ZagatoV12

Well my experience with non active systems and high end cabling has shown me in the past that careful choice of interconnects and speaker cables can make a significant difference, so that would still be my expectation. Anyway, since there were no suggestions I went back to my default choice of the past and looked again at Wireworld and other vendors' offerings. Having spoken to my dealer at length we came up with an alternative that I was not familiar with - Atlas Cables. Made by hand in Scotland, with some care it would seem, I decided to try their Mavos offering, preferring to stay with OCC Copper rather than Wireworld's Silver and Copper offerings - I've used Gold Eclipse interconnects from them in the past as well as Transparents. This time I was looking for a balance of highest quality at a reasonable price. The dealer was able to offer burn in before delivery and had the cables in stock, so I will be testing them this weekend and will report back here.

No recommendations? I am surprised. I thought readers here would be keen to suggest a solution. The Mogami cables I'm using at present seem to be Ok, but I was expecting a gain from specialist interconnects?

I wonder if there is anyone out there using the Invicta / Mirus DAC with active speakers? If so I would be very grateful for any recommendations on the best interconnects between the DAC and the speakers. Mine need about a 3m run or so, terminated in XLRs. Any help would be much appreciated.

+1 on the iPad controller for Audirvana. It would be great for controlling iMac Minis without a monitor.

I thought I would, possibly unhelpfully, offer my simple observations on some changes in my setup I made today. Having been off this forum for many weeks, I just today learned of all the discussion about the most recent versions of Audirvana and the debate over whether the earlier A+ betas offered superior SQ or not and then whether the most recent version of 1.5 had caught back up again. Well, before logging on here, I had auto-upgraded to the latest and greatest A+, well before I read all those posts and so, having been alerted and to hear for myself, I went back from V1.5 something to V1.4.9.7 and was agreeably surprised that the suggestions that was a 'better' version were right on the money. Then I read there was also a later version of the Invicta DAC firmware (V5) that some posts here were claiming SQ improvements for so I upgraded that as well. The overall improvement from these two changes was an unexpected but extremely welcome gain in instrumental realism, transparency/air and soloist's 'intimacy' on orchestral DSD material. Dvorak's Concerto for Cello by Pieter Wispelway and the Budapest Festival Orchestra from Channel Classics recorded in DSD was a grin producing revelation after these changes. Excellent combination! Thank you Damien and Resonessence Labs. Not sure what will happen next, but I'm 'Very Chuffed', as they say :-)

Having been off this forum for many weeks, I returned to learn of all the hoohah about the most recent versions of Audirvana i.e. version 1.5 and the debate over whether earlier betas (vs 1.4.9.7 / 1.4.9.11) offered superior SQ or not and then whether the most recent version of 1.5 had caught back up again. Well, I went back from the very latest to V 1.4.9.7 and was agreeable surprised that most of the opinions suggesting that was a better version than the latest were right on the money. Then I realised there was a later version of the Invicta firmware V5 that some were claiming SQ improvements for so I upgraded that as well. The net overall improvements from these two changes were an unexpected but very welcome gain in realism, transparency and intimacy on orchestral DSD material. Dvorak's Concerto for Cello by Pieter Wispelway and the Budapest Festival Orchestra from Channel Classics recorded in DSD was a revelation after the changes. Excellent combination! Very Chuffed, as they say :-)

acousticsguru and other helpful album contributors, I wonder if I am alone in being somewhat lost as to how to find these downloads? I would very much like to follow up on all these album suggestions and purchase them, as it is quite obvious that they are all first class additions to one's collection and an invaluable ear opener for many of us. Grateful thanks are due to all contributors. There is one thing I'm sure many readers would be grateful for, especially those like myself, who are perhaps reading this thread only just now, and that is a list of the albums so far suggested together with a recommended link to where each might be purchased. Is it possible that someone could provide that for us less well informed readers?

Perhaps the analogue characteristics of DSD recording / playback are due to it's superior ability to capture and render more harmonics than Redbook and 2fs PCM?

That sounds interesting -> Redbook ripped to DSD! How do you do that?

Calling all Invicta users on this forum! There should be quite a few of us by now, so I was interested in hearing about how others are using theirs - system configuration - cabling, - amplification - speaker or phones etc and was wondering if you could summarize ypur thoughts - the benefits - how it sounds etc on what kinds of music - which kinds of files and resolution do you play most - has it lived up to its promise etc and whether you have any recommendations for the designers?

I caught sight of DarrenMc's signature:- 'really good music -> high bitrate lossy files -> iTunes -> Fiio E10 or Edirol UA-1EX or PS3 - > ATH-M50 or Pioneer receiver/Mission 751/PSB sub -> 43 year old ears' Would this have anything to do with his view? (My ears are somewhat older ) And, it occurs to me, a drummer is very likely to also have suffered hearing loss through continual exposure to loud BANGs!!! My apologies - no offense - just couldn't resist the temptation

Very interesting. Thanks for that suggestion. I used to follow 'Kodo', the Sado Island based Japanese drum troupe, for their fabulously exhilarating live performances. Sadly they haven't been to the UK in several years. Back to the topic though - have you done a spectrum analysis of these drum strikes using WAV and MP3 versions? I might look at that later this week when I get a chance and I'm back in the UK. I have some recordings on CD, from Sheffield Labs, of early Kodo recordings which I have stashed somewhere.

I wonder if anyone is interested in some insights I came to in these experiments on MP3 'losses':_ http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/analysis-what-goes-missing-when-you-make-mp3-files-15121/#post207107 and the follow on:- http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/how-are-bass-notes-affected-mp3-psycho-acoustic-compression-algorithms-15177/#post208109 I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone who could add further insight

I sent a note to the company a month or so ago about providing the ability to use standard playlist files so that you could replay tracks in an ad-hoc, non album related way, playing tracks from across multiple folder structures, and I also suggested a 'repeat replay' function. I'm not sure about the latter but it looks as though we might get something on the .m3u and repeat level sometime this month. So, you never know, you can at least ask. The company is certainly listening to positive suggestions that might benefit the many, provided you can make a strong enough case.

Precisely