Confused about digital audio, DAC and a deluge of hifi info

[Kruz]

Hello I hope someone can help me get my head around digital music. I'm in the process of putting together a plan about upgrading my system and went into a HiFi shop and got very very confused after talking to one of the employees there. Basically my question is around downloaded music.

My original plan was to purchase a marantz sr5008 and stream music I downloaded from itunes etc to whichever speakers I end up purchases (considering ascend sierra towers, salk song towers and maybe Tannoys now). After hearing my budget for my front speakers ($2-$3k) the hifi employee launched into a conversation about $800 bluray players, DACs and the need to balance my speaker budget with an expensive receiver that will somehow make everything sound better. Also he said to stay clear of MP3s.

10 years ago when I first purchased my first pair of (what I would consider serious speakers) I would listen to CDs off of my cambridge audio CD player. But with the ease of downloading music and being able to pick random songs from artists I don't want to go down the CD route.

What do you guys think? Are MP3s really bad? If so what is my alternative? Should I even consider something more expensive than the SR5008 if it has all the features I want (esp. network streaming)? The room is >1600 cubic feet(20' x 11') and the couch is facing the long wall.

Thanks for the help!

 

[ski2xblack]

What he told you was a bunch of hogwash. Your original plan is just fine.

All available evidence suggests 320kbps mp3 is very near human thresholds to discern any difference, and 44.1/16 redbook, FLAC, ALAC etc. exceed those thresholds. Provided you stick with 320kbps mp3 or higher resolution, the big issue with recordings is the production quality.

As for if the receiver, depends on what speakers you get and how loud you listen. Your room is not too large, so unless you pick some low sensitivity speakers you'll probably be ok.

 

[Pyrrho]

ski2xblack is right. Salesmen like to make money, so they often try to sell you things that you don't need. As far as the sound goes, your speakers matter far, far more than anything else, and so it makes sense to put most of your money there. It is, as ski2xblack indicates, only necessary to put serious concern into the amplification if the speakers are difficult to drive. If they are easy to drive, then you can run them with something cheap. I used to use a $600 receiver with speakers that retailed for well over $6000. It sounded great, as it should. I decided I wanted more (and newer) features, so I replaced the receiver with one that retailed for about $1700. If I do not engage any feature that affects the sound, it sounds the same now as before. The new receiver is capable of putting out about twice as much power as the old one, but my speakers are easy to drive, and the old receiver could drive them to levels I found painful with crystal clarity. So in my case, the extra power was useless. The better specifications on the new one also don't matter; for example, once one gets below the levels of distortion that humans can hear, getting any better will not matter for any human listening to it.

For a Bluray player, I recommend going with an Oppo if you can afford it:

OPPO BDP-103 Blu-ray Disc Player

That is because it is reliable and very capable. One can make it region free with kits on ebay (buy at your own risk, of course), which is another nice thing about it. But it is not going to make your CDs sound magically better than a cheaper player, or make your BDs look magically better than a cheaper one. Its DVD upconversion, though, is particularly good, so it may make a difference for them over a cheaper alternative. But they still will be DVDs, and not look as good as BDs, if viewed close enough for it to matter that you have an HDTV instead of a SDTV.


You do want to stay away from low resolution MP3s (again, just as ski2xblack stated already). But these days, with hard drive space so cheap and with fast internet connections, I would recommend sticking to lossless, but, really, you would be hard-pressed to hear the difference between that and a well-made high resolution MP3.

Regarding DACs, any decent home theater receiver has fine DACs in them; you do not need anything else. The Marantz you are thinking of would be totally fine. I personally would go with Yamaha, but one cannot really argue against going with Marantz, which makes a fine product.

 

[ImcLoud]

Kruz, I love itunes, I compare it to cd's, I have a few sacd's but no longer have a designated player hooked up, its just not a "real" difference to me that will make up for the convenience... This hobby is a balancing game, you balance, convenience, cost, aesthetics, with sound quality, just a never ending battle of compromises, unless you have a never ending budget, no wife, a designated room, and don't care what it looks like, then sure grab $250K in gear, throw 100K in room treatments all over the place, and put your chair rite in the sweet spot, with $100K in sacd's playing through what ever player is best at the time, ect ect ect...

Here is what I do, I use an ipad/ipod/or iphone because its "CONVENIENT", I use a pure i20 dock that takes the digital signal from the device and feeds it via a toslink cable to my DAC that feeds the amp... I think it sounds really good, a lot of people have heard it and I never heard anyone say its compressed or anything like that....
I love the Ascend towers, very nice speakers, if I were you I would be between them and the Salks....

This would be an AWESOME system if you are into it, I played with this m1 unit and it was SICK, music streamer, dac, preamp, its a real nice unit... very very nice stuff...
$4600 in gear for $1448!!!! They were just listed on the demo sight, I almost pulled the trigger, but I just have no where to put the stuff...
You can buy this setup and buy the extra amp, run them mono and get a sick deal on them heres a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBu9RQ4IrrA
heres the sales links
MUSICAL FIDELITY M1 CLiC & M1 PWR BUNDLE at Music Direct
MUSICAL FIDELITY M1 PWR POWER AMP (BLACK) **DEMO** at Music Direct

so that will give you mono blocks at 100w at 8 ohm 200w per channel at 4 ohm a dac/preamp, just need speakers..... Music fidelity makes nice stuff...

If you want to use an avr there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I just never liked mixing video circuits with music systems and I have a soft spot for "music only" systems... just something about a designated NO video bs system that is sexy, add to that mono blocks, and nice wood veneered towers, you have the makings what some perceive as art...


Another options is apple tv, a dac, and an amp, you can get an xda2, apple tv, upa 200 amp, and be around $700

 

[Kruz]

Thanks for the suggestions. You know the more I go to these hifi shops the more I like the idea of spending my money with people who actually care about customers (ascend and salk have been great to deal with so far and both have actually steered me away from more costly options). You have some very good points about the compromise that comes with this hobby. Ideally I would have a 2.1 dedicated music room and then a seperate home theater but I will just have to wait for that option .

Kruz, I love itunes, I compare it to cd's, I have a few sacd's but no longer have a designated player hooked up, its just not a "real" difference to me that will make up for the convenience... This hobby is a balancing game, you balance, convenience, cost, aesthetics, with sound quality, just a never ending battle of compromises, unless you have a never ending budget, no wife, a designated room, and don't care what it looks like, then sure grab $250K in gear, throw 100K in room treatments all over the place, and put your chair rite in the sweet spot, with $100K in sacd's playing through what ever player is best at the time, ect ect ect...

Here is what I do, I use an ipad/ipod/or iphone because its "CONVENIENT", I use a pure i20 dock that takes the digital signal from the device and feeds it via a toslink cable to my DAC that feeds the amp... I think it sounds really good, a lot of people have heard it and I never heard anyone say its compressed or anything like that....
I love the Ascend towers, very nice speakers, if I were you I would be between them and the Salks....

This would be an AWESOME system if you are into it, I played with this m1 unit and it was SICK, music streamer, dac, preamp, its a real nice unit... very very nice stuff...
$4600 in gear for $1448!!!! They were just listed on the demo sight, I almost pulled the trigger, but I just have no where to put the stuff...
You can buy this setup and buy the extra amp, run them mono and get a sick deal on them heres a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBu9RQ4IrrA
heres the sales links
MUSICAL FIDELITY M1 CLiC & M1 PWR BUNDLE at Music Direct
MUSICAL FIDELITY M1 PWR POWER AMP (BLACK) **DEMO** at Music Direct

so that will give you mono blocks at 100w at 8 ohm 200w per channel at 4 ohm a dac/preamp, just need speakers..... Music fidelity makes nice stuff...

If you want to use an avr there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, I just never liked mixing video circuits with music systems and I have a soft spot for "music only" systems... just something about a designated NO video bs system that is sexy, add to that mono blocks, and nice wood veneered towers, you have the makings what some perceive as art...


Another options is apple tv, a dac, and an amp, you can get an xda2, apple tv, upa 200 amp, and be around $700

 

[TheoN]

Thanks for the suggestions. You know the more I go to these hifi shops the more I like the idea of spending my money with people who actually care about customers (ascend and salk have been great to deal with so far and both have actually steered me away from more costly options). You have some very good points about the compromise that comes with this hobby. Ideally I would have a 2.1 dedicated music room and then a seperate home theater but I will just have to wait for that option .

In my experience, implementing digital media servers is one of the shortcomings of many (though not all) hifi stores. Once things cross over into dealing with computer operating systems and networks, it's outside their comfort zones. Consequently, you'll hear some folklore being repeated by sales staff.

The other thing that sales people will do is confine the discussion only within the sphere of products they sell. For example, one could legitimately argue that the Oppo Blu-ray players are the best Blu-ray players on the market. AT $499 for the entry level BDP-103 and $1,100 for the BDP-105 you are getting the best of the best. In fact, there are other Blu-ray products that OEM or use the Oppo players as the guts for their more expensive products. Here on audioholics, there was an article about his Lexicon did just that. Now, $499 is far below the $800 product the sales person was quoting you and that's because Oppo doesn't sell through dealers (with very few exceptions).

If you're concerned about your DAC, let's make some practical suggestions here:

1) Try out your Marantz' DAC. I'm willing to bet you'll be very happy with it.
2) If you have an itch to find out whatever else is out there for DACs, try the close-out specials at Music Direct | Audiophile Hardware, Vinyl Records and Analog Gear | (800) 449-8333. There are a few DACs that are 50% off and will run you just over $100 to $500.
3) If you want to go for the best Blu-ray player (the Oppo BDP-105) then it has a built-in DAC with some of the best chips you can get. There's a built in USB input so it's all self-contained.

Remember that your DAC will only be as good as the original digital source file.

So, regarding digital file formats: Personally speaking, I want all my music in as high a resolution possible so I have all my music ripped as Apple Lossless Files.

MP3 is by definition a lossy format and as it's been previously pointed out, there are certainly arguments to be made about the audibility of the compression at a given bitrate. The audibility of the compression will oftentimes depend on the type of music you are compressing and the playback system. Nevertheless, if I do use a lossy compression scheme, I use AAC (as I prefer it); and personally think that AAC sounds better at the same bitrate when compared to MP3. Again, personally speaking, I would not recommend using MP3 as an archival scheme because I feel there are better codecs out there that do a better job at the same bitrate.

As the other posters have said here, you have several options. While that can initially seem confusing, it also affords you tremendous flexibility. HiFi stores will unfortunately tend to give you solutions based solely on what they sell. So just keep that in mind. There's more than one way to accomplish your goal. If I were you, I'd put the majority of my money on the fundamentals — speakers and amps— and look for good deals on the Blu-ray/DAC end of things.