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Hi Romy,

You wrote:
 Also, I remember that in 1998 or something like this when the first Sony SACD machines were only about to heat the market I was given a demo of SACD played directly form the original hard-drive and recorded via the original “conceptual” DSD AD-DA processors. It was phenomenal and it was the only time when I heard a good performing DSD. Of course since then no one make good DSD converters…. And the SACD as it und up turn out to be a crap. Still, I’m sure that even if I dig the original pro DSD processor then, although it might do good sound, but I do not know if it will be able to be transparent to something that distinct my FM form my LP ….

If it was an original DSD converter, was it a Sony or more likely Ed Meitner's? I wanted to use unprocessed DSD as a digital delay and was looking for converters some time ago. Being in Canada, I spoke with Ed about DSD. His A/D has the ability to be adjusted to be nicely linear. Other units may not be able to do it. But there is a "bit" of processing in programmable logic to get the DSD stream. Something I am not that thrilled about. Also, Ed strongly recommended against just low-pass filtering the output DSD to get audio out. This is exactly what some equipment modders do. If Ed's DSD equipment were not that expensive, I would love to try it and modify it.

On paper, the best computer PRO audio card is Lynx. Based on measurements, Lynx does something better than others. I have seen some tests of Creative cards and was not impressed. But computer is such a horrible environment, with horrible power supplies. So it is the last place I would want to put my converters into. But because it is the simplest and cheapest solution, that is what most people do. Lynx has an external rack converter unit for about $2k. It could be interesting. But I would look on any external unit only if it can accept an external reference clock and if it uses asynchronous data transfer for DAC (i.e. the external DAC is the master, uses its own or master clock and requests data from the PC when its input buffer is low). Right now the most external units have only 24/96 A/D while the internal cards go 24/192. I would definitely prefer 192k samples/s. Mind you, the converter performance goes down with higher sampling rates.

Cheaper PRO cards are M-Audio Audiophile 24/196 and ESI Juli@. I just bought Audiophile USB external unit for a PC based audio test measurement unit. It has only 24/96 A/D but we will see how it sounds.

There is something about FM radio. I even wondered what is the net processing done to the signal by the process of FM modulation, transmission, reception and demodulation. I have an intercom with FM radio built into a wall in the kitchen. I listen to it during dinner. One can get a very good feeling about the actual performance of the piece. Likely better than in a high end system. Maybe it is the single driver speaker in a nice enclosure in the wall between wooden studs and drywall. Who knows. No wonder that the FM was discontinued from this intercom - it was competing too much with high end systems. But listening to my Mac MR-67 is not bad either. I could visit Magnum Dynalab again considering that I used to work almost next door to them.

Regards,

TonyB

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