970 musicality

This post might be of help to the less technically knowledgeable Outlaws. I purchased the 970 last summer to go with my 7100 amp and although movies have been great I was generally disappointed with the two channel stereo quality out of the 970 and wanted to find out where the weak link was. I am using the Yamaha DV-C6770 super audio / dvd-A player via the stereo line out for standard CDs. After reading an excellent review of the Squeezebox Silent PC Review - Squeezebox 3 I realized that you could actually get better quality sound by digitizing CDs than from a lower end CD player. Well, I just purchased a squeezebox and using the analog out on the squeezebox and the bypass mode on the 970 input, I now have what I would call good quality stereo sound and I haven't even converted to FLAC yet.
Perhaps the reports of better musicality of the 990 over the 970 comes from people in a situation similar to me with lower quality DACs on their CD players in combination with the lower quality DACs on the 970. In any case, with the higher quality DACs on the squeezebox in combination with my 970, I now have a digital cd collection and sound quality that is much improved and to my ears very good. Hope this helps others that might be in a similiar situation.

dvenardos: I am a 970 owner who just bought a Squeezebox within the past month (I LOVE the Squeezebox, by the way).

As far as two-channel performance with my 970, I have been very happy with it configured as follows: Analog bypass mode, using the analog HPF/LPF 80Hz crossover setting for my sub.

I, too, was less than impressed with the 970's internal DAC performance, and in an A/B comparison of the 970's DAC and the DAC in my Cambridge Audio 640C CD player, I much preferred the Cambridge. Recently, I upgraded to an outbaord DAC that supports digital streams from both the SB and the Cambridge. I have not played around too much with the analog outs of the SB, prefering instead to use my new DAC. I can tell you, however, that I prefer the new DAC over the Cambridge.

From what I have learned perusing the Slim Devices forums, the performance of the SB's internal DAC is on par with a decent mid-fi CD player (i.e. in the $300 - $400 range). Further improvements can be had by upgrading the switching power supply that came with the SB to a linear, regulated power supply and also by going with an outboard DAC.

Whether using the SB's DAC or an outbaord DAC, many people claim they prefer the sound of the SB over a standard CD player. I recall a review where they compared the digital out from a SB to the digital out from a CD player fed to the same DAC. The SB sounded better. Why? The SB receives a pure digital stream wirelessly from the harddrive of your PC, thus eliminating problems associated with the transport from a conventional CD player (vibration, jitter, etc.)

BTW, I am also using FLAC. And I'm glad to see another Outlaw out there using the SB! Feel free to drop me a line and we can swap notes about ripping, etc. It can be a little overwhelming at first, as there is not much in the way of user guides for the open source software commonly used. I'm still learning the ropes, so I can't say I'm anywhere near an expet, but will be glad to share what little I know!

The 990's better two-channel performance is likely due in large part to the DAC's: Scott has commented in the past that the DAC's in the 990 are of a higher quality. Analog bypass performance is apparently less of a difference between the two, which would tend to reinforce the DAC's role.

From what I've heard, the Squeezebox uses a very good DAC (Burr-Brown, if memory serves), whereas the Yamaha player I had used a DAC that was decent but not as good as my Model 950's was (and I'd expect the 950 and 970 to have relatively similar caliber DAC's). As Videodrome suggests, a lossless compression such as FLAC would be the optimal way to make use of the Squeezebox's sound quality chops.

Thanks for the responses and the confirmation of my hypothesis.

I also like the analog bypass, but I found the analog crossover of 80Hz to be too high for my speaker/sub combo. Probably because my sub is not that musical and my mains have a pretty good bass response. So I just send everything to the mains and do without the sub.

Yes, that's correct. I have read many of your posts when I go poking around for information and your knowledge is amazing.

Can someone clarify for me? I am correct in my understanding that using digital or coaxial outputs on a CD player will utilize the 970 Pre/Pro DAC's? So does that mean using analog outputs will use the CD players DAC's instead? If so, can the 970's musical shortcoming be overcome by a good CD player?

Here's what I wrote yesterday in this post :

The concensus seems to be that the 970 and 1070 are quite good as analog pre-amps, so using a source with good DAC's (such as the Squeezebox that dvenardos and Videodrome are using, or the Denon 3930 that Lizard King uses) and an analog bypass mode can be an excellent approach for music.

Thanks for indulging my ignorance on this subject. I can't afford to spend over $ 1000 for the Denon, but I do want good musical reproduction out of my system. I am really leaning toward returning the 970 for the 990 as a compromise for $ 300 more. So do most serious audio listeners have a separate CD player for their HT instead of a DVD/CD combo like an Oppo?

I think that dedicated CD players are becoming less common in home theater systems. I haven't had one in my system since I took my Yamaha CD changer out of the system almost four years ago.

I still have the Sony carousel that preceded my pioneer universal player. The Outlaw does the DACing for both so the sound is the same, and the Sony can do automatic dubbing to my Sony cassette deck, which the Pioneer won't.

I pieced together my system tempoarily last night using my old Carousel CD changer to check out the SQ. I must say that while good, I was not overwhelmed. Since I plan on having only a CD/DVD combo player, I guess I need the best DAC's I can get in the food chain (990?). The lack of bass so far has surpised me, although I admit I still haven't gone through all of the set-up so I am going to hook it all up and play for a few days to see if it gets better.

I'm kinda interested in more hard sonic info. Been thinking about a Squeezebox; my wife is waaayyyy into the idea of transferring our CDs to files as a space saver, but she also knows it would take an extraordinary amount of effort and some heavy storage capacity to actually accomplish that goal. Of course, I'm quite happy with the DACs in our Marantz carousel. I actually own two of them; got the second one dirt-cheap when the first was being serviced last year after an accident in our apartment (long story that has absolutely nothing to do with the Marantz's quality). Really like carousels, but for obvious reasons they're becoming dinosaurs.

The route I took was to keep my 970 (which I am very happy with) and address it's two-channel shortcomings by purchasing an audiophile-type outboard DAC. The net result cost-wise is the same as the difference between the 970 and 990 ($300). The DAC I'm using (Musiland MD10) uses Cirrus's Flagship CS4398 D/A Chip. It also allows you to select bit-depth on the fly (16, 20 and 24 bit). It's new, so I'm still evaluating it, but so far, I have been very happy with my purchase. I'm not sure how the 990's Analog Device AD1852 stacks up against the Cirrus, but I would venture to say it is no slouch.

Regarding tru blu's comment about storage capacity, with FLAC, you get compression that reduces the WAV file to 1/8th its original size, so you can fit a lot of songs per gig' of storage space. That said, it is time consuming ripping your CD collection.

Anybody know what kind of DAC was used on Oppo 981?

As I understand it, the Mediatek chip that serves as video DAC in the 981HD (used just for the composite and s-video outputs in this case) is also the audio processor and DAC. I've got some pictures under the hood in my 981HD review .

When I use the analogue/bypass route on my 970 I have it hooked up to my Denon 2910 universal player. I really like it for vocals because it sounds more natural with the voices coming smack dab from the center of the sound stage......noticeably more so than the 970's stereo mode.