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franknote88

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  1. Nice.. thanks for the solution! The single malt is a good idea as well!
  2. Hi Everyone.. I haven't posted or been to the site for a long time. Life has gotten in the way of my audio life - hopefully that is on the mend. I have a question that I hope someone can help with. I have a Drobo raid server on my home network; an iPad that can read files on the network via wifi using an app called file browser; an oppo 83se; an audio research dac8; audio research ref5; and boulder amps that feed into my focal scala speakers; and i run purist xlr cables. I also have an apple TV that feeds my projector. My drobo network server sits in a different room. What I would like to do is use my ipad to tell my drobo to feed a song to my dac8. I know I can hook up a computer and run a line to the projector and route music from the drobo to the dac and use software to manage the dac. But I don't want the computer in the room because the fan is too loud and I'd like to see if I can do this via the ipad as a controller using itunes or some other app.. i know i can run a line between rooms and still use the computer (or my laptop) but I want to find an ipad solution if one exists.. Anyone had a similar idea? Thoughts? Thanks, FRANK!!
  3. IMHO CD player transports are dead.. with the evolution of high-res files I can't imaging spending 5 - 10k on a CD player..
  4. Barrows/Chris - thank you for your help on the software question. I'll take the time to give them a try and read that link. Well.. it's been a few days and I've been burning in the dac8 and while I know it's early days it is clearly getting better with use. What has really surprised me is the level of detail that I'm hearing. I've heard quite a few systems, all great but different from mine. But the level of detail in songs that I know well is remarkable. I'm hearing things I've never heard in songs and I'm getting such clean imaging. Not necessarily perfect imaging or sizing (nothing is perfect and that's not a good thing to say I know) yet. The imaging isn't as wide and as I think it can be and I know I'll need to play with speaker positioning as well. But the sense I get is that there is 'air' between instruments, I can pick them out in space. The focus is very tight and the smallest of notes pop out at me on some songs. Couple that with the beryllium tweeter on my focals and some instruments almost pop too brightly. It's a bit bright and my room is bright but I'm trying to focus on the system right now, over dampening my room. From the low end I'm also experiencing remarkable base that I haven't heard before from my system as well. Standing up against the wall today, while talking to some friends that were over I could feel a resonance in the room that was remarkable and not anything I've noticed before. I was actually shocked at how much my wall wall was vibrating (and it's a specially built room - still in progress). I know it may sound silly to think that all this came from a change in dac, but it has. All to say at first blush - what a beautiful dac and so sweetly the ARC sound. That then takes me to the test of weiss vs dac 8 back-to-back test, and the view among the group was that it was very close at this stage and depending on the song you could go either way. But when it was a pronounced difference in musicality or detail on a song, the dac8 was a standout to win. I was worried that I was trying to bias my perceptions to validate my purchase but I genuinely think that the dac8 sounded better to my ear. But I also like more detail, not less. The dac8 also brought out a fuller mid-range sound. The weiss sound was rounded and almost softer with less air between instruments to create a more harmonious or uniform sound. Instead, the dac8 treated the instruments individually. The drawback one friend thought was that you get pulled into focus on an instrument during a song and he felt that took away from the whole musical moment. But is that maybe what the musician wanted - to highlight that individual instrument in that moment?. I also felt I had greater depth in the sound stage from the dac8. Again, early days as it has only about say 24 hours of play on it. Lets see how it evolves. As a final comment I a/b'd some mogami and purist XLRs and the view was clear and unanimous. The purist cables were richer, fuller, louder and also provided more detail. I still don't fully understand how this is possible, but I trust my ears. Now while I don't plan on spending that much on a pair XLRs I'm clearly looking for something more than what I hear from the mogami cables. Ok. Enough from me today. Frank!
  5. Hi Everyone, I'm new to this forum and over the past several days have read all of your dac8 comments/threads here. I have heard many dacs over the past year, from sonic frontier / weiss/ Esoteric, etc. After a lot of thought and listening I receive my dac8 tomorrow and will hook it up to my ref5 on focal utopia scala speakers. I'm obviously a fan of ARC and JMLabs independently and think the combination is outstanding (IMHO). My question is this.. there seems to be a very clear consensus on this forum/thread that itunes, pure audio and amarra used as a playback tool for high-res files (or any music for that matter) materially impacts the sound heard. I currently run off itunes on a PC primarily but can also off a macbook pro. I never thought of the impact of the software playback. Can someone please explain, or direct me to an explanation, of why and how there is an impact from the three software programs on playback? How do they differ from one another in impacting the digital signal? Am I wrong in thinking that the software programs act as a simple transport of the digital signal from hard drive to dac? Thanks in advance, Frank!
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