J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

[Rajiv]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Hi,

If I have missed some 'nuance' in your question - kindly shed some light

There is no 'nuance' in my question. It is just a simple straightforward question.

If I 'read' you correctly , you stated that the ST-Opus was the second best digital front end you have heard and that the Ypsilon was the most musical you have heard.

I only wanted to know which of the two you would choose. The choice was either A or B but you answered C .

Can you at least now tell me given a choice between the ST -Opus and the Ypsilon what would be your choice.

Regards
Rajiv

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

computer based audio is a nascent field.

Actually, sid, no it isn't. It's been on the go for ten or twenty years, or perhaps even more. I've been using PCs as a hifi source for just over ten years.

practicals are always more relevant than theory

arj, the networking thing is not theory: it is long-established, well-know, common sense, fact.

It's very odd that music reproduction is based in electronics, has science as its absolute foundation, relies on technology entirely and absolutely until we get right to the end of the chain, where people have been taught that they can throw all that away, and hey, just listen to it and never mind the science. No, do mind the science, and just listen because that is practical doesn't cut it. Listening is, after all, the only reason we do all this stuff in the first place --- but, as a tool, although it undeniably can be trained and sharpened, it is has so many faults. If I spent three-figure sums on cables, I'd notice a difference! Whether it was there or not.

But this thing doesn't even come within the audio sphere where a change of cable could make a difference. It is not part of the audio signal chain at all.

But, if this is to be done in the name of research (even I tried the green marker pen, but hey, green marker pen came free) then it should be blind-tested, and there is no reason why cat-anything could sound different to an ancient piece of thick-ethernet coax (10Mb/sec) --- or even wireless. Except that wireless should only be used in oxygen-free rooms, of course . And anyone who can hear the difference in a sighted test --- can't. In all innocence, and with the best of intentions, they are falling for the well-documented physical and psychological reasons why they hear something as different.

I don't believe in playing music from ram. It is playing from ram anyway, because it all gets buffered, and playing from memory is just buffering the whole song. But it costs little or nothing to try. I'm not sure about the separation of server and player on two machines, but I don't know the reasoning and it probably isn't impossible that it makes a difference. Of course, pro audio gear, such as Bhagwan is lucky enough to use, can't be doubted --- and that is firmly within the audio sphere of operation.

Tangentially, I was really delighted to discover a pure-common-sense audio/video cable company this week: Blue Jeans Cable. A blast of fresh air! I know where I'll be buying next.

 

[Nikhil]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

 

[mowgli80]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

All I can say after reading this is one needs to have an open mind. Pre conceived notions aside, computer based audio is a nascent field. I am learning and right now am commiting bigger and bigger sums of money, as I move on, and at the stage I am in, my setup handily beats Cd playback from an ayon Cd2 s, which is a $ 6500 player. Just as Bhagwan, I experimented with usb cables ( actually had a thread in hfv, for which there was huge derision and ridicule). Regardless I plowed on (settled on a $6o audioquest usb cable btw, and I will be the first to admit that in my system I hear more of a difference with coax rather than usb), and I believe I am getting somewhere now. Mine is a different path, where I am concentrating on isolating the usb to coax conversion outside the computer device entirely with its own power and clock. Now Bhagwan has indicated a different method. Perhaps I will try it, perhaps not, but I will keep an open mind, and make an attempt to atleast try and audition it, before making any judgements.
Cheers,
Sid

Well said Sid .... However the basis of our argument is our knowledge of how networking works ... Our anger is directed towards companies trying to take advantage of somebody's ignorance ... No problems with Bhagwan as it is his money that he is spending.

About having an open mind, our argument is based on the mathematics, on which error correction is based. 2+2 will always be 4 be it copper or silver wire and no number of auditions can prove otherwise. You may hear a difference between coax and usb but thats an apple to orange comparison. Spdif does not have error correction while usb does and is more reliable for data transmission and both might be transmitting different data. Difference between two usb cables is however ....

If interested, check out the theory behind it.
Cyclic redundancy check - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Note: like all things in life, there are limitations here. The chances of error not getting detected in networking is about 1 in 16 million to 1 in 10 billion. This is by design as scientists think this is good enough although they could have reduced it even further. Moreover, there are far greater chances of failure at other parts of the chain that we can ignore it.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Well said Sid .... However the basis of our argument is our knowledge of how networking works ... Our anger is directed towards companies trying to take advantage of somebody's ignorance ... No problems with Bhagwan as it is his money that he is spending.

Absolutely.

Nikhil, sorry, but slogans won't improve networking: the networking industry will. You can rely on it that they will. It is a hugely competitive area, and even the need for universal standards doesn't seem to slow it down that much.

It used to take a technician to make a connection to a 10Mb/s thick cable: now we can all have 1000Gb/sec, under our home desks if we want to, and, possibly for video it isn't even an inappropriate home technology.

The thing that needs to change is this obsessive audiophile gullibility. Let's call a spade a spade (and a banana plug a banana plug ), and lets look at utter nonsense and call it utter nonsense.

 

[sidvee]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

. You may hear a difference between coax and usb but thats an apple to orange comparison. Spdif does not have error correction while usb does and is more reliable for data transmission and both might be transmitting different data. Difference between two usb cables is however ....

What I meant Mowgli, was that I heard difference easily amongst different coax cables rather than different usb cables, not between usb and coax.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[sidvee]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Ok as long as anger is directed towards some company trying to take advantage of gullible people, that is fine, last I checked they are present in every field of life, not only audio. Please spare some anger towards them as well :lol:
Cheers,
Sid

 

[panditji]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Well, I can't help it but point everyone to read Alan Shaw's (Harbeth) views on sound, amplifiers, cables etc ... it can be found on the user group link on the main Harbeth website... Whether everyone agrees to his views or not is their personal decision but he is someone who designs excellent sounding speakers with a sound engineering background and experience.....

I think the main reason why people choose to ignore logic is because they would feel foolish to admit that they were wrong or were conned into spending a huge amount of money or that they lied and paid glowing tributes to a product which frankly did'nt deserve it...It is like trying to explain that there is no god to atheists...

 

[sidvee]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Actually, sid, no it isn't. It's been on the go for ten or twenty years, or perhaps even more. I've been using PCs as a hifi source for just over ten years.

.

Is that so? Then I wonder why so many methods of playing back audio over a computer, internal sound card , external usb to spdif converters (entirely new category, not existent until 2 - 3 years ago), the one that Bhagwan is referring to. Also when I got into it for the first time for my hi-fi needs a couple of years ago, there was no easy method, I had to read a gazillion websites with a gazillion views on what was the best way to implement computer based audio into your hifi and each claimed their method sounded the best. Does not sound like a mature, decade old technology. Of - course music from computer has been around, but Hi- fi, IMO is still nascent. I am getting ready to build a music pc to replace my laptop, but there is no one stop source to go and get one. I have to source everything and assemble it. To me hi- fi over pc sounds to be in the realm of early adopters. And when Windows by microsoft is the most popular OS, I bet we will have to keep adapting to listen to decent sound, as they keep screwing around with new versions to try and get it right. No wonder there is a Vinyl revival, a century old technology btw!
Cheers,
Sid

 

[mowgli80]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Ok as long as anger is directed towards some company trying to take advantage of gullible people, that is fine, last I checked they are present in every field of life, not only audio. Please spare some anger towards them as well :lol:
Cheers,
Sid

Can't do that .... GOI just banned it all
https://mobile.twitter.com/DDNewsLive/status/345172728229289984?p=v

 

[panditji]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Sid, maybe there are so many people involved in the same and they maybe keep trying to create newer ways to keep themselves in the business....You may admit, there are a number of people willing to spend money if they are told that THIS is the latest and the BEST way .....

The simplest way of listening to music via PC would be to send the signal to a good DAC which sends the signal to an amplifier.... I think businesses are just trying to reinvent the wheel rather than focussing on improving the simplest method which maybe USB, Coaxial, maybe a better internal sound card etc....

 

[sidvee]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

The simplest way of listening to music via PC would be to send the signal to a good DAC which sends the signal to an amplifier....

Panditji, talking about Dac' s, did you know that right around 2000/01, they were a dying component, only meant for fiddly audiophiles. They however, made a comeback in the past 2- 3 years. Why? AFAIK and have read it was all due to the popularity of playing back directly from the computer as downloaded music surpassed physical cd sales, hence also the inclusion of usb in dac's. I have Dac's purchased 5 years ago that did not have usb. So I stand by my belief that hi- fi from computer is not mature yet. Too many methods, cables, conventions, formats, file types etc. for it to be standardized and it still lies firmly in the hands of early adopters, tinkerers etc.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[malvai]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Indeed Panditji... I think most of the times we end up complicating what should be a simple joy.... I simply use a laptop, that I have optimised for Music playback (this means nothing else on it except windows professional 7, 64 bit and a JRiver software, Mozilla firefox and fidelizer). I use the USB ports one port to output to the W4S Dac2 and one port that connects my 2TB HDD that has the files... and I am quite happy with the sound....

 

[panditji]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

Absolutely Manav.... I wont be surprised reading about someone using a music server - mono DACs - Mono Amps - speakers...with separate power supplies for each component......

I tried an experiment some time back with an entry level DAC costing approx Rs.20000-22000 v/s my NAD 521 BEE CD player bought in 2005 for Rs.10,000 in Dubai....
I ripped a lossless track from a CD and played the same via the CDP and then via the laptop-DAC....The DAC was no competition to the sound from the CDP...

Now in Feb, 2005, the CDP cost me Rs. 10,000....I am sure the distributor cost for the same would be Rs. 6500 approx (correct me if I am wrong please) NAD must have made atleast Rs. 2000...so the approx manufacturing cost of the CDP would be Rs. 4500-5000 which includes a transport as well as a DAC..

If the 2005 manufactured CDP was beating the pants off the entry level DAC designed somewhere around 2010-2011 then there is something not right ....

I think people are being taken for a ride by these audio manufacturers by using jargon claiming to be newer/better products when inside nothing much has changed ...

 

[square_wave]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

From what I have heard and seen these days, playback from computers is state of the art if one knows how to do it.

 

[bhagwan]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

From what I have heard and seen these days, playback from computers is state of the art if one knows how to do it.

Cannot agree with you more;
100 % correct

 

[sidvee]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

If the 2005 manufactured CDP was beating the pants off the entry level DAC designed somewhere around 2010-2011 then there is something not right ....

I think people are being taken for a ride by these audio manufacturers by using jargon claiming to be newer/better products when inside nothing much has changed ...

I am not sure about entry level but at the higher end, this is not the case anymore. At least in my case, my computer setup plus dac is beating my past AyonCd2s used as a cd player decisively, and I have dropped the idea of even having a cd transport in my system, because though it is a pain to rip my 700cd's, I will enjoy them better Sq wise on my computer.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[panditji]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

You must be right Sidvee...but I am sure the technology should have trickled down to mid level products as well which I am not sure is happening....

Also your computer setup + DAC must be costing a bomb if it is bettering the Ayon CD2 and if that is true it bloody well sound nice....

 

[arj]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

arj, the networking thing is not theory: it is long-established, well-know, common sense, fact.

It's very odd that music reproduction is based in electronics, has science as its absolute foundation, relies on technology entirely and absolutely until we get right to the end of the chain, where people have been taught that they can throw all that away, and hey, just listen to it and never mind the science. No, do mind the science, and just listen because that is practical doesn't cut it. Listening is, after all, the only reason we do all this stuff in the first place --- but, as a tool, although it undeniably can be trained and sharpened, it is has so many faults. If I spent three-figure sums on cables, I'd notice a difference! Whether it was there or not.

Thad, I agree with you on Networking having known TCP/IP protocols well. But again in the past I have eaten crow with my views

1. on Digital Cables- i felt bing a digital signal the cable should not make a difference..But it Does.
2. Power cables : i still dont understand the theory but it does (to my ears)
3. CD transports..theoretically has to be the same..but it is not
quite a few more as well

In each one of the above i simply could not convince myself intiially theoretically but had to change my mind


and in case of Music..it is not that science cannot measure it..We just Dont know What to measure ! and if we do find it we will definitely be able to measure it and I do blame audio manufacturers for the same.

I have heard Bhagwans system and it is truly state of the art as far as systems go..my system would never be able to reproduce the details in a spatial space the way that does and any microscopic differences are very apparent.

Knowing Bhagwans vast knowledge /experience i am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and hear from him as to what he feels...although i do not agree that it will make a difference and from reading his post even he is not sure..but wants to give it a try anyway

 

[bhagwan]

re: J Play 5.1 - 2 Box on Win 8 with ULTRA Mode & Hibernate ON

My computer setup plus dac is beating my past AyonCd2s used as a cd player decisively, and I have dropped the idea of even having a cd transport in my system, because though it is a pain to rip my 700cd's, I will enjoy them better Sq wise on my computer.
Cheers,
Sid

100 % Correct;
Same here;
I ave 5K ++ CD's & I do not have a cD Player;
Have not had one since 4 + years.
Rippin the CD's is not that bad or difficult - on dB Power Amp - Accurate Rip in Wave takes 5 to 8 mins per cd in Secure Mode....
Not only can I share my music - I have so much music from different people from all around the world - in fact a 500 GB HDD is in DHL - German Post that is on its way from the Canton Room @ Munich Show.
Music options have increased & I have shared so much of my 16TB of music with people - all are enjoying;
This is a win win situation...
I am in favour of Computer Audio & I do suggest & recommend it to all.
J Play 5.1 - 2 machine set up...please do try it on Win 8 with Ultra mode & hibernate on...