amplifier recommendations

[spwath]

Sigh...

I was not serious...

[Footy]

Agreed about the external dac potentially remedies PC source issues (providing it got issues in the first place)

 

About the digital files themselves, the quality of the recording itself is far more important (than the way it's encoded). A bad recorded FLAC will still sound crap, while a good recorded 128kbps MP3 will still sound good. Of course you can test this yourself. Pick a good recorded FLAC, encode it to MP3, and try to do a comparison. 128 and 192kbps MP3 can still be discernible for some people with sharp ears, but I never heard or read anyone able to discern a 320kbps MP3 encoded from FLAC from the original FLAC.

 

I do believe amps, dacs, and even cables can alter the sounds to a certain extent. The issue is the scale of difference. In most cases, it's not worth it to shell out the extra money for that scale of difference. If the budget is there, it's far better to upgrade the headphone and/or speakers. I've auditioned $5 to close to $1000 headphone and interconnect cables. There are some differences (for better or worse), but I got to cringe and concentrate really hard to hear it. Which I don't think is an ideal music-listening situation. Surely nobody would wanna cringe and concentrate for hours of music listening. 

First and foremost thank you for posting a real response.

I completely agree that a bad recording is still bad, there are many examples of this even with big artists.

 

The differences between 320kbit mp3 and flac are more subtle than from 64->128 for example, and really you need better sources, amps and speakers in order to really notice the difference.

An interesting thing I observed with low bit rate or badly mastered music is that it quite often sounded better on lower end setups, I think this is because the additional clarity from a better system actually highlights the issues where as the lower end system is all a bit muffled anyway and smooths over them.

 

I run 2 sound systems and they are far from highend, however they are better than most.

Living room, Quad Elite Integrated amp with Quad 12L speakers sources from TV/DVD

Play Room, Quad Elite Preamp, Quad 909 Power, Quad 99 CDP, Monitor Audio GR20s, sources from CD and PC.

 

I have actually gone for a halfway house with my computer audio and picked oggvorbis 500k, from the PC source its very hard to tell the difference between ogg500 and flac/raw but you save more space

However there is a significant difference between a flac from the PC and the same track from the CD player, with the CD being considerably better

 

In regards to cables, there is a significant difference between basic cables and good cables however once you start to look at the extreme cables like nordost and other similarly priced brands its more to do with tuning your system than a direct reflection of quality.

[SSL]

I was not serious...

 

Sadly, some people in this thread are plenty serious.

[spwath]

Sadly, some people in this thread are plenty serious.

Yeah.

I tried to make it obvious i was joking, but i guess its hard when many people say the same thing, and are not.

[ShearMe]

Yeah.

I tried to make it obvious i was joking, but i guess its hard when many people say the same thing, and are not.

I remember the first time I was sarcastic on the internet...

[SSL]

I remember the first time I was sarcastic on the internet...

 

I'm surprised your memory goes back that far

 

[creatip123]

I remember the first time I was sarcastic on the internet...

 

When they invented the internet?