perrew

Get a pair of used AKG K340 and make sure you have a good amp to drive them. Enjoy!

What music and files and computer setups Win8 vs OSX etc. do you guys use for all these comparisons?

The APL Dac-S is no feedback with a Good output stage.

Did anyone get these yet?

I have a question about the Medea, whats so special about its output stage, it looks like bipolars with feedback, does that really sound good?

Have you compared the Medea to the Medea+ and whats the difference?

Totally agree on the inportance of the output stage I have the APL NWO-M with one of the worlds best stages but the Dac-S is sufficiently close at à way more competitive price,5k, tanks to very good designed stage.

Regarding the SSD issue, am I reading this correctly that the SSD is not improving sound by having less of something, like EMI or other noise, its just that the type of noise the SSDs emits "blends" better with the other noise and cancels it working as a filter? So assuming you have "decent" system whatever that means the SSD is just masking something else?

Check out the APL Dac-S, it will defiantely be an upgrade. You can even go direct to the monos and you can sell the preamp which will make the wife even happier. Im pretty sure you wont have the urge to go for a table after this. Im letting my table go at the moment...

From what I see they stream to the Amp and amp is connected with speaker wire?

If you ordered new speakers Id wait and hear what they sound like before Id change my source/pre/power. Maybe it sounds good and you dont need to change. First optimise the speaker placement and then see if the sound is so bad. Analog out from PC was just for comparison. If the speakers are set up right you should get ok sound from just the internal PC Dac.

Ok, if you dont want to go for the eSata and say a IcyDock, I would load the music Id like to listen to at the moment to the internal drive and not use the USB for playback. If you consider buying a better Dac Id look into the APL Dac-S. Otherwise I cant come up with any easy solutions...

Like the Linear PSs! Have you considered eSata instead of USB for the music library? Are you willing to consider other Dacs than the W4S?

Dont change the Cyrus yet. I dont think its a source problem I would guess you need to check your speakers first. What are you using and how optimised is the placement. Speaker placement can do a lot more to the sound than going to another source. As a suggestion I would take a 3.5mm->RCA cable and bypass the Dac inside the Cyrus, Im pretty sure you will think oh what a crappy Dac inside the Cyrus but if you see it the other way around thats how small of a difference a Dac makes in a non-optimised system. If you think the system sounds thin after "correct" placement of speakers I would add a sub. After this I would consider looking at another Dac.

My experience with analog and digital is that it takes coinsiderably more efforts by the manufacturer/builder to get digital to sound "right" compared to analog but it is possible. Also I preferr the sound of the CD-transport vs computer as transport. I had a good digital front end and my approach was to build a very good analog setup. Although the analog was VERY good the digital was preferred. The analog setup was a highly modified Micro-Seiki and digital from APL, see link for more info http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vaslt&1241632152&read&keyw&zzskulls