With Network media player is fast gaining momentum to be a popular household media device, I create this topic to gather the feedback from mainly the Hi Fi players who can give feedbacks on its Audio quality, after connecting the device in existing Hi Fi system.

Anyone has done any comparison test would also be greatly appreciated.

so far for stereo I heard myself best is Bollo

Dune
PS3 ... ok but sound flat
BD1 ...

If bitstream everything to AVR got difference?

It should be different. I think due mostly to circuitry quality and decoding capacity. But it could only be apparent if the media is connected to a fairly efficient Audio system with good speakers.

So far, other than the video file type and audio file type handling, none has been said about its audio quality.

Video quality on the other hand, was much more emphasised.

If bitstreaming the player have no effect on the sound quality at all. The player does not do the decoding, the decoding is done by a receiver or a pre/pro. Even when the decoding is done by a pre/pro, the quality is the same.

Dolby Digital, DTS, TrueHD or DTS-MA is just a compressed audio file. A good analogy is winzip, the file is compressed. It does not matter where you do the unzip on, ie Pentium PC, Athlon, Windows XP or Windows 7. As long as the decoding algorithm is done correctly, the end result is always the same.

I am referring to the decoding quality, not the output of the sound itself which is dependent on the receiver amp section or power amp and the speaker itself.

This post has been edited by rahavsmt: Jul 1 2010, 07:58 PM

You mean even for the mp3's, or flac files, or the normal wav files will not be decoded in anyway before being played thru the media player?

I do understand that the DTS etc are mostly being pass through without any processing.

I use Elektron 606 NMT player to play all my music files (flac, mp3, wav) to my stereo system (Behringer, Hypex, Swan setup).
Quite happy with the sound compared to CDP. It sounds more relaxed, less hard, less dynamic so somewhat different, but still good
even playing audiophile rips in flac.

Great for compiling playlists for demos

It is not as simple as you said, digital transmission could cause distortion as well, for example, if you use SPDIF output to your AVR, a distortion call clock jitter could make the sound difference.

When playing music the media player should decode MP3s and FLACs to PCM and send it to the receiver via SPDI/F (Or HDMI)

Thanks. Almost all the items with good audio decoding appeared to be pretty rare on our shore.

There are lots of made in China products around now.. it seems that no one has done any audio comparison among them.

I subscribe to the belief of making the signal chain as short as possible from source to output, and letting my Denon 4310's Burr-Brown DACs do the processing. So my setup goes like this:

QNAP NAS (where the FLAC files are stored) -> Denon 4310 -> speakers.

To my peasant ears, the AQ is pretty brilliant (of course, depending on quality of the source material as well). Much better than when I used to run my FLAC files thru the HTPC -> Denon 4310 -> speakers.

This post has been edited by terranova: Jul 15 2010, 09:30 PM

I think sound quality can be affected at digital stage also before being bitstreamed. Things like digital filtering etc sure have influence on the SQ.

Ic.

My curiosity is this, if we were to set up the chain like this :

NAS > HTPC > AMP > speakers.

vs

NAS > Media Player > AMP > speakers

my common sense tells me that this media player will play a role in affecting the quality of the audio files. As compared to the HTPC, of course the media player will have a shorter signal route with less interference due to the simplicity of the circuitry itself I suppose. Am I right in saying that?

So the Media Player will have its role in making it sounds better or worst. Has anyone compared that before?

I'm no expert on this. However, I can share with u my own experience and view.

Purely on AQ alone, my experience with playing FLAC files (and I believe for that matter, any lossless audio files) on my HTPC's Windows Media Centre running Windows Vista (and subsequently Windows 7) has been disappointing. There is a clear and distinct, and definitely audible difference in the AQ of the same FLAC file played through (a) "source -> denon avr -> output" VS (b) "source -> htpc -> denon avr -> output". Obviously, (a) sounded better to my peasant ears.

I did some research back then on the possible reason(s) for this. Since I am not a technical guy, I will not dwell into the technicalities of it. Suffice to say, I came to the conclusion that it had something to do with the way Windows handle audio files and downsampling the audio. There is something inherent within the Windows OS that does not result in a bit-for-bit replication of the resulting audio output, despite having a top-grade audio/video card that allowed for the digital transmission of the audio files thru HDMI to the Denon AVR.

Since then, I am not sure if the current crop of audio cards that does "bitstreaming" would have cured this dilemma and allow for the possibility of setting up the HTPC to act purely as a transporter of the audio file and then pass it on to the AVR to do the digital->analogue conversion. I'm inclined to believe that most current-crop AVRs will do a better job at digital->analogue conversion than their PC/HTPC's audio cards. Of course, feel free to share your views on this.

So basically, it boils down to which component in your signal chain does the digital->analogue conversion, and whether the quality of said conversion is up to par. Imho, the current crop of media players in the market are relying on SoC solutions to do both video and audio processing (e.g. Sigma, Realtek). I don't own one of these, so my subsequent comments may be academic. However, I believe most do a decent job at the digital->analogue conversion task, although some do a better job over others due to various technical superiorities. If not, how would one explain the price difference between the Squeezebox and the Transporter (both Logitech devices). And most audiophile reviews have given the Transporter a thumbs up.

So to paraphrase your question above (i.e. whether having a media player would make it sound better or worst), the question, rather, should be if the media player does a better job than the AVR at the digital->analogue conversion task. And above all, the entire thesis assumes that your digital file is left totally untouched and unprocessed in any way from source until the DAC stage.

So theoretically, if one assumes the AVR's DAC is better, then the media player can act as the transporter and user-interface (library management) for the digital audio files and pass it on to the AVR untouched and unprocessed for the AVR to do processing. Alternatively, if one assumes that the media player would do a better job with the AQ, then allow the media player to process the audio files and just "pass it thru" to the AVR for amplification duly only.

Not sure if all my blabbering has put you to sleep by now. If so, kindly wake up now. I think the water in the kitchen is boiling.

p/s : my Oppo BDP-80 can act as a network media hub, but as FLAC is currently not a supported format, I am unable to do an A vs B test with it.

you could always use ASIO or kernel streaming through some media player (software) that supports this kind of output. in example, foobar2000 which is very popular with computer audiophiles.
this will bypass all the crap that you've said about windows not being able to reproduce bit to bit replication as ASIO/kernel streaming have direct control to the card bypassing all windows control.

and not to mention you have the option to resample the FLAC to any sampling that you like. fancy high quality resampling to 24bit/192KHz? foobar2k could do it.

with a HTPC, you have the option to use other DAC that you like. fancy a wolfson high performance DAC? or burrbrown flagship DAC? or phillips Non-Oversampling 1-bit DAC?
simply by changing the soundcard or USB soundcard or external/outboard DAC, the DAC could be changed as you please. you won't find this kind of option with a media tank.

true.....foobar rulez