Canuck Audio Mart

'Ear grating' and detail need not be bed mates.
The detail offered with digital sources has been the bread and butter of the industry for decades, and recordings have fallen in line with the theory forever.
I love detail. The 'tick' of a cymbal is what I need and crave, and digital does that easily.

The harshness and grain of yore is long gone, it is all now just flavour.

^ Yes. I was referring to poor recordings and mixings. Where the crap was done before making the master. Some DACs can actually make this sound remarkably pleasant, I was amazed. But some "detail" has to be sacrificed to do that i.e. something removed from the recording, some recorded intention removed. Anti-hifi. What we need is a parametric ignorance filter.

One thing I noticed about some newer DACs is they are all about detail and sacrifice some fullness/weight to achieve it. I am not so much into the "hifi" detail thing unless the recording is very good, which really most normal recordings are not.

One DAC for good recordings, one for lesser ones. This would work, I have seen/heard it work here...unfortunately the DACs weren't mine, nor could they be easily bought.

That's the route I have gone myself.

I have my trusty ole, analog sounding, Roksan in place to tame the harsh sounding redbook discs that are all too common in my collection. I have a Transporter and Metric Halo which are fully capable of revealing all the good (and bad) that is captured on a recording, redbook or 24/96, and I have my Modwright Sony to handle my SACD works. I also have a tubed DAC (Lite Audio DAC 60) but it is used mostly in my office.

There are cheaper ways to make some of the harsher CDs sound IMO much better. I have found that ripping them to 192 or 320kbps MP3 or WMA, copying them to my PS3 (instead of streaming from PC, otherwise PS3 doesn't use/get all the embedded tag info), and playing from there via HDMI. I hate to say it, but it doesn't sound bad at all. Please don't tell anyone I said that.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed something similar after ripping CDs in some way.

I have no idea exactly why the part of those lousy recordings I identify as harshness, or at least annoying to my ears, mostly disappears. The better the DAC I've tested said CD recordings on, the more clear the harshness, even though it may sound a bit less abrasive. So it must be in the CD master. Somehow it gets "compressed" out... Certainly the MP3 doesn't do anything helpful with the good recordings.

By playing from a hard drive you have substantially reduced the noise and jitter produced from a cdp. There are other reasons though elimination of the physical transport is right up there with one of the greatest benefits. Speaking of jitter the best connection I've experienced that minimizes that distortion has been via firewire.

My local dealer just brought in the YBA DAC. In the store it sounded great, like a HQ CD. I will sample one, but this will be my first and only DAC and no reference to compare other than my sound card. For whatever it will worth, I shall post my impressions.

I love YBA stuff but no one seems to carry their product in Ontario anymore. I usually audition at least 2 comparable units at a time for reference and comparison. Do keep us updated on your audition.

This coming Tuesday Nov 10 (5 to 9PM), Audio One (Toronto) will be having a product demo of the Linn DS network players. If anyone is attending hope to see you there.

Have a good weekend.

Electronic Depot on Lundys Lane in Niagara Falls carries YBA. They are a member dealer of this site.

Not aware of that place at all, thanks. That would be a good excuse to go to Niagara falls .