarly, there used to be dozens of car manufacturers and now there are few globally. We may end up with Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and Target dominating retail. Expect big lawsuits and then a frozen pattern.
Welcome to the maturing Internet era.
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I know all about the 1984 breakup of the Bell Companies ( AT&T) , I was employed by AT&T/Western Electric at Bell Labs during that time. The end result in today’s world is AT&T is bigger than it was The RBOCs ( regional Bell Companies) were the cash cow for AT&T. So they had to begin all over again. They bought Bell South in 2006 ( which was a RBOC of AT&T back before the breakup ordered by Judge Green). As of 2019, AT&T is still a telecommunications giant, led by its mobile and fixed telephone services. It also made a big move into the media space, acquiring DirectTV in 2015 and Time Warner in 2018.
Car manufacturers dropped, only 20 still exist not counting the super car manufacturers. The big retailers will end up ruling the markets, pretty much as they are doing today. … The internet era, The Good Bad and the Ugly.
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And all this time later what has it really helped?
Most people only have one choice for cable or internet provider.
Mobile phone contracts are stupidly overpriced.
All that happens is companies adjust to the new regulation and find a way to be abusive in the new environment. Companies now don’t even bother to try to hide that they’re screwing customers, just because they can.
I worked at a computer service company during the breakup. It wound up being much worse for us.
Before the breakup if there was a comm failure we called “the phone company” and they fixed it.
After the breakup we had to deal with multiple companies and they all just pointed their finger at the others, was a nightmare trying to get something fixed.
You can thank Judge Green for that. His ruling killed customer service in the phone industry and allowed crap like cable companies to NOT be regulated or held under any restrictions by the state Public Service Commissions. They can do pretty much what they want. Darn sad, but its the law these days. All we can do is change companies and hope we get better service.
I have no idea what you pay for mobile phone contracts in the states but this side of the world you can get unlimited calls and 20gb of data for $20 a month (with free roaming throughout Europe) or unlimited calls, unlimited text and unlimited data (with free roaming) for $40.
Compared to prices up until about 5 years ago, that seems pretty cheap to me.
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In USA unlimited plans are in the $70-$85 range and often come with restrictions - like they throttle high speed back to 3G-ish if you exceed 5GB.
There are some third-party companies with fewer features (but use the same networks as major companies) in the $40 range.
You can get 2GB plans for under $20 but of course if you depend on mobile internet that’s not close to enough data.
Qobuz does look very interesting, but they do not have “stations” like Amazon does (or Pandora, which is why I still have Pandora for the radio/discovery experience). The radio station option is important, but maybe not a deal killer. Does Qobuz offer playlists, based on an artist or genre?
I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is Qobuz may not have the algorithm like Amazon, etc. that gives suggestions based on your listening history. This is nice from a discovery/suggestions standpoint for possible new music. Qobuz does have a pretty good catalog of the music I like, so that is a plus for sure. Americana, folk, bluegrass, roots music is not the most popular stuff out there, but it is surprising how much is available on these services. Some holes for sure, but more than I expected. Other genres that I like are well represented.
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No auto-generated radio stations and you can create your own playlist
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Qobuz has playlists by genre and related artists but not stations.
They might have a 30-day free trial so you can see if it will work for you.
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We got unlimited plans in Canada only recently. We are comparable to the US in prices or even more expensive. Massive throttling if you exceed the “limit”, way worse than 3G, way under 1mbps. Makes unlimited plans somewhat useless for what they would generally be intended for unless you pay for an extended upper “limit”.
On the subject of DACs. For informative purposes, as I drove myself crazy for a few weeks. Even though I haven’t reached my destination I have better understanding on advice I was given.
So I went to Schitt today, got a chance to use my headphones for the first time.
I got to say I’m hard pressed to notice any difference. Maybe a tad bit of clarity. But that could just be the amp power, no clue.
I tried the modi and Magni, Vali, Asgard multi and Jott multi. Honestly can’t see too much difference, not sure if it’s inexperience or just what you guys keep telling me.
They were running Roon, so I kept listening to the same song repeatedly dac/amp to dac/amp roughly equal volume. Each unit had its own tablet to play music out of and I mean I’m not sure if 10 second delay to reconnect and press play was doing anything or my headphones were playing a role.
I would just say that the ak chip was slightly a little less clear, but nothing that is even probably 10% difference.
Only the tube made something noticeable, which I can’t explain😂
Just kind of confuses me with Schitt cause why would you buy a higher end product from them besides for balanced output and you guys say that’s not even worth it.
So I now better understand what you mean.
Second, just like my experience with SourceAV, I still keep hearing this hiss when music is playing. Not when the music is not playing, only when it is on play. I don’t get it, what is that? It’s kind of annoying.
It was present on an 1800 Chord dac all the way to Schitt.
Is there any way to get rid of that?
Also what is the sound signature you guys would consider Schitt DACs posses? With the terms that many audiophiles refer too when describing.
And Lastly, probably the least important question is what benefits are you really getting by buying better DACs even strictly in the Schitt line up in the sub $700 range. Modi 4490 vs Modius 4493 vs Multibit.
Modius seems to me to have a better a dac chip and eitr combo AIO.
I’m just baffled to hear hardly any difference. Not sure where I went wrong.
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Differences are subtle, and it takes experience to really get a grasp on those differences. That’s why I initially suggested for you to just start with a Modi/Magni stack, and down the line once you get deeply familiar with that stack go and audition some higher-end DACs and amps.
So I’m not surprised that you didn’t hear any clear differences, just start off with an inexpensive stack and try again at a later point in time.
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