mulberry bush

Two or three years ago I installed a system in our kitchen area. Nothing special, just a Marantz all-in-one. I was wondering where to place the speakers and on a whim I tried them up fairly high on a shelf towards the back, but facing away from the main kitchen area. They are about a metre from the back wall which reflects the sound back into the kitchen area. So what you get is effectively 100% reflected sound. The results were really quite unexpected. While I wouldn’t recommend this approach for all types of music, the SQ of the aforementioned orchestral strings can be surprisingly close to what you hear in the concert hall - in terms of space, bloom, smoothness, etc. Large scale choral music also seems to benefit. It does vary from recording to recording and sometimes it is too washy and defuse. Still an interesting experiment and I’ve kept that configuration ever since.

When I go to a live concert - a good seat in a good hall with a world class orchestra - I’m often struck by the gorgeous sound of the orchestral strings. A wonderfully smooth silky bloom, but with such inner complexity and life. Often all we get from (even quite high-end) hifi systems is a harsh, shrill travesty. Especially fortissimo, above the stave, violin passages. It’s possible that simple excess brightness is the main culprit here.

I used to use a mac mini with A+ to stream Qobuz. The A+ Qobuz integration is very good, comparable to using the iOS app. I few weeks ago I upgraded to the Auralic Aries G1. A very pleasing all round improvement in sound quality - one of my better decisions. I would say that the Lightening DS integration of Qobuz is as good as A+, with one or two minor issues.

I guess it is a mindset thing. I feel that if anything goes seriously wrong I still have my (embarrassingly) large CD collection to fall back on. Although, it’s far more likely to fall back on me!!! The artist royalty disparity is a separate issue that does need to be sorted out. I might stream an album I really like, say 20 times a year (not 100 granted). So in five years it may equal out. But I agree, as we move to a largely streaming environment the artists must not loose out in the process.

Well I've used Qobuz streaming, very happily, for the last four years. One or two labels were not available for streaming during their ownership transition, other than that I've had no problems. Never felt the need to download anything.

But if you can stream in hi-res, why would you need/want to download anything?

How would you run Qobuz on the NB? I've read it only supports Tidal and Spotify.

Roon is the very epitome of bloatware! Audirvana with Qobuz hi-res is all I need.

But according to iFi there is no advantage in doing that!

So if we look at the post on the 16th, it says: OK that seems clear. But if we then read the iGalvanic3.0 manual it emphatically states: "Tip: The iGalvanic3.0 is powered by the Host PC via the USB bus and has an ultra-clean 0.5uV stealth converter. There is no benefit powering the iGalvanic3.0 with other power supplies." So which is correct?

I modified the filter settings along the lines suggested and also went to integer mode 2. It has made a real difference, version 3 now definitely sounds better, very good in fact. But I do feel that to get the best from version 3 you need to adjust the settings - perhaps that's maybe why some people have had SQ issues going to version 3 with the same settings they used for version 2? I wonder if it's possible to put a higher level user interface on top of all those very techy parameter settings? The combinatorial possibilities are huge, but the 'feasible region' for optimum SQ is much smaller - although the shape of that region will be a bit different for each user/system of course. Adjustments could then be made using sound/musical terms rather than the technical, dare I say nerdy, magic numbers.

Thanks for your input guys, I'll have a try at those changes. The issue was made clear to me while I've been listening to the experimental lossless FLAC stream that the BBC have made available over the summer. On my system this sounds truly superb. No brightness or glare, just very natural. The 'Proms' live broadcasts create a genuinely "you are there" feeling.

Version 3 may be more detailed, but on my system at least that seems to come with added brightness, and on some recordings, a bit of glare. I'll try setting Direct Mode to 2 instead of 1 as suggested by copy_of_a. I guess I need to have a go at changing the filter settings. It's just that I find the combinatorial possibilities a tad daunting and potentially somewhat time consuming. Any recommendations on what I should do to get version 3 sounding sweeter?

Oh dear, I should see a doctor as soon as possible. They can work wonders these days you know...

The controller of BBC Radio 3, Alan Davey, has just issued this blog post on the BBC website: http://bbc.in/2ta2Iu8 The Proms will be relayed live “in lossless at over 1000kbps”. Sounds really exciting can't wait to hear it!