I don't have much audiophile cred to lose, so I'll just admit it up front: I've tried boutique players...can't hear it. I've tried memory play...can't hear it. I've tried playing from battery power and shutting down everything in the system that can be shut down....can't hear it. I very rapidly came to the same conclusion you jokingly referred to above -- I need to listen to music that bores me so I can listen for these differences instead of getting distracted by the damn music, which doesn't seem to understand my audiophile objectives! Found some well recorded Western European folk music (It was not Polka, not that lively, but nearly as melodically goofball and annoying) that would encourage me to listen to anything but the music. Still couldn't hear it.
I don't know if it is my impatience with critical listening or the SNR of the voices in my head or some combination of the two, but given all that trial for nothing, I've gone with the path of greatest convenience, least resistance, and the best user interface (not to mention seamless integration with a bunch of stuff in my house; I use iTunes.
Talk about losing my audiophile cred...if I had any.
Yep, I use iTunes in a MacBook Pro with all the files right there on an internal hard drive, USB out to an inexpensive little Chinese box that isolates and reclocks, then optical to the DAC in my active monitors and digital coax to the DAC in my headphone rig, both of which have lower SNR than the virgin count on Jersey Shore. I don't hesitate for a second to surf over here and harrass Frank while I'm listening. And I hear no degredation of sound quality when I do that (well, sometimes my tweeters disappear). The fan almost never comes on and while the hard drive makes a little sound - a little more than the original, smaller one did, actually - when the music is playing...hmm, I think I've said this before -- I can't hear it.
Tim
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