14-Aug-2016, 00:18
(13-Aug-2016, 23:48)Antoine Wrote: I hope no one is implying digital is inferior. If so, remember all Devialet analog inputs are digitized by an ADC, upsampled and processed by DSP (like for SAM) and later converted back to analog by a DAC.
The one digital source is not the other and a Sqeezebox over USB really is not going to cut it.
Excellent point. I have often wondered why vinyl has such incredible dynamics, and digital often sounds squelched. It seems to make no sense mathematically (and I am a computer scientist, so I should be more enamored of bits than a rock cutting through plastic!). I vividly remember my experience as a grad student excitedly hooking up a portable CD player through its line output to a receiver, and expecting to be blown away. After all, the specs of the CD player said it had 90+dB dynamic range, yada yada. I was incredibly crushed to find it sounding totally lifeless compared to my analog turntable (then a air-bearing tonearm based wonder called the Mapleknoll, long since defunct). I learned an important lesson, way back in the late 80s. Don't trust the specifications, trust your ears. Whatever the specs say, your ears are the ultimate arbiter.
Digital technology has made vast strides since the late 80s, but not always in terms of higher fidelity. Consider that the vast majority of mankind considers high fidelity to be compressed MP3 tracks from iTunes (or in a cruel joke, it's now called "Mastered for iTunes"). Or the millions who listen to crappy Internet radio, or Spotify, or even the latest horror of horrors, Tidal (a marketing joke, if there ever was one).
If this is the digital input you are feeding your D400 (or Dxx), vinyl will sound infinitely superior in every way, even a $300 turntable with a $100 budget cartridge playing a 20 cent record. This is largely thanks to the wonderful vinyl stage that Devaliet has given us.
The Logitech Squeezebox is superior to every digital streaming source I've heard, unless you get into the real high end of digital (e.g, my 3 piece Esoteric system, which has vastly superior dynamics). I haven't heard the much touted Aurender, but to my ears, iTunes or JRiver or Pure Music through my iMac or Mac Pro or Mac Mini or any of my fancy GPU machine PCs does not sound superior to the Logitech Squeezebox. I would be surprised if that were the case. These are crappy computer interfaces, not designed for high end audio, but made by Apple for the mass market to stream iTunes. I would expect any computer output to have very high jitter levels, unless it is clocked asynchronously (like USB) to a very good clock. Such interfaces are rare, and cost quite a lot. It takes real moolah to construct a low jitter clock, since the temperature has to be controlled just right for the clock to be stable.
I haven't heard the Aurender system (e.g, the W20) or some of the higher priced streamers. They may be better than the Squeezebox. But, if you are streaming from a PC, forget it. It's not going to sound better than the Squeezebox through asynchronous USB.
The best digital sound through my D400 that I've heard is my high end Esoteric transport (P-03) clocked by the GR0b Rubidium quantum clock, to the AES-EBU input. That has incredibly low jitter. Unfortunately, the Devialet cannot accept an external clock signal, which would certainly improve its sound by a significant amount. I hope eventually Devialet would release a version of their amplifier that can be externally clocked. Certainly, if they want to make a dent in the professional digital world, they can't sell to studios without such a clocking mechanism.
There's a reason why every high end recording studio in the world uses a very fancy external clock to synchronize all their digital equipment. So do dCS and Esoteric, which together sell the best digital high end equipment I've heard. But their external clocks do not come cheap, unfortunately. The higher the bit rate, the more important the clock becomes. The saddest part of the story is HDMI, a story of failed opportunities. For literally cents, the HDMI interface could be vastly improved by adding synchronizing clocks, but for whatever reason, the clown who designed it did not. Every HDMI interface has vast amounts of jitter, and is hugely inferior to asynchronous USB with a good clocking signal.
