dbdog

Ok folks, my XP music server died after 10 years of service and I need to replace it with a newer Win 7 server. I have a Lynx AES16 (the PCI version not PCI-express). This really limits the motherboards that I can use since most newer ones only support PCI-e. So here's the question. If I'm only using it for playback (not recording) do I really need the AES16 at all to feed my Bryston BDA-1 with a perfect bitstream? Wouldn't any sound card with an SPDIF/Optical output sound the same? The rest of the audio system is fairly high res audiophile (Thiel speakers, Sim-Audio pre, Sunfire amp, MIT cables) so I'll be able to notice fairly subtle differences. I've read many people talking about the sound quality difference between various digital feeds but if my BDA-1 locks in on the signal seems to me I'm in good shape. No? If the answer is, hell yes the AES16's gonna blow the doors off another SPDIF card, how on earth do I get it into a PCI-e slot without a world of hurt? My days of hours of tinkering are behind me. Many thanks dbdog

Maybe you could join a private torrent tracker community and download the CD's someone else has ripped and tagged already. Ones like what.cd have fairly tight quality control so it should save you a ton of time. If you just get the ones you already own there is no guilt.

Has anyone heard the Audiolab 8200CDQ? It looks too good to be true.

Well I finally got around to replacing my M-Audio Delta 1010 sound card with a Lynx AES16 and the problem has completely disappeared. It was nothing to do with the awesome Bryston BDA-1. The lesson: when troubleshooting always start with the source! Thanks everyone for your help.

iamimdoc wrote "A noiseless machine is really nice as you never "lose the moment" when the music fades and the noise then becomes noticable."<br /> <br /> Totally agree. That's why I've put it in another room altogether. Those IOCELL's look very interesting. Thanks. <br /> <br /> audiozorro wrote "Do want you can and makes sense; don't belabor the difficult or chase the bleeding edge." <br /> <br /> Good advice for sure. If I had all the hours back that I spent trying to get the last 1% improvement... <br /> <br /> What I was wondering is if anyone can tell the difference in the sound of a fanless/motorless pc relative to a regular one if you can't hear the pc (i.e. is there an audible difference in the bitstream). I asked the tech at Lynx and he said there would be no difference as long as jitter is controlled. <br /> <br /> I'm interested in others thoughts. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />

Great article. I'm looking into building a new music and video server. I'm having difficulty with the fanless and motorless goals since this box will also need to run 4 sata drives until I can afford a nas. I therefore need a powerful enough power supply to spin up multiple sata drives and for future proofing, yes, I'd prefer a fast processor. <br /> <br /> I'm planning on using my Lynx AES16 connected via EAS/EBU single wire cable to my Bryston BDA-1. Given that these both have fairly good jitter control capabilities I'm wondering if I will ever be able to hear the difference. <br /> <br /> I understand the importance of a fanless PC if you plan to have it located in your music room. I get around that by locating the pc box in the next room passing my 10 ft. AES cable through a hole in the wall. I can't hear a thing from it.<br /> <br /> My system is fairly revealing but the engineer in me is questioning my ability to hear the difference in the signal coming from a fanless/motorless PC in the next room relative to a regular PC with fans and motors. <br /> <br /> Has anyone done blind a/b tests to justify what would be a fairly big expense/challenge?<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> dbdog

Yes, MM3 is short for MediaMonkey version 3.X<br /> <br /> No, they don't have ASIO support and the ASIO plugins that are available don't work well in my experience. I haven't tried ASIO4All since I've always been using cards that support ASIO so I never thought it was appropriate.<br /> <br /> I'm using J. River with success. Good suggestion. I still am hooked on MediaMonkey for library and tag management since I have everything dialed in to tag, organize folders, etc in MM3. <br /> <br /> It's really good to know that I can anticipate good things with my Lynx card when I migrate to Win7. My current box is too old to run it so it'll have to wait for a new investment in hardware. <br /> <br /> For now I have updated my firmware and driver to the latest versions from Lynx and it all seems to be fine though I doubt I'm not getting bit perfect playback from MM3 since the new driver supports directsound and it is my understanding that wavout will route the signal through k-mixer if directsound is supported. <br /> <br /> It's starting to feel like time to get a new box. putting bandaids on my old XP box is no longer fun.<br /> <br /> I have to admit that I don't understand how J. River uses ASIO with volume and equalizer controls. It couldn't be bit perfect running through these controls. <br /> <br /> Thanks again. <br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> dbdog

Hey Chris,<br /> <br /> Several time i see you mention needing to use the OSS drivers for the Lynx AES 16. I'm having difficulty setting up my new Lynx AES16 card on my Dell XP SP3 box. I've tried V1 version of the driver suggested here: http://www.goodwinshighend.com/music_servers/lynx_aes16_setup.htm.<br /> <br /> Sadly it doesn't seem to be happy. My system is constantly restarting itself for no apparent reason, sometimes after 3 hours of operation and sometimes only 10 minutes. Furthermore, my PC only wants to play one thing at a time (maybe this is a good thing but it's different for me). I have to stop MM3 playback (not pause it) to say listen to browser content. If I try to play MM3 while the browser is playing sound it freezes MM3.<br /> <br /> I'm hesitant to use the current drivers from Lynx since there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid K-mixer without ASIO playback and I've never been able to get a decent ASIO driver set up for MM3. <br /> <br /> I'm wondering if the OSS driver you refer to is my answer. I went to the OSS site but it's greek to me. It seems like they are Linux orenented so I'm not sure about it.<br /> <br /> Any help would be greatly appreciated.<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> dbdog

Perhaps time to get back to the content...Eloise and others have mentionned the more direct way to connect a computer and DAC. I was under the impression that AES-EBU was preferred (I've got a Bryston BDA-1 and was thinking about getting a Lynx AES card to take advantage of the AES connection). It sounds like others are leaning towards Firewire or ASnyc USBs. Can someone let me know what the advantages or tradefoffs of these are over AES? Cheers dbdog

Hello Chris,<br /> <br /> I've just ordered a Lynx AES16 card to take advantage of the AES input on my Bryston DAC since it seems to be widely recommended as the input of choice for audiophiles. I've noticed you suggest replacing the stock multi cable with one with perhaps only the AES XLR end for the DAC input (as I don't have any plans to add a clocking device). Do you recommend that for performance reasons? Is there some signal degradation introduced by the stock multi-cables?<br /> <br /> If so I'm in! Can you kindly let me know what to call the connectors I need on either end? I'm guessing its:<br /> Cable type: AES/EBU Mogami 2 channel<br /> 25 pin DSUB to XLR straight.<br /> <br /> Does that sound right?<br /> <br /> When I try that on the Redco site it seems to always only allow me to choose 2 or more channels when selecting the AES cable type. Maybe I'll have to call them.<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> dbdog

Hello Elias,<br /> <br /> Thanks for confirming the 30 day trial. Unfortunately I'm living in Canada. Us Canadians always get the short end of the stick, boo hoo.<br /> <br /> Is there any options you can think of available to me in Vancouver BC?<br /> <br /> All the best,<br /> dbdog

Hey Chris,<br /> <br /> Great review and tempting. I'm running a Bryston DAC into my Bryston Pre into my Bryston Amp. This review suggests that I might be able to get replace both my DAC and Pre with something like this, using this as both a DAC and Pre. <br /> <br /> My concern is this: your review doesn't sound as glowing in terms of sound quality as your impression of the Bryston DAC. While I can't afford a Berkeley or Weiss, I could afford the Benckmark. Here's the tough question - do you think I'd be further ahead from a sound quality perspective with the Benchmark or my Bryston pair? I know it's your perspective but I'd appreciate your thoughts.<br /> <br /> All the best,<br /> dbdog<br /> <br />

I totally agree Eloise. It's complicated since is depends on what you are upgrading from and how responsive your system is to the changes. Pretty much everything has the potential to affect the sound. My point is that not all changes are in the same magnitude and an investment of $1000 in one area could be either marginal or negligible depending on the nature of the upgrade. To this point, before I upgraded my system (amp and speakers) most of the tweaks and upgrades to the transport/DAC end of things we're negligable at best. After I invested in higher end system gear (Bryston 4BSST (4K new), Thiel 3.6 (3.5K new)) differences are so much easier to discern and appreciate. I suspect that many enthusiasts are using systems that can't resolve the more subtle changes we are talking about. That's not a bad thing. It's good to know where the bang for the buck is in your current system. Often it's downstream of the DAC in my experience with friends. Lastly, the biggest factor in how my system sounds by far is the quality of the recording. No matter what system you have, a bad recording will always sound bad. They may actually sound worse on a "better" system because you hear everything, good and bad. Conversely a great recording will sound good on most decent systems. I dare say that I'd rather listen to a great recording on a mid range system than a bad recording on the best system on the planet. Cheers dbdog PS I love this forum

My experiences has been that while almost everything makes a difference, sometimes the difference is so slight that it's arguably not worth any extra cost or comes down to a personal preference (i.e. what sound do you like?). When I first set up a music server I was using my sound card to do my DAC sending an analog output from my PC. Upgrade 1: When I went to a SPDIF connected to an external DAC the difference was not subtle. Upgrade 2: Then when I upgraded to a better DAC (I went from a MSB Link DAC to a Bryston BDA-1 the difference was subtle and one of taste. I prefer the Bryston but the difference is not night and day). Upgrade 3: Getting a "better" digital cable made no difference to my ears. Upgrade 4: Moving my computer to an electo-magnetically quieter part of the house resulted in a more stable bitstream (less drop-outs) but the sound didn't improve IMO. It is important to note that even the most dramatic of these upgrades did not come anywhere near the dramatic improvement I got from my new speakers (swapped Sound Dynamics 300 TI's for Thiel 3.6's). So unfortunately it's complicated. You might have some weak links somewhere where dramatic improvements are possible. You may quickly get to a point where the subtle differences are not noticeable enough to bother with. From my experience as long as you are getting a decent bitstream out of your box and sending it into a decent DAC, spend the rest on your system and enjoy. I use an old Dell box with MediaMonkey running wavout like Chris's budget server. I'm going through a decent but not top end card (M-Audio). At some point I might experiment with a Lynx using the BNC output but for now it sounds great to me. I have a feeling that the difference would be on the subtle side but I'd love to be wrong on that. Cheers dbdog

One potential benefit of higher end cards is the AES/EBU connection which seems inherently better: 1. It is 75ohm shielded wire throughout it's entire length 2. It send the signal at I think 10X the voltage as S/PDIF thus reducing the potential for noise to corrupt the signal. Can anyone verify or correct these point? Cheers