AnandTech: Audiophile Journeys with a PC
Good info, although a lot of greek for newbie like me 
Its a very nice article. For a change it doesn’t skim the surface like most AT articles these days. The bit on DRC is quite interesting and its something I intend to do for my setup soon. Need to borrow a mic and preamp from somewhere.
Twisted Pear Audio has a DIY kit(Buffalo DAC) based around the most sought after DAC at the moment - the ESS Sabre8 ES9008 converter.
Wish I had the time to actually assemble one myself. Would be a fun and not too hard DIY project with potentially stellar results.
Yep, really in depth article. Except he seems to like single driver speakers too 
Just one query.. isn’t DRC all about applying equalisation - and isn’t EQ like one of the ‘sins’ of pure sound? 
You may get check it out in Mumbai sometime early/mid next year- touchwood.
I asked Russ to hold it actually. The time is not right to get electronics into the country - my 4870X2 got delayed by ten days because of 26/11, and there was a lot of back and forth. Dunno if those guys will be able to do the same for their order.
So maybe, end of Jan. There’s a fair bit of assembling required as the Ivy and the supplies still need to be knocked together. Russ is confident the Buffalo beats out the Opus by a fair margin, so I’d be interested to hear the results.
To the question of EQ, it normally creates phase errors, but whether those errors are audible or not is a big question. Douglas Self held the view that even absolute phase (inversion of a signal by 180 degrees) was not audible, till he heard some specific systems and music and admitted that it was.
ALS seems to be the kind of guy who likes single speakers and tubes. Not sure that our minds meet there, but at least he found a OS DAC beat a NONOS DAC. I hope he will audition a good pair of speakers that don;t need so much correction next.
@Chaos - if you were in Mumbai, you could’ve borrowed my mic and mixer anytime. Maybe it’s time for me to invest in room correction software too.
Heh heh sangram you should try listening to my new NOS dac built by Peter Daniel. Its stellar :). Never expected a NOS dac to sound this good. Plus Sridhar got me a killer deal on it.
Not surprised really, Peter is a man of very good taste and the DAC is extremely simple, which I guess contributes to the sound. He uses quality parts throughout. I think somebody in Mumbai also told me he’s buying one - Ronnie IIRC.
I do plan to build the PD kit too, the premium kit sounds like a good source to have on hand. Maybe in the middle of 09.
Got the premium kit with all BG caps built by him for not much more than what the DIY kit retails for (I believe the list price of the premium version is 999USD while I got it for much much lower even after factoring in the shipping+duty). I think Ronnie also got the same DAC as well. One of the other folks who got the DAC has a pretty pricey Ayre CD Player based on BB PCM1704-K and he said that the DAC decimates the analog outs of that CDP.
Nice. I don’t have that kind of cash for some time now, as tax season is approaching fast. I prefer building when I can anyway. It calms me.
Not surprised by the fact that it shames a good CD player, we knew about that. I hope we can do a swap meet sometime after I get the Buffalo up and running
All that sounded pretty much Greek/Latin to me- maybe interspersed with some Baanglaa.
Very nice post and info dude
Anyone played about with DRC, were the results noticeable ?
be verbose
This is an intersting quote, what do you do with ppl that rip vinyl to digital and play that instead ?
As they still claim vinyl sounds better than a CD 
An analog rip vs a digital rip hmmmm..