Golden Ears

I also heard this unit at Newport at the Head-fi show vs the Hugo (but not with the Cavali) and was very impressed with the LCD-3's in combo. I did not find the Hugo by itself to be as well balanced in terms of even frequency response. This is certainly one of the best Portable DAC/Amps out there. Music was fluid, dynamic with appropriate bloom , color and nuance. Earth Wind and and Fire and Micheal Jackson enveloped me and put the soul in my soul. An excellent job of voicing by Ken, really for me the highlight of the last show. I did not get much time with the Woo tube portable , this form factor is just small enough to lend itself to portable as opposed to transportable use. I preferred the sound of the CDM to many full sized rigs.... battery power is just very very clean with plenty of current for dynamic swings.

I've been on tidal tonight... and though it isn't doing it now..I could swear for several tracks it sounded like it was playing fast... Weird huh? The pitch was not really off...but the pace was definitely picked up. Anyone else notice this?

I have the LAN Ethernet connector for my MSB. I'm hoping that it will round up the bits quickly into its buffer and not have any drop outs. Still not sure how to stream it there, I use the Oppo iOS app to stream from a Hard drive on my network. Supposedly anything you stream to the MSB gets put in memory so in theory that might eliminate dropouts if the stream loads quickly and completely as opposed to a near real time stream.

Me too and some buffering issues. Stalling.. and clicks I compared the SQ to iTunes 12.0.1.26 and preferred Tidalhifi 3.1.2.16 SQ to that. But compared to the codec that I have enjoyed from Audirvana Plus 1.4.9.7 I much prefer Audirvana paying Aiif files . The sonic difference ...more air with A+ 1.4.9.7 less of a murky midrange cloud, and tauter more defined bass. Certainly the stand up bass and cello are more stripped of their emotional impact with TidalHifi than with 1.4.9.7. I used Grammy award wining singer Carmen Lundy well recorded track on JVC XRCD (Extended resolution CD) "old Friend" to compare this as I know her personally as she is family. JVC sent a recording team to her handpicked her and about 100 artists to feature on this format. The lasting is done with glass pits which are precisely laser etched in spacing to reduce jitter and pressed from a glass master. Excellent way to make a CD. Also I listened to Pink Floyd DSOT MO-fi vs the ne remaster on Tidalhifi... and the winding brass chains on the Grandfather clock at the end of TIME are very distant and almost missing. Also compared a pop recording of Steely Dan Gaucho... that was revealing as the early Highest frequency chime as much of the distinct and intensely detailed character as to be almost indistinguishable from the Audirvana 1.4.9.7 . It should be noted that I run 2x up sampling hen running Audirvana in integer mode. I wish I could run Tidalhifi through Audirvana + 1.4.9.7 There is an immediateness and presence missing with tidalhifi as compared to Audirvana. But.. all that being said... it sounds Way better than any other streaming service I have heard, napster, iTunes radio, pandora, MOG , spotify . Bit to say it sounds identical to a CD.. is just false. Now, in al fairness. I listened to this with a MIT USB cable- to Hegel HD2 USB /Spdif reclocker- Hegel HD 25. and heard it. And I also heard it with USB to a Wadia 860x both in my bedroom system. But not on the living room system ...I have yet to steam Tidal over my LAN to the MSB Analog DAC LAN port which will send it to the MSB UMT+ and put all the bits into a buffer and then output it reclocked to 1 millionth of a billionth of second with the FEMTO clock. MSB claims "You should hear no difference from no matter where the file came from be it USB, USB stick, CD (no damage to the disc of course), DVD, Blu-Ray, Ethernet Stream, SP/dif coxial or optical. All data is put in a buffer and reclocked using the MSB FEMTO clock accurate to one millionth Billionth of a second." That might work... but the cost to the average user is ridiculous as the full MSB Analog DAC stack with the separate power supplies for both the DAC and Transport comes to about $20K. Tidalhifi should sell some sort of external USB or thunderbolt or firewire add on... that can recollect the bits...if indeed that is the issue. Because... good as it is... I don't feel like sitting down and listening intently like I would with really good digital or even below average analog. The promse of Tidalhifi should be digital as good as on the CD. The gapless issue are frustrating too... but then again I have those gapless issues on Audirvana + 1.4.9.7

I have an elaborate McIntosh car system (2) MC4000M 6 channel 1000 watt amps and (2) McIntosh MCC80 amps Mcinotsh Parametric EQ.. McIntosh 5 way electronic crossover - dash mounted meters.. the whole deal in a w/124 chassis 1994 E500 Mercedes which has great acoustics. I just put on quiet tires too. The Ipad runs the system and serves as NAV for the car- the touch screen with the McIntosh AP1 interface is much better than iTunes for the car. So I was trying to do exactly what you have done using a Meridian Exploroer as a DAC but I failed to get the Onkyo HF player to work with my Phone. Nor could I get the Meridian Explorer to work with my Ipad and Apple camera connection kit. Any chance you could do a quick youtube video showing your steps from start to finish? It would be greatly appreciated by more than just myself as a lot of others have failed too. Being able to use the McIntosh AP1 is key for my car install. I intend to use a Hegel HD 2 as a USB/SPdif converter and a Hegel HD 25 in my car and as a transportable DAC so I can bring that to work and travel where ever I go. I have heard the Chord Hugo, and Ressossence Herus, and the SQ is not a good as I my car is capable of reproducing (it is a remarkably good sounding car- particularly after parametric EQ with depth that seems limitless and soundstage width well beyond the confines of the physical car). The explorer DAC is not so much for the car- but more as a portable DAC for iPhone .... while having decent tone, the Explorer does not do depth and the physical venue as well as some other DACs but has the advantage over many small portables of having less grain and fewer frequency anomalies which cause listener fatigue. If you don't feel like doing a Youtube video- could you PM me so I could give you my phone number. I am in Laguna Beach CA Pacific Daylight time.

I have not bought a USB hub yet. So I would likely try to buy USB hub whatever Hecubus is using with success. Hecubus...what are you using?

Which iPad and which iOS are you using? I would like to feed a Hegel HD 25 DAC using a powered Usb hub , camera connection kit, an iPad Air 2 once HF player and iOS 8.

snipped : Well, not exactly. I used to work for B&O and never drank the cool aid... (I mean ICE amplification in all their speakers (class D) c'mon....awful. ) Bang had a guy sit at the production line at Panasonic in Japan... the plasma panels were graded for quality. He cherry picked the best ones. They get sent to Denmark, are fitted with better electronics, and are tuned better. They are not pumped up with contrast and saturated so that when they are compared side by side to another competitors plasma they appear to be "brighter"..instead because they are not sold side by side..they are adjusted for best picture- their motion handling is superior, and they make the best trade offs in terms of image choice. Also they can take a less than perfect signal and still output a near perfect picture... with most other competitors TV's feed it a lesser signal and the picture degrades rapidly, You can also match the color to your decor, and the TV integrates much better into a multi-zone home solution. The TV's were more than just a Panasonic in a shiny case. They really concentrated on how people perceive motion. I remember when the first 65" Plasma BeoVision 4 hit my shop... Amazing. So much better than the Panasonic. Watching the US open of Tennis was like being there. No jaggies, smooth motion, colors were excellent right out of the box. We had a customer who bought a Bang and a Panny and had the same color calibrator go there and do up both sets..the Bang was superior in every way. In fact... that IMHO was the only thing Bang did right (other than make pretty conversation pieces). The audio gear was far from intuitive and cost way too much for the Audio quality. Their strength was in the plasmas. They had much longer life too in terms of dimming over time...pretty great sets. I don't know about their current TV's, but I imagine they are still using better image algorithms . And that - makes almost as much difference than likely the choice of panel manufacturer. Bangs stuff always gets price hikes. So oddly, the TVs hold their value quite well over a 5-10 year period..where a Panasonic or any other brand might not. I got a good discount... but still could not swing them. My EX-GF bought two, and eventually...(bought the store she bought them from and is now co-owner in Kansas City).

Old thread..but I used an Apogee Mini DAC and heard amazing improvements in sound vs the nakamichi DAC in the Music Bank MB-7. The mini DAC can run 6-16 volts dc. Ideal for key off listening, driving sound quality was still amazing, car is a quiet E500 mercedes 1994

An airfoil user...cool. With airfoil what is your max bit rate for streaming? I used to enjoy AirTunes...but alas no hi- rez will pass. With iPad you can stream high rez through home sharing...but then no A+ and it seems to me that a decent recording with A + in redbook vs high no A+ Hi rez in iPad... The A+ might win out. I did a test years ago with Apogee mini DAC with FireWire (I liked that apogee mini DAC FireWire bus better than the Apogee mini DAC USB BUS) comparing the FireWire vs Wadia i170 iPod Classic to spdif optical ams spidif coax vs Airport express to optical wire world supra nova 6 toslink to apogee mini DAC...shockingly I found the wireless version to sound better than the hard wired coax version. over all though FireWire was best. so airfoil with A+ might be interesting if you can do hi-rez...just wasn't thinking the hardware could support it. BTW thanks to everyone for the Mavericks tip... I'm going to have to try it. in regards to sound. My take .. If I were sitting in front of a mixing console, I would want to hear the recording. If I am after that point in the chain..ie..end user. If I can get 60kbs 2 bit 1khz to sound indistinguishable from live playing through a Bose radio...I'm fine with that. I'm not so much interested in the recording as having the performers feel as if they are here conveying exactly the emotional content they intended with the music with the timbral cues and so forth sounding exactly correct. Good sound staging is of course great..and adds to believability. But to have to suffer through a rhino record squeaky recording..if the was a way for it to sound NOT PROCESSED EQd and just live... I'm ok with that. There is too much great music that was unfortunately poorly recorded that lost its emotional impact and tone through bad recording techniques and gear to sacrifice so many of those recordings to a musical mire of muffled sound. so I have my regular rig... For good recording..and ..... horrors.... I have a sweet sounding rig which I use for awful recordings, and yes that rig is totally colored...but it makes the music become more alive..and the negatives of using it are so minuscule compared to the positives when using bad recordings... Of course great recordings are just smeared a And hyped run through the colored system. So I'm not after the sound of the recording, which IMHO is a path that will never lead to being there......except with a very few exceptional recordings. My goal is to make as much of the music sound live without destroying the great recordings either..and for me ...for now this is a two system approach. Some recordings to me sound best on headphones ( live recordings with dual mic'd close together far rom the stage), some on a high rez system and some on lower rez systems. Some pop...sounds like it was engineered for translation in car systems.

What is in your system? I have to say, if I change to the wrong interconnect, or poor speaker cable, the differences are not as audible. I'm also not sure if it would be as noticeable if I were using a medium power solid state amp...like a creek or similar....to my ears as well as others we can identify the 1.4.9.7 nearly every time if given a reasonably well recorded song with detail without a ton of compression. Would I hear the difference with say Nine inch nails... Probably not... It would be a strain and I doubt I could feel certain every time... But toss on nearly any Motown track or decently recorded jazz track, or the Doors LA woman... Well it's pretty easy to hear.

Still digging Audirvana plus 1.4.9.7 (i should be comparing more players prior to Tuning for CES 2014...but get suckered into listening to this version everytime... kills my comparisions dead in their tracks after about 3-4 ....I'm just happy with it. The later versions have most of a front and center prescence, but loses the far stage detail and air as well as overal vibrant feel of live the sound of well tuned and selected instruments. 1.4.9.7 sounds more like music as the muscians want it- full of emotional cues- hair raising, clarity, overtones- its just to me is a superior experience. I think if I were to listen on a less resolving system..say... my Centrance 2405 (sub $500) speakers..or Genelec s30D studio monitors ($6600) I might be tempted to pick the later A+ version because those speakers are not capable of resolving like the Chapmans and could use more localized front stage presence.... but for sure ...to me .... 1.4.9.7 is the road to audio nirvana...so far... the best path there. I'm not sure what the developer is using for his speakers... sometimes...a designer hits something right,,, and then moves towards another path which can be further from his true goal ..- because his ablity to discern or measure objectively adn subjectively can be compromised by his gear....I think it isn't limited to small companies... I've heard it happen to Infinity, Audio Research, Wadia, Magnepan...the list is long. I have to say, for some reason, the other versions seem to lack the detail of the back of the throat, and vibrant tails of notes. The organic propogation of tone is left...for the most part more intact in this version and it sounds like notes are not segmented as much. It's too late to write anything articulate... I tried the most recent build, and find myself going back. Here's the System I used for coming to this conclusion: Chapman T-8 or Chapman T-9MKII, MIT 66 pole speaker wire or MIT 110 Pole High Defintion wire or DH Labs Q-10, Audio Research VS110 with Great Northern Sound upgrade and NOS Svetlana cryoed 6550 winged C tubes, Audiquest Lapis (cryroed and uncryroed) or MIT $20,000 interconnect- , Wadia 860X with Great Northern Sound Statement level Upgrade (handles 24/96kHz) 13" Macbook Pro 2.26gHz intel 2 core duo with 8Gb ram 10.6.8 (snow leopard ) Audirvana + 1.4.9.7 in integer mode (all iTunes disabled). Room reasonably damped and no early reflections within 6 feet of speakers. System sounds vividly real on a great deal of material. The Absolute Sound gave me props on a room I tuned at T.H.E. Show Newport 2013 (and that rooms acoustics left a lot to be desired and I was using IMHO far lesser quality speakers) they said it was "impressive and musical , non fatigueing etc. But my home system is far more engagingly REAL.... lots and lots of sleep lost to endless late night listening. I'd welcome the developer to come and have a listen if he ever finds himself in Newport Beach California.

good nit picking! I might just have to get one of those instead

Thats great to know! Thank you so much. I have the newest macbook Air which does not have an IR receiver. In fact no current apple computer without an optical drive comes with an IR receiver any more.

The issue being... any Apple laptop without an optical Bay CD/DVD made currently has no IR receiver. And so you can only use the "REMOTE app." in iTunes Integrated mode as a remote....and if you want to use Audirvana plus in stand alone mode you were SOL (Save perhaps for screen sharing on a laptop ...or some weird app. like "Screen recycler" on the iPad which are wonky and slow) Or some sort of second touch screen like a Mimo... with a long USB cord...ugggh. Mimo Monitors - Welcome Twisted Melon Shopping Cart - Fine Mac OS Software & Hardware The Mantra TR1 bundle might solve this issue So currently if you want Audirvana PLus in playlsit mode for best SQ.... and use the apple remote to change volume and tracks without using a pre-amp with a remote control... you can not use a Retina Macbook pro or a newer Macbook Air which do not have IR receivers. Hoping the Mantra TR1 bindle solves this..... according to Bruno the developer for Mira... he thinks it will work see letter below. Hello John. After replying I noticed you had written "Macbook Air" in your subject so I guessed you were talking about two machines. Laptop #1 Older 2008 Macbook 13" 8Gb RAM 512 SSD with built in IR receiver running snow leopard , works with Audirvana plus in Stand along (non iTunes integrated mode) which is the mode I like. You can use Mira on this machine as well if you have a need to control anything else that doesn't already work with the Apple remote or you want any features Mira offers. Laptop #2 Newest Macbook Air 13" 8GB RAM 512 SSD NO IR receiver running 10.8.4 Mountain Lion. Not sure if your IR receiver works with mountain lion (I found a post saying it did not work with Lion) . I have yet to test if this works. That will work fine. Mira works perfectly well in Mountain Lion and older operating systems all the way back to 10.5, with a separate download if you needed 10.4 support on any other machine. We're working on some changes necessary for 10.9 Mavericks at the moment. Is there a USB stick as opposed to a dongle? Manta TR1 is under 2" square and you can use a shorter USB cable if you want greater portability. At this time it's the only model IR receiver I have available. Audirvana Plus has improved Sound quality when you disable iTunes (this of course disables the REMOTE APP.) and forces the use of an IR remote. Which was no problem with optical bay laptops , but is a issue with any LAPTOP without the iR receiver….and hence your target market increases. Got it. Audirvana plus makes music sound better by turning off certain things in the OS… I was worried that if it detected a macbook AIr without IR that it would disable the IR software too. It's not possible for another external piece of software to disable Mira. At least not if it's written "correctly" and in a polite fashion. ---------------- Almost gonna risk it... money back on hardware.... trial version for software....and if it doesn't work it can go back... rather not have to waste anyones time if it doesn't work... So what remote works with Playlist mode and a non IR equipped MAC??? IR probably works best... would bluetooth work also? The apple remote is he most desirable solution because it is small in pocket and inexpensive to replace if lost in sofa cushions forever... destroyed or .....washed...