I'm hoping someone out there can help me understand how the 950 performs D to A conversion. I am planning on using an Audiotron to stream WAV files to my 950 via optical input. I want the D to A conversion to be as good as possible. The 950 manual specifications are not too enlightening for me, stating that Digital to Analog is "CS4396 up to 24-bit/192khz".

What does this mean? Is the 950 providing 24/192 "oversampling" to any 16/44.1 bit stream? Or is it telling me something else? What does "up to" mean? Is it selectable?

Thanks!

It just means that the DAC's are capable of accepting up to 24 bit/192 kHz streams.

I don't think the Model 950 has upsampling capabilities. It would have been nice, however.

Dan

You can go to Cirrus Logic's web site and look up the model number to find out more...

http://www.cirrus.com/en/products/pro/detail/P33.html

http://www.cirrus.com/en/press/releases/P33.html

Thanks for the replies and the link. I think I get it.

I plan to get a high resolution player anyway, which I can use for "critical" listening. I'm still planning on ripping my CD's to my network and using an Audiotron for every day listening. I need to do something, as my carousel player only holds 400 CDs and I out grew it a long time ago!

Thanks again.

I am loving my Audiotron - but for me the biggest compromise in high fidelity comes pre Audiotron - my CD's getting compressed to MP3's. If you plan on keeping your CD stored in a WAV format 400 CD's would take you over 240 Gig of HD storage - more than my budget allows. So I have everything ripped to MP3's and whenever I am in the mood for 'serious' listening I just go get the CD and listen to that directly. Although lately I have found myself listening to Net radio streams more than my CD's.

Glad to hear you like your Audiotron. What audio electronics are you using it with? Any tips on setup or ideas to make it work more effectively for me would be appreciated!

I am actually planning on storing my CD's in uncompressed wav files. I plan on putting together a LINUX based file server with about 600gig of storage to start with, and room for expansion. Good news is the price of storage is coming down all the time.

MM- You know about EAC, right? (Exact Audio Copy) A piece of software that reads each section of a CD at least twice, which cuts way down on the error rate. Best digital audio extraction I've found.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

My Audiotron is plugged into an old Nakamichi receiver I had laying around (via analog - not the digital out) and then into Paradigm Monitor 11s. I think I will test out that EAC conversion app and compare that to my CD Player. Obviously with MP3's you can hear a difference - if you can set up a box with 600gig then wave files are the way to go. My only complaint with the Audiotron is the remote - you have to be right next to the unit for it to work and it doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Although you can control the unit via a web browser - so one day I'll just use a PocketPC to control it

Kevin-I do know about EAC. Discovered it reading an article in Hi-Fi News. Went to the web site. Looks like a great program. Have not downloaded it yet, but plan to get cracking on that after I get my file server put together.

TurnerF-Thanks for the feedback on the Audiotron. Have you used it at all for wave files? How is the sound quality?

I'm hoping the Audiotron will be easy enough to use that my wife can do it without too much trouble. Regardless of how much patient instruction I give her, if it is not easy she will, in her own words "keep hitting buttons until the right thing happens". Which has created some interesting results at times! I suppose if the remote is not intuitive enough I can port the functions to a universal remote.