I've been thinking about sources the last couple of days.
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of digital is the ease we can get a decent quality signal into our amplifiers.
Even the output from most 'common' cell phones appears to be reasonably 'clean', however the levels are often too low for higher impedance headsets and line inputs. Buying a lot of music on iTunes (the convenience is unbeatable), the quality of the listening experience is probably limited more by the source files (and studio level compression) than the actual gear.
This is actually confirmed by listening to vinyl in my system, which justs sounds so much better than my electronic files - But I regrettably only buy a small percentage of music on vinyl... and I need the tunes for the car etc, thus, lots of electronic files.
Which brings me to my recent purchase of a fairly cheap "Airtry" wifi Music receiver, for a third (bedroom) system, I did not want to go to expense of a separate DAC+Airport express. This little device hooks up to your wifi network or you can stream directly to the device. From what I've read it incorporates a Cirrus Logic DAC, similar to that used in phones and hooks up via line-in on an amp). And it sounds absolutely fine! Very convenient streaming from iphone and volume adjustable via iphone. It is more than adequate for iTunes sourced AAC files, and it was fairly cheap.
So especially for guys starting out - is it even necessary to even spend a lot of money on a DAC, when fairly compentent 'delivery' systems are available right in your pocket? Better spend money on amps and speakers - one can always add a dac later or if you have lots of high-def files... Or am I underestimating the separate DAC (except for very high quality source files).
What do you guys think?
Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of digital is the ease we can get a decent quality signal into our amplifiers.
Even the output from most 'common' cell phones appears to be reasonably 'clean', however the levels are often too low for higher impedance headsets and line inputs. Buying a lot of music on iTunes (the convenience is unbeatable), the quality of the listening experience is probably limited more by the source files (and studio level compression) than the actual gear.
This is actually confirmed by listening to vinyl in my system, which justs sounds so much better than my electronic files - But I regrettably only buy a small percentage of music on vinyl... and I need the tunes for the car etc, thus, lots of electronic files.
Which brings me to my recent purchase of a fairly cheap "Airtry" wifi Music receiver, for a third (bedroom) system, I did not want to go to expense of a separate DAC+Airport express. This little device hooks up to your wifi network or you can stream directly to the device. From what I've read it incorporates a Cirrus Logic DAC, similar to that used in phones and hooks up via line-in on an amp). And it sounds absolutely fine! Very convenient streaming from iphone and volume adjustable via iphone. It is more than adequate for iTunes sourced AAC files, and it was fairly cheap.
So especially for guys starting out - is it even necessary to even spend a lot of money on a DAC, when fairly compentent 'delivery' systems are available right in your pocket? Better spend money on amps and speakers - one can always add a dac later or if you have lots of high-def files... Or am I underestimating the separate DAC (except for very high quality source files).
What do you guys think?
