medman711

Hi Audiorat, My understanding was the fix was to be for spontaneous firmware updating that fails. My first unit had to be replaced when the display went black. Medman711

Just a word of caution about these firmware updates. A month ago the firmware update caused the display on my Aries to go dark, and no steps recommended by tech support could resurrect it. My dealer had to get me a new unit. Last week the update to 2.2 went flawlessly. Today I got no notice on my DS Lightning that there was a firmware upgrade, but my unit never booted properly and got into an endless loop of starting but not fully booting. My dealer contacted a tech support person for the Auralic who actually spoke to the head of Auralic who said some units spontaneously tried to update themselves today without a warning notice, and failed. They are looking into a fix.

Yes, their favored program, iZotope, is $1200. R8Brain pro is $130. That's why I asked about J.River's capabilities.

I was quite interested in the Computer Music Audio Quality article in the January 2012 issue of Absolute Sound, in particular the significant improvement in sound quality afforded by what the authors call pre-sample rate upconverting lower sample rate songs to 192/24 or even 192/32 utilizing programs like iZotope and rBrain Pro, which I had never heard of. Has anyone utilized these programs for that purpose? J.River Media Center also apparently has the capability to upconvert. Has anyone tried that? My DAC (Berkeley Audio) can handle files up to 192/24. I thought you typically didn't want to mess with the native sample rate of a song because of the chance of having it no longer be bit-perfect, but I may have these concepts wrong. Richard

I just wanted to mention a very interesting article that headlines this week's Digital Audio Blog (https://sites.google.com/site/computeraudioorg/). It is a comparison of "Music Software and Operating Systems". Worth a look. Richard

I have been using JPlay for the past week, and am quite impressed with it. Particularly in its "hibernation" mode wherein most non-audio processes and threads are eliminated, music playback comes out of a much quieter background, focus is improved, and the overall sound draws one in more. A trial version is available at http://jplay.eu/ I did end up paying for the full version. Their blog has some interesting tweaks. ______________________ medman711 Lynx AES-16>Berkeley DAC>Classe Model 10 amp>Martin Logan speakers. Windows 7 J.River

Thanks, Laurent, for your feedback. Were you able to listen to any high resolution 176/24 (or even 96/24) downloads with the DAC7? It appears that one of the biggest differences in Chris' reviews of the Berkeley DAC and the Bryston DAC is the greater sense of depth and soundstage of the Berkeley. I wonder how the Audio Research compares in this department. Medman 711

Has anyone had any listening experience with the Audio Research DAC7. It doesn't look like Chris has done a full review of it. I am interested in seeing if there are any really good sounding DACs that cost less than $5000 and can sample 24/176 resolution and have an AES/EBU input (other than the Bryston).

I'd love to know how you compare the differing feature sets. It sounded to me that the PerfectWave combo was an alternative method of playing high resolution music and, with the optional Bridge, a way to also connect to a music server/NAS and stream music that way. The PerfectWave Transport also gives you a CD "player" which, of course, is totally different from the Lynx/Berkeley combo.

This is probably mostly a question for Chris, but did anyone hear the demo of HRx discs playing through the PS Audio PerfectWave Transport and DAC at CES 2009. It looks like they are close to release, it's a very interesting concept, and I'm considering them as an alternative to the Lynx card and Berkeley DAC. Richard