Hierge

Someone on CA once told me to shut up and listen. Enjoy the music. I have been listening to Tidal with the new firmware on a Black model. First noticed the bluish purple light which is new. The sound is really good. I put on my Sony MDR V6 headphones which expose everything including flaws. I listened to Led Zepplin III and Jethro Tull Aqualung on Tidal with the Master versions playing. Made sure to get the settings right on pass through and exclusive mode. I definitely hear things I've never heard on these tracks. I'm slowly acclimating my ears for the new sound, but so far it's definitely fantastic. I think that Gordon and Audioquest really did Dragonfly owners a HUGE service adding this support to our existing units for NO CHARGE!!! And all I read here is people hassling Gordon over technical issues. Just listen to the damn thing! I am so very happy and feel like Tidal is finally starting to get serious with their sound too adding Master Recordings. What I would like to say to Gordon or anyone from Audioquest is that I'm having some issues with Tidal recognizing the Dragonfly as being an MQA decoder. I had to reboot my system and jerry around with it to get the blue light to come back on with the Dragonfly after unplugging it. The volume control is also biases me down to the lowest levels on my computer and Tidal so I don't lose my eardrums. Seriously, I can't turn the volume up above three or four on each before my ears start to bleed. This has always been a problem with Dragonfly Black. Firmware upgrade to help volume and Tidal recognition may be needed. Keep up good work and thank you Audioquest for taking care of your loyal customers.

Ok, I'm with you on this.

Just got a reply from email to JRiver from Jim. Response is that Malwarebytes is mistaken. I just reinstalled and it was quarantined again. Any chance Jim may be unaware?

I've been running this software for many months and this is the first hit. It's bothersome. I am including a screenshot.

My heart is warmed by the recognition of this musical genius on CA. Way to go Chris. My friend actually met Chris Cornell in Las Vegas at a meet and greet event. Nobody even knew who Chris was but he humbly showed up anyway. They spoke for a half hour and my buddy told Chris that he could probably beat it to his next engagement. They had an instant rapport and I loved hearing the story. My favorite video is a live performance of Burden in my Hand from New Jersey where he describes how he got the guitar from the song at Rick Rubin the famous producer's home. Truly a beautiful song and description. The audio is pretty good.

From the Book of Gordon Chapter 3 Verse 2. "Thou shalt use a 90 ohm USB cable when attaching a DAC to a USB 2.0 port on a computer." This book has been started by the holy scripture thread participant committee and will be thus developed as seen fit by all Computer Audiophiles until such consensus is reached or boredom sets in letting the final thread die. "Thou shall not let the wicked effect of jitter infect thy music. It must be be hunted out and destroyed in the name of "PERFECT audio." I'm going to He.. for starting this thread, but the pure heart I have is so inspirational as to reflexively query the denizens of the computer Jerusalem for the TRUTH.

That party happened a few months later. We actually got in trouble because some dimwit took a 50lb bag of Alpo dry food and spread it out like fertilizer on the lawn. The missus made us go out and actually pick up all the individual dog food kernels. Animals were visiting to eat. It SUCKED BADLY except for the eternal great stories. She tolerated a great deal, but we were bad. Oh so bad. Long live ROCK.

Almost. You are nearly there and are REALLY onto something here. One thing that most people tend to forget is that the Golden Ratio or Phi is 1,618... EVERY TIME you add another audio component to this system you are merely extending the decimal ratio to ever further values. People treat Phi as a discrete numeric value and that couldn't be FURTHER from the truth. The cable people all know this and have been keeping it secret for a long time. I've heard rumors of this going all the way back to Tesla himself. Break in is THE most important quality for audio components. It may take YEARS or DECADES to truly break in a component properly. But, for the few who are WILLING the reward is beyond anything that is linguistically describable. Only when a break in reaches PHI to hundreds or thousands of decimal places is the true reward palpable. There is no amount of money that can achieve such a result other than total dedication. The silence is now OVER !!! True audio bliss is within our reach.

Wait just a second. How dare you bring in LOGIC into this discussion... Everyone knows that the cables "sense" the other components and must be broken "in situ" in order for it to work properly. If they are broken in at the lab itself then the "synergy" of the equipment would be wrong. Also, cognitive dissonance wouldn't be kicking in after the initial buyers remorse. Hey, everything sounds better after a couple weeks. It's a scientific fact for Gawd's Sake! It's a known "fact" that cable makers can invalidate their warranty for breaking in cables with a system other than the original audio system, so BE CAREFUL about switching out components. The manufacturer can easily tell from forensic analysis that another component was used after the break in period. End of warranty. It's the only way they can afford to offer such incredible technology at bargain prices. Fortunately, they do offer aftermarket warranties. Just make sure you buy it up front.

Massive Who fan. I'm influenced by your post on this. True story: in High School I worked for a top end stereo store. Convinced my buddy to buy Tandberg and Klipsch Heresy speakers. He picked up the Bang and Olufsen Beogram 4002 tangent tracking turntable. We put on Who's Next and got so rowdy after several beers that we destroyed a helpless laminate cocktail table by doing Pete Townsend jumps on it repeatedly until it was in chips. Volume had to be over 110 db with zero distortion. The vibrations knocked out a poorly mounted wall shelf with booze bottles on it. We got in big trouble. It was worth it.

Joke: What do you say at a Dead concert when the drugs wear off? Gawd, this band SUCKS!!

Thread police here. You are all under arrest.

I will take a shot at the second question. I found an online guide that answers the other three questions, but I don't have the link right now. I used to listen to Winamp and MP3 audio for the last ten years until I found CA. I am a fan of the band Coldplay, particularly an album called A Rush of Blood to the Head. There is a track called In My Place on this album that is a beautiful song, but the overbearing cymbals are a disaster of what I now know is Jitter. On my old Winamp setup with a straight soundcard, these cymbals sound like MUSH and pretty much ruin a nice song. After I made the discovery of computer audiophile technology, I read a discussion of Dragonfly designer Gordon Rankin's discussion of how a computer clock is the culprit on jitter. Mainly by using an external USB DAC with asynchronous technology you can use the external DAC circuits to fix jitter to a level below audible limits. I experimented with this and found this to be the single greatest sound improvement of a DAC. It's like looking through a clean window. That dramatic. The "common wisdom" on CA is pretty much panning out regarding DAC technology. The most dramatic sound improvements I have heard were when I ditched Winamp though. I am addicted to JRiver and the exotic players like HQPlayer and Bughead which sound truly amazing. I can even listen to my computer sound card with HQPlayer with jitter and it is still amazing. Once you go low jitter though, you can never go back. That's my opinion anyway. Oh, and lossless audio really sounds much better than MP3. I still listen to a lot of MP3, but I'm slowly replacing all these with lossless recordings which sound amazing. I'm very happy. This is the golden age of computer audio.

It's good that you still listen to other cables for reference. I took sage advice from J. Swenson who said to just get a Supra and "be done with it." I did and am done with it. Looking forward to the day where USB audio is like having cassette tapes.

I concur on Supra. Very happy with mine.