New Gear - Hellelujah for High-Def Audio

marscay

marscay

marscay

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Because w/out the massive price drops on legacy gear i would never have invested the asking price for these 2 sexy items. And being ex-demo i got an extra £500 off the sale price even though they arrived seemingly brand new, not a mark anywhere.

I've upgraded from an Onkyo 805 with pre-outs to Arcam A90 & P85 for stereo duties, but have kept the P85 for the surround in order to bi-amp all 3 front speakers on the P7.

Was it worth it? Well in comparison the Onkyo doesn't get close under blu-ray versus PLII on the Arcams - the resolution and power on tap is just scary :eek::eek::eek:


 
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Also received the new 7520 SE 'Caiman' in the post this morning, basically a 7520 but fitted with a Wolfson 8716 64x OS DAC .....so far it's sounding pretty tremendous and these usually sound like crap for the first 10hrs lol.

Anyone considering a DACMagic or similar price just get either the 7520 or the Caiman version, much much better DAC's and a tweakers delight as you can play around with the opamps.
 
marscay said:
Because w/out the massive price drops on legacy gear i would never have invested the asking price for these 2 sexy items. And being ex-demo i got an extra £500 off the sale price even though they arrived seemingly brand new, not a mark anywhere.

I've upgraded from an Onkyo 805 with pre-outs to Arcam A90 & P85 for stereo duties, but have kept the P85 for the surround in order to bi-amp all 3 front speakers on the P7.

Was it worth it? Well in comparison the Onkyo doesn't get close under blu-ray versus PLII on the Arcams - the resolution and power on tap is just scary :eek::eek::eek:


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Going on, tell us more about em'. Looks juicy.
 
How much did they set you back?
Iam looking at going the pre power route in the near future, how good is the av9/p7 compared to the a90/p85 for music?
Whats the rest of your kit comprise of?
 
Not sure I understood the slightly cryptic OP..... BUT yes even the old sound formats can sound seriously good on the right kit..... HD sound who needs it ?...LOL
 
'HD' audio is a joke really. Even the very best systems can't resolve much more than 16bit to begin with and we can't hear the higher samplerates and you don't need lossless to get transparency. All it's done is bring us higher bitrates as standard which is all was needed.
 
AbsenceJam said:
'HD' audio is a joke really. Even the very best systems can't resolve much more than 16bit to begin with and we can't hear the higher samplerates and you don't need lossless to get transparency. All it's done is bring us higher bitrates as standard which is all was needed.
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An interesting viewpoint. What did you try and what was the kit you were playing with?

I tried SACD a few years ago, but then decided not too bother. I did think that it was better than CD, but not mind blowingly so. At the time, I thought that it resulted in the £300 SACD player that I'd borrowed being on par with a good £850 CDP that I owned. As I was more interested in making the best of the music collection that I already had, decided to use the funds that could have been spent on SACD player/disks on bettering my digital source.
An interesting side effect of more recent hardware changes is that quite a lot of kit now supports 24 bit files out of the bag. e.g. my SB3 supports 24/48, my processor supports 24/96, meaning that you basically get some HD audio compability for nothing. The Slimserver server software also does auto downsampling on 24/96 files, to allow replay on their SB3 and similar. Rumours are that the new SB Touch will support 24/96 files out of the bag.
As such, I have tried some 24 bit files. Can't say I'm too impressed by the musical options that are on offer at the moment, too much plinky plonky tosh IMO.
Having said that, what I have heard really did sound rather good. Linn, B&W and HD tracks all have HD audio files that can be downloaded at not exhorbitant costs, so for new music, would be worth having at least a quick look at.
 
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All manner of sources, and kit, consumer and pro.

24bit and higher samplerates are good for recording/production as they give a better end result even at 44/16. From a listening perspective we really can't hear very much more than this, a little above 16bit and certainly none of the higher samplerates.. New masters, better encoding/lossless and new equipment are all concurrent factors that have come along with higher resolution and bitdepth audio; these are what we're really hearing.
 
danoliver1 said:
How much did they set you back?

how good is the av9/p7 compared to the a90/p85 for music?

Whats the rest of your kit comprise of?
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Got them for £2k with 5yr warranty - not a bad drop on the £6.5k retail not so long ago.

The Diva range was not bad ...really quite good when you pair them up but the av9/p7 shows it up quite easily as you would expect.

Speakers are Monitor Audio GS20/GSLCR

+ a 7520 Caiman DAC feeding the AV9.


Mr_Sukebe said:
I really couldn't pick which models they were, my apologies.

Have to say that I've also been a little busy, but can't reveal the details until next week.
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Oh sorry it's an AV9/P7 combo - sounds like someone else has some new toys on the way.

9designs2 said:
Not sure I understood the slightly cryptic OP..... BUT yes even the old sound formats can sound seriously good on the right kit..... HD sound who needs it ?...LOL
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Was hinting at the now substantially cheaper high quality legacy gear because of everyone rushing to the new HD formats.
 
I'm surprised that you're using an external DAC to feed music into the AV9. I thought the AV9 was meant to be pretty good with music. How do you find it compares?

With my recent job situation (basically just another statistic of the economy) I'm part way through shuffling a number of bits of kit around. The merry-go-round should be finished by the end of this weekend fingers crossed.
 
Yeh it does sound a little weird feeding an AV9 with a £200 DAC, from the little comparison i've done so far the Arcam is a hell of a lot warmer but at the sacrifice of some detail.

The DAC has still only had about 15hrs through it though and still sounds a little shrill but i wouldn't be surprised at all if the DAC wins in the end as it has loads of resolution, i see a lot of ppl using analogue for the AV9.

I'd like to try using a SB3 or similar as a transport to either also.
 
The SB3 is a pretty good (but not perfect) digital transport, certainly so for the dosh. I'm still surprised about the Beresford outperforming the Arcam. I had an older 7510 for a little while. Didn't really get on with it. Yes it was detailed, but I found it dry to the point of bleaching out the life from the musicians.
 
Hmm lots of interesting comment here.... I agree quality legacy kit can be a great buy, but then I and a few others have championed the virtues of "good old kit" for a while ;-).

The issue with high res audio is like all formats, it’s more noticeable how good the recording was and the mastering than the bit rate. That said SACD IS better, smoother, more relaxed and sweeter sounding. Though I think you can only really tell when you have pushed 16/44.1 and SACD to the limit and compared. Often SACD players are compromised on 16 bit as the DAC's are tuned for SACD, so you think SACD is better. It my view it was a very poorly managed format and a mess for people to understand. Luckily I had/have a Linn 1.1 Unidisk, which really looked to handle each format to the best it could. Normally a well recorded SACD was better.

Times are changing tough, SACD is very small market, and now we are into streaming audio....Which often comes from 16/44.1 files (in FLAC maybe).
Now (I refer to the Linn range, who I consider lead the SQ end of streaming) We have a streaming solution out performing "all" CD players, by the streaming DAC upsampling 16/44.1, to a sound that is now BETTER than their SACD player !!!
Then you can feed it with 24/192 bit files for even better performance. But as Mr_S says, not always easy to find the right music ;-).... Stunning when you do.
All assuming you have the rest of the system up to the same standard !
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
The SB3 is a pretty good (but not perfect) digital transport, certainly so for the dosh. I'm still surprised about the Beresford outperforming the Arcam. I had an older 7510 for a little while. Didn't really get on with it. Yes it was detailed, but I found it dry to the point of bleaching out the life from the musicians.
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Yeh the 7510 6/4 i first tried doesn't have much life to it, it's decent but it lacks emotion - as you say it is too sterile.

The 7520 and especially the Caiman 7520 are different animals though, i think you might be a little surprised how much better they are than the earlier Beresfords.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
The Slimserver server software also does auto downsampling on 24/96 files, to allow replay on their SB3 and similar. Rumours are that the new SB Touch will support 24/96 files out of the bag.
As such, I have tried some 24 bit files. Can't say I'm too impressed by the musical options that are on offer at the moment, too much plinky plonky tosh IMO.
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NIN recently gave away an album, called The Slip. They had downloads for 24/96 FLAC files too, which are nice, and to me sound better than the 16/44 despite me using a PA LMS as an output (Berry DCX2496). :)
 
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