rgodridge

I'm relaly not sure where to go from here and it is annoying me. Maybe I'm just stuck only being able to use foobar! Any ideas to play flac files in the highest possible sound quality will be appreciated at this point, otherwise i'll just start an optimise fooar thread.

trying it on win 10. No chance. None of the menues voice properly at all. Absolutely rediculus frankly! There has to be something better than foobar that works.

I'll try! I am going to try the latest jriver. I'll be surprised if it works ut it may well work on 10.

When I have a bit more time on my hands I can try win 10 on my wife's machine. Must say though there are some things that win 7 is guilty of, but it doesn't tend to hide menues from my screanreader. I did see that on the bad old vista days though.

Just tried the very oldest version and while I can install it, it doesn't read any menues or any of the options. Bugger.

So as a fellow windows user? what are you using? Jriver is so inaccessable that not even the installer reads, first time I have ever encountered that!

Oh Process lasso! I forgot about that. I did actually have to use that for somethin years ago and seem to remember it working with my software. I will download it again. If there is a way to use some sort of web version of jriver to control it, that is likely to work. It's the actual desktop program that isn't usable to me... I'll have a play with it or try to.

Oh I know I'm hearing a coloured system to an extent. I know what studio equipment sounds like and it ain't that, but I'm not sure absolute pinpoint accuracy with no percieved warm/colouration/whatever it really is! is what I want, I just would like better than this. You won't upset me. I'm not a touchy person and find it a bit silly how upset some folks in audio circles get when you point out that they actually like tape hiss or vinyl noise or whatever, but thank you for thinking about it! Good listening room: Unfortunately I can do nothing what so ever about the physical room and it isn't the best room! however, we can do a lot about clean power. This dac has a linia psu that is plugged into a wall outlet not an extention, the computer when plugged in is also plugged into another outlet not an extention. I listen mostly with the compute rrunning on battery power. My screanreader doesn't come out of the dac, it comes out of my laptop speaker. I have found a way to shut down and reopen the screanreader at will, so I could possibly now try a lot more/different stuff. Is Fidelizer worth taking seriously?

You've nailed it, I think. What I want to do is first of all, find foobar's breaking/high point. While I'm at it, experimenting with other programs that are bitperfect and offer good/different sound. I have ruled out vlc and winamp, winamp is a shame as it's a nice little program and was what I used for a good 10 years, ut it doesn't have the flexibility foobar has. Sidepoints and side aruments are fine, but I don't want to lose sight of the actual point, which is that I want the best possile windows based digital system. :d

That definitely applies to cartridges so I did wonder if it applies here too. Anyone with experience with this calyx dac's opinion would be greatly appreciated.

That's a very interesting comment. Am I to take it that, in your view, what was a good dac 10 years ago is now not to be conciddered so good? I like the warmer sound (and probably harmonic destortions to a degree) of vinyl, but I am enjoying the clarity that this current setup is providing me with. Still, there is room for improvement. Do you think there are ways to truely improve things without spending a great deal of money? My absolute ideal is something of a contrediction as I really want both warmth and clarity, I don't want mushy or harsh sound. My Calyx is 80% of the way there with everything other than pianos, and I know how difficult pianos are to get right. Does knowing I'm coming from a vinyl background change the goalposts, then?

Excellent, later this evening I'll reply when time is available. Also see if I can't get a few more people in here to distinguish the network capabilities of JRiver and some of these boxes with proprietary apps. Can I take it you are in the US? Ha no, I'm not I'm in the UK. Another spanner in the works? lol Look forward to hearing from all of you guys, this is very interesting to me and yes, it could be better, but this calyx dac is very good with most things and I'm enjoying listening to it! I'd love to hear from another calyx 24-192 owner with their impressions.

Well, today after an extended listening period with the calyx and foobar, I am happier than I've been before, but it has it's shortcomings. The main one is somehow individual instrument timbres (most noticeable with pianos) are a little hard to hear, all the details of the playing is there just not the individual instrument. I have a good friend who is an organ fanatic. I'll have to get him to bring some of his super sounding organ cds round he has hundreds... My real concern (I'm not sure how valid this is) is that every non-pc thing I've seen uses a touch screan. I simply cannot operate one. However, I do have one of those little sdcard playing pocket sized flac file players (Benjie BJ-T6 / AGPtek Rocker) that has rockbox on it which enables it to speak. If there's anything down this route, that'd be great, I'm open to absolutely anything! but, while it's here and I have it, what is the furthest that can be gone with win 7? How for example is the resonic player linked above better than foobar? is it not a multitool? It does annoy me that jriver isn't accesseable. There's no reason it couldn't have accesseable menues etc but it doesn't. Perhaps I can play it via a webplayer but won't that need google chrome which is pretty intencive? Yes, used equipment suggestions would be great! I'm using a system that leans toward warm (quad 33 and 303 because they have all the 78 filters I want for records) and mordaunt short ms10 mark 1 speakers which are frankly amazing for the money they cost, they beat a pair of tannoy mercury speakers hands down. When all is said and done, I'm sat here listening to Berlioz's Harold in Italy (Zukerman, Dutoit, Montréal SO from a 1988 Decca cd) and it is glorious. It is the best home hifi sound I've had, but if it can be bettered, let's better it. It's worth noting here that I aparrently have amazing hearing from a medical standpoint but my wife's is even better than mine, making me happy is only half the battle lol I really appreciate all the help I wish I'd descovered this forum 10 years ago!

Thank you for filling in some blanks. Fidelizer working included. That program definitely deals with changing thread priority. To avoid turning you off I was hesitant to mention very many programs. Instead focusing on slowly addressing the technical concerns you have instead of freeware or items that can be purchased. Discover what you would like to accomplish. Getting all of your files onto a single brand new drive would almost certainly have benefits though. My currently preferred means of copying large amounts of files on Windows is Teracopy. Once set up it will copy and verify using better protocol than dragging and dropping inside Windows. With a note that working within Windows 10 or 11 would greatly improve the outcome through advancements made since 2009. The hard drive question is fairly simple to answer. Only certain SSD have been reputed to have improved sound qualities across a wide enough swathe of users to consider the price premium for purchasing them. Any number of good quality spinning drives work well enough everyone uses them. Even with SSD you would defer towards spinning drives for backup purposes as either RAID or cold storage. The best practice we strongly advise is a working copy and a total of two full backups in different locations. So if a theoretical tornado lands on your home spreading the first two copies on the wind. That final backup in the town bank basement preserves your music. Can I ask what your thought process was behind selling the modern DAC to use your current one? I didn't sell any dacs I just swapped them in and out of my system. I have a calyx 24-192 which is quite old now, 2010ish, and a startingpoint systems dac3 which is the non-oversampling type, the latter is warmer the former more detailed and I generally prefer the Calyx while my wife is on the fence, leanin towards the startingpoint dac3. What I'm trying to do is learn various ways to digitally change/effect/alter the sound, without destroyin bitperfection. I'm a fan of Foobar's equaliser and have various settings for various things bubt tend to leave it off for most music. So plugins, software/freeware, asicly how can I have the bbest sounding windows system possible? If jriver does have a web interface and is useable by someone who isn't a computer science grad, I'm all ears. I just can't use the desktop program it isn't accesseable. However, if foobar is as good or can be configgered to be as good, let's do it :d

Funnily enough Fidelizer does work, just tried it today. I didn't hear nearly as much of a difference as I thought I was going to, though, so I wonder if my screanreader is stopping it from doing it's job. I'm not sure how to find that out! Another newby question: Most of my files are on various us hard drives but my laptop does have an ssd. Anyone heard improvements using an ssd? I have yet to try wav vs flac. OT but a bit of background I've been a cd collector for about 15 years, I'm 31 years old and quickly realised that if I wanted to get into classical music (which I did) records, which were my prefered format, were going to be expencive and frustrating. This was before Ebay was a big deal. So I have 10, 15 thousand-ish cds and a huge collection of downloads. Music has always been my passion (rare romantic era repertoire, baroque era stuff and 20s and 30s jazz eing my favorites but also early progressive/psychedelic rock and early dub reggae) but I've only recently got into making digital sound good. My analog setups sound great, but my wife has encouraged me to get rid of some records (78s mostly) and focus a bit more on cds/digital. I was unconvinced until I started to realise that changing the dac is a bit like changing the cartridge on a turntable. I have 8 cartridges in use and I'm now starting to really notice dac sound signitures. All this to say that in the world of audiophilia, I know how to hear it and what I'm hearing ut not really what I'm doing. Funny for someone who remasters 78s!