Squeezebox Duet

[RedRobe]

I would appreciate some advice on computer audio. I have a couple of hundred CDs recorded using apple lossless and stored in itunes on my laptop that uses Windows 7. Late last year I bought a Squeezebox Duet that I have connected to my dac through a reasonable quality optical cable. I have to say that the quality of the playback is pretty ordinary compared with my CD player played through the same dac. Is there some way I can get playback from the Duet to get closer to the sound of my CDP? Please note that I am a total ignoramus when it comes to technology; jargon and acronyms cause my brain to go into auto shut down. I am probably just the wrong sort of person to get involved in computer audio, but now that I have the Duet it would be good to use it more. Any advice gratefully received.

[too_tall]

There are several things you can try. Coax cable ( apparently the jitter on the duet via toslink is about double that of the coax.) Also make sure its connected via wired network, as if the network is getting congested or the link is weak, it will struggle.Make sure that the server is actually powerful enough to decode the FLAC's ( I assume you used flac as opposed to mp3? If not, that is your problem, and get ripping again using EAC and set it to flac ) There are also a few software tweaks for squeezebox server, but those might be the last resort.

Another tweak which works well is to get a linear power supply. This is a much more stable power supply than the switch mode the duet comes with. The linear power supply is a small transformer, with heavy filtering and regulation. Switch mode powersupplys can be quite polluting - as in making the power a lot less sine wave than it should be. This can effect the SB Duet, but it may actually be effecting the DAC, pre or power amplifiers more than the duet itself. SMPS are not really desired in an audio system, and this can extend to class D amplifiers, which themselves can be good ( although in my opinion, never truly great ) but they can adversely effect other system components. Even a $10K pair of Bel Canto monos have been measured causing considerable power supply pollution. Think of what that $3 squeezebox power supply is doing...

[too_tall]

P.S. I use a Squeezebox duet as my main music source, with a pretty high end system, and its good ( not perfect though ) although I am slowly migrating to a linux based computer server. The duet is just more simple to use, and the android app is really easy and sensibly written, as opposed to the plethora of android apps which will control the various linux players I have played with.

I actually have found that jriver on windows can perform very well if you have an appropriate output setup and trim windows down heavily. My computer which serves up music is using an Asus Xonar STX sound card, outputting spdif. I prefer this to the several USB options I have tried, however others can prefer USB. I guess it comes down to the USB/SPdif adapter or DAC as to what will work best.

If you want to know what I based my server on, I can point you to a _very_ long thread on another forum which details it extensively, but unless you really do understand computers well, dont go down the computer server route unless its via a squeezebox.

[chopper]

What bitrate are your rips?

[tkr001]

Guys read the original post, OP is using ALAC.

@Redrobe

As too tall says a coax cable should yield reasonable results. There are some tweaks you can make in the server but the sound difference won't be night and day.

Out of interest what is your CD player?

[RedRobe]

Thank you for your help. I will try a coax cable today and see how that goes. I will also look into a linear power supply. My CDP is a Perreaux ECD2 and my dac is a Moon 300D.
I originally started ripping CDs to use on my ipod which I only use when I run and all I use is lossless on itunes. I don't know what bitrates it uses. Is there a better way of ripping CDs?
Thanks again.

[kaka]

I originally started ripping CDs to use on my ipod which I only use when I run and all I use is lossless on itunes. I don't know what bitrates it uses. Is there a better way of ripping CDs?
Thanks again.

Yes - iTunes doesn't check the quality of rips. The better products check the rip vs checksums from other people who have ripped the same CD, and retry slowly if there is an issue. EAC is free, dbPowerAmp is commercial (I use the latter)

[too_tall]

As I and the other posters have mentioned, trying the Coax and trying a different ripping method would possibly improve things quite a bit.

To detail the ripping a little more, I would rip to either wave ( large files and no tags being the negatives ) or to flac ( smaller files, tagging, but some claim slightly inferior sound quality ). You may be startled at how long it will take to rip using EAC or dBpoweramp ( or any of the similar products ) because they really do the best possible job. They will often check online to ensure that the checksum of the file matches what you should get for ripping that disc. This can be a way to know that you have a bit perfect copy. However, often the NZ discs are different pressings to the Euro or US discs, and you will get a different checksum, so if every track reports a checksum error, its more likely that you have a different pressing, and its very slightly different.

I rip to FLAC. For my ipod or car/tractor/boat systems, I then use foobar to do a batch conversion of my playlists to VBR mp3 - as a highish bitrate mp3 is perfectly adequate in those situations. Flacs are backed up so I dont have to rip the collection again - being that I have well over 1/2 a TB, I dont wish to rerip!

The Moon 300D should work well with the duet, I am not sure how well it handles jitter, so if its not a strong performer with a jittery source, it may suffer. The Perreaux as a pretty good transport from my understanding so it may be producing a lower jitter signal - which is where the difference in digital sources occurs. Its 0's and 1's, but when they arrive is the important part.

[tanman_sg]

I use a Squeezebox Classic, and I know it might be a different story here, but I found an improvement when I used wired networking instead of wireless, and a small but further improvement when I opened the casing and pulled out the wireless card.

There is one other small thing - In the settings website for your Squeezebox, on the advanced tab, head into the 'file types' section and see what the settings are. The squeezebox itself can decode things like FLAC and MP3, but my preference is to leave this job to my computer, and send only a PCM stream to the device, and lighten its load a bit. I'm not sure what it usually does with Apple Lossless though.

[RedRobe]

Thanks for the replies. I have had a play with a rather good coax cable and it did make a noticeable improvement in the sound. Because of our house and room layout I am limited to using a wireless system with my computer. If that is the cause of the problem then I will just have to put up with a lower performance from the Squeezebox. I have tried to download EAC and dBpoweramp, but my antivirus doesn't like either of them. I will have a play around when I have time during the week and see what is going on. Thanks again.