Trinity DAC
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My question was why would you do a conversion on the fly with your CPU while playing the music. If you did an A/B you would here a difference in the sound quality . If I am not playing the disk directly , I have the music ripped to wave and have it saved on nas with SSD. Drive.
Nothing touches native DSD done right....meaning no conversion can match native.
Yes, even the Mac version can now. PC version always could. Careful though, its a CPU intensive process.
What is exactly the disturbing part? The Trinity dac/transport combination is really very good with redbook and I enjoy listening to my cd's with music that is not available in high res. So if you want to listen to 16/44.1 only, this combo sounds damn fine. My point is that to my ears high res files sound very clearly better than redbook. So why not use high res files in order to get the best sound out of the Trinity dac/transport combination? I have been collecting high res for some time now, that is even before I bought the Trinity combo. Right now I have about 2,5 terrabite of high res music and it makes an awful lot of fun listening to these files as well. But like I mentioned, this does not imply that you should not enjoy yourself listening to 16/44.1.
I have been living with the Trinity dac and Trinity transport for approximately two weeks now. Due to the holidays I was in the lucky position to listen to this combo very intensively. I am still as enthusiast as I was on first hearing. The Trinity combo are formidable performers, not only with high res files but also with red book cd. As mentioned before, I prefer the sound of good recorded high res files to good recorded redbook: less digital stress, greater dynamics, more fluid and smooth sound, and a more convincing presentation of the soundstage. I would gladly receive any suggestions regarding very fine/stunning sounding high res recordings.
Review of Dcs Vivaldi by Michael Fremer is now available on the Stereophile website. In it he makes some interesting remarks about red book versus high res files including some RR HRX waf files. His statements concur with my experiences with the Trinity combo: good high res betters good red book although the latter can also be great fun when you use a great dac. The question even arises if good vinyl reproduction really betters good high res files reproduction.
I am rather curious too. Any way to join the club or get invited ? Vivaldi needs a reference clock to perform at its best.
Regards,
Joe Ling
Audiocrack,
I'm a little bit surprised you like the Trinity so much.
Let me explain. Trinity is extremely transparent to my ears. It is like listening directly to the mic feed. Gobs of resolution, very deep, saturated tonality, all coupled with extreme fluidity and total lack of grain or digital glare. To use John Darko's expression - the Trinity is like mineral water in a world of carbonated soft drinks.
Now, I maybe wrong here (please feel free to correct me on that !), but I always thought that Zanden CDT/DAC combo is on the warm side of neutral. So, if you had successfully voiced your system around Zanden front end (by careful choice of cables, speakers and amplification etc), one may think, that after doing a simple swap, you may lack the certain coloration that Zanden gives.
I'm a little bit surprised you like the Trinity so much.
Let me explain. Trinity is extremely transparent to my ears. It is like listening directly to the mic feed. Gobs of resolution, very deep, saturated tonality, all coupled with extreme fluidity and total lack of grain or digital glare. To use John Darko's expression - the Trinity is like mineral water in a world of carbonated soft drinks.
Now, I maybe wrong here (please feel free to correct me on that !), but I always thought that Zanden CDT/DAC combo is on the warm side of neutral. So, if you had successfully voiced your system around Zanden front end (by careful choice of cables, speakers and amplification etc), one may think, that after doing a simple swap, you may lack the certain coloration that Zanden gives.
Adam, this is an interesting approach. Let me explain as follows. I am not only using the Zanden cd-transport and dac but I am combining them with (active isolation) devices of Halcyonics. As a consequence the noisefloor of the Zanden cd-player has been significantly reduced. And as a consequence of this the Zanden cd-combo made a big step forward as regards info retrieval. That said the Dcs Scarlatti is still better at info retrieval but the Zanden is not that far behind. In combination with - what I would call - a very humane presentation of the music this makes that I love the Zanden combo. Please keep in mind that the Tidal T1 speakers (with the big Duelund silver caps in it's xover) are very revealing speakers. In addition the Taralabs zero gold ic's and omega gold speaker cables are revealing cables. So I never felt that the Zanden combo was sounding too warm. The Trinity combo opened for me the way to high res files (had not used the Dcs Scarlatti for high res). Sofar I have used the Trinity combo mostly for playing high res files; for me these files have added a new dimension to my 'digital world'. The presentation of the Trinity combo is also very natural (or if you want: humane) without any digital harshness or glare. So in this regard Zanden and Trinity can be compared very well, albeit with the addional dimension of the high res files I described earlier in this thread. The trinity combo with good high res files is the best digital I have heard so far in my systems (and just to be clear: this statement does not imply that the Trinity combo is the best digital device in the world as such stupid claims mean nothing to me).So in short, I love both combo's but to me this does not imply any contradiction.
Horses for courses! Dacs for formats.
Dacs generally have sweetspots. Zanden is a RBCD centric Dac, for example, like the Chord Qute.
Next you have to try DSD128!!!!!
Having spent 6 long years tweaking my Zanden...I have to concur with Audiocrack. The Zanden is a very finicky piece of equipment when it comes to certain things, namely tubes in powersupply and isolation. The interesting thing is that when I finally managed to get everything isolated and the tubes set...the Zanden voice remained the same! but the bass power took a whole new level! and detail retrieval and noise floor improved as ?Audiocrack experienced. But as much as these improvements were great...what mattered even more was what was lost: softness in the bass, slight rounding of notes...which led to a slight warmish, blurred delivery. What I think some Zanden fans found was that the purity of tone for them was more important than that last bit of detail and the softer gentler bass...but if u make these important changes to all 4 boxes, the bass slam, linearity, burnishing of the edges of notes really takes off...but he original purity of tone remains.
This is one man's experience which seems similar to Audiocracks. The only other person who has heard this is my local Stillpoints dealer who has heard a reviewers Zanden 4box and concurred that he heard and liked the changes I had made to my Zanden setup.
This is one man's experience which seems similar to Audiocracks. The only other person who has heard this is my local Stillpoints dealer who has heard a reviewers Zanden 4box and concurred that he heard and liked the changes I had made to my Zanden setup.
Maybe I should indeed listen to DSD 128, Wisnon. However, given my recent experiences with the quality of pcm sound through the Trinity combo it is hard to believe that dsd 128 can sound better. But I suppose you never know for sure until you have heard it for yourself under conditions that You are (somewhat) familiar with.
There is only a handful of read DSD dac. Many top notch DSD capable DAC (MSB, CH, dCS?) converted the DSD to PCM firstly in the DAC.
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