Equipment Recommendations - The Home For New System and Upgrade Advice

The different masterings on CD are kinda what I’d get sucked into I think (who is the BoomBoom of CD mastering?!) but outside of SACD rips, I have access to FLAC downloads of most of them. I’ll buy some CDs here and there to rip and my library has an insane amount of CDs too to rip
 
MikeH said:
The different masterings on CD are kinda what I’d get sucked into I think (who is the BoomBoom of CD mastering?!) but outside of SACD rips, I have access to FLAC downloads of most of them. I’ll buy some CDs here and there to rip and my library has an insane amount of CDs too to rip
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My local libraries have quite the CD collection available, so that's nice for ripping some FLAC files to the server ;)
 
Joe Mac said:
I’d not discount a top loader. I really like the one I have. But yeah slots aren’t great.
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I have no problem with a top loader, it's the cost. I don't know if I want to spend that much on a transport, I'm thinking $1k is about my limit and if that's not going to happen the Lokius will be the solution.

The Audiolab and Leak are both nice and "affordable", but that slot load always worries me.
 
AnthonyI said:
I have no problem with a top loader, it's the cost. I don't know if I want to spend that much on a transport, I'm thinking $1k is about my limit and if that's not going to happen the Lokius will be the solution.

The Audiolab and Leak are both nice and "affordable", but that slot load always worries me.
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Schiit is getting ready to release a transport called the Urd soon as well. Sounds like price will be $1299

Edit: I think it might be a slot load as well
 
trickyseven said:
Schiit is getting ready to release a transport called the Urd soon as well. Sounds like price will be $1299

Edit: I think it might be a slot load as well
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I stand corrected I think thats a tray

www.head-fi.org

Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

2022, Chapter 18 Slam the Door Is this 2019 all over again? Nah. It’s 2019 hooked up with 2021, as drawn by a drunk skywriter, as seen by someone who dropped acid, right before the real aliens show up (hopefully all in nose-shaped spaceships built to dock with the nose-hair-trimmer-shaped...
www.head-fi.org www.head-fi.org
 
trickyseven said:
I stand corrected I think thats a tray

www.head-fi.org

Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

2022, Chapter 18 Slam the Door Is this 2019 all over again? Nah. It’s 2019 hooked up with 2021, as drawn by a drunk skywriter, as seen by someone who dropped acid, right before the real aliens show up (hopefully all in nose-shaped spaceships built to dock with the nose-hair-trimmer-shaped...
www.head-fi.org www.head-fi.org
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I remember hearing about the Urd, but I also remember reading somewhere that Jason wasn't crazy about how things were going and his dislike of "moving parts" made the Urd a "maybe" as far as becoming a reality.
 
Angsty said:
Real talk - I have three DACs at various price points and vintage and I can’t tell the difference between them when they’re level matched. A louder, high output DAC will always seem better than a less loud one, but may not sound at all different when the volume is the same.

I have my Integra CD player plugged into the “CD” input of my Bryston pre-amp with an internal DAC. I have the digital coax from the CD player running into the Bryston DAC. When I flip the selector from DAC to CD, I hear no change whatsoever. I have a Topping DAC on the balanced inputs and have run the same comparisons; no difference except volume. YMMV.
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Thanks for that ..well I thought that it was a bit of pointless exercise, good to hear from those that have done it first hand ..I will stick to fiddling with the vinyl set up
 
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Gavaxeman said:
Thanks for that ..what I thought that it was a bit of pointless exercise, good to hear from those that have done it first hand ..I will stick to fiddling with the vinyl set up
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I couldn’t really notice a difference between different DAC chips but the R2R DACs do seem to have a different sound. Could just be in my head but my Denafrips Ares sounds better/different than my Singxer and built in DACs in my amps
 
Well, I was going to back burner the transport thought by picking up the Lokious and being done with it, but came across an open box Audiolab 6000CDT for only $150 more. The slot loading always concerns me, but from the research I've done, Audiolabs slot drive trickles down from the flag ship player, and I'm not finding overwhelming concerns with scratched discs.

Sleeping on it to be sure, any additional input is always appreciated :)
 
AnthonyI said:
Well, I was going to back burner the transport thought by picking up the Lokious and being done with it, but came across an open box Audiolab 6000CDT for only $150 more. The slot loading always concerns me, but from the research I've done, Audiolabs slot drive trickles down from the flag ship player, and I'm not finding overwhelming concerns with scratched discs.

Sleeping on it to be sure, any additional input is always appreciated :)
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I have the 6000CDT and have used it almost every day since buying it about a year ago. Haven't had a single scratched disc yet (though it certainly reads already-scratched discs very well).
 
AnthonyI said:
Well, I was going to back burner the transport thought by picking up the Lokious and being done with it, but came across an open box Audiolab 6000CDT for only $150 more. The slot loading always concerns me, but from the research I've done, Audiolabs slot drive trickles down from the flag ship player, and I'm not finding overwhelming concerns with scratched discs.

Sleeping on it to be sure, any additional input is always appreciated :)
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Let me know how it is if you do end up going for it. I may get one too soonish since I have the Audiolab 6000A. Seen them for good prices open box at a variety of places
 
Shout out for one day shipping from HiFiHeaven, lol.

It's a little dusty, but it's also freezing from delivery, once it thaws we'll give it a cleaning. Coax out to the DAC-1 and on to the M2si, looking forward to hearing how this sounds. I was surprised at the "heft" of this unit, nice solid feel and is heavier than the UD5007 it's replacing.

20230126_124255.jpg
 
Angsty said:
Real talk - I have three DACs at various price points and vintage and I can’t tell the difference between them when they’re level matched. A louder, high output DAC will always seem better than a less loud one, but may not sound at all different when the volume is the same.
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This is bang on.

Also, hey everyone! Back from a short hiatus. Life got busy. Catching back up! Able to spin plenty lately :)
 
MikeH said:
For me, I have vinyl for physical media. So I struggle to see when I’d go CD over streaming. I have access to the equivalent of what.cd which has loads of CD rips and Qobuz. I also have a charity record shop near me with tons of CDs all for $2 so I’ve gotten some there and ripped them to add to Roon. I’ve been hesitant to add a CD player for most of those reasons but SACD was intriguing if I could get DSD out. Don’t know that I want to invest a lot in it when I’m happy with my DAC/streaming combo
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Qobuz sounds so damn good, and I just saw in a Boom Boom interview on YouTube that he's capturing 192 copies for most of his analog masters these days, some of which are ending up on Qobuz. It's just awesome.
 
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