Source
r/audiophile•
39pine

Experienced the magic

Impressions

Hi everyone I've been upgrading this past year. Started with the rega line,p1,p2,now p3.Then saw excellent deal on evo 4.4 speakers .The combination sounded great the soundstage opened up .All this was running through Yamaha av reciever and all the reviewers said you need a 2 channel amplifier to really bring out the magic.So again found deal on a cyrus one and again soundstage opened up a bit more and the base mids and highs just seemed crisper.Then the other day asked my hifi guy about the exact cartridge for my rega,and again got a great deal .So I just hooked up the new cartridge and put on a reissue of james taylor greatest hits,and that's when it happened, I've heard that record numerous times but never like this ,all the instruments from the background jumped forward and across the boundaries of the speakers the vocals were crisper hell it felt like I was at a concert.All the things the reviewers talked about I experienced for the first time.Now I need help with my digital experience, I cant get any enjoyment out of streaming, I've bought a Yamaha nps303 streamer and tried tidal hifi and I dont understand why everyone says digital is better than analog records.Theres no dynamics or soundstage, so please help me ,do I need a better dac?

Posted Apr 27, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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squidbrand•

Digital is superior as a medium for music vs. a vinyl record... but the sound of a particular recording on vinyl or in FLAC (or in any other format) is not just down to the format. It's mostly down to the mastering—meaning the transfer that was done from the music publisher's archival copy of the music, to whatever the final delivery format is. This is a process that's done by a person, not just a machine, so it's subject to the mastering engineer's tastes and skill... as well as the instructions they had from the publisher about how they want it to sound. It's almost never just a straight up conversion. Compressors, equalizers, and other processors are involved. It can affect the sound a lot.

A well-mastered vinyl record will sound better than a poorly mastered digital file.

It works this way within a format too. An MP3 file that was created from a well-mastered digital version of a song will sound better than a high res FLAC file that came from a poorly done master. Garbage in, garbage out.

What type of music do you listen to? A lot of rock music in particular has been very badly treated by the endless “loudness wars” remastering campaigns of the last 10-15 years of the CD era, so a lot of that music sounds pretty bad on streaming services.

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39pineOP•

Mostly stuff from the 70,s maybe early 80,s ,not just rock I like steely dan, to pink floyd supertramp, accoustic stuff too.

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squidbrand•

It's going to be case by case then.

If you're curious about whether a DAC upgrade would help, the good thing is that you can get a world-class DAC for only around 100 bucks. Get a Schiit Modi, Topping E30, SMSL Sanskrit, Monoprice Liquid Spark DAC, etc., and connect that to your streamer over the optical or coaxial output. Then connect the DAC's analog outs to your amplifier.

It's also possible your Cyrus may have a built in DAC which may or may not be better than the one built into the Yamaha. But you weren't specific about what you have.

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39pineOP•

Ya cyrus purely analog no dac,Yamaha streamer 500 dollar streamer so not sure quality of dac.

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39pineOP•

So spending money on a separate dac wont fix the streamed stuff from tidal,I did notice newer music on tidal sounds good.

1
bigbura•

Aren't most streaming services sending lossy files? So you are comparing lossless vs lossy in your LPs vs streamed content?

For me, the convenience of streamed content does not outweigh the crappy files being sent over on these services and the lower sound quality that comes with that.

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39pineOP•

Streaming supposedly lossless hihi cd quality files.tidal hifi tier.

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Emotional_Hamster86•

Tidal uses their compressed mqa crap even for he hifi tier. so U dont even get CD Quality.

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