Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com> wrote:

> Oh?  Is this one of those Special definitions of critical listening,
> where $2,000 power cords and wooden preamplifier volume knobs make a
> difference one is supposed to pretend magically disappears in blind tests?

Nope. This is more along the lines of a decent mp3 v. an original CD,
or a straight through 44.1kHz signal v. one being resampled to 48kHz.
For casual listening (background in an office, workshop, outside by the
pool, ...) the Squeezebox is really neat, and I strongly recommend it.

In comparison to a good(*) quality CD player or a M-Audio Transit and
the Squeezebox all compared with the same DAC, there are obvious (and
unpleasant to me) differences, due I suspect to the processing of the
digital signal that the Squeezebox is doing.

(*) Yeah, "good" is another subjective term.

This /is/ only annecdotal evidence: I haven't done blind testing.  For
me, it's not worthwhile: the differences are so obvious (material just
not audible on music I know well, for example) that it's not worth the
time and trouble.

We're close to being off topic and I will try to leave this as my last
message, however I'm still interested if anyone knows of products priced
at less than the Squeezebox's big brother Transporter that don't involve
mystical hardwoods, cyrogenic treatment of cables, precise north
alignment, pyramids, or other audio vodoo that might let me get good
quality audio from a file server to my hi-fi.

Regards,

Giles

P.S. I confess I was considerably surprised the first time that I tested
alternate digital sources and found that they weren't all the same.  I
/did/ do some blind testing at that time, and the differences were
agreed indepenently by multiple people.

Being a software guy, I offer no suggestions as to why one digital
source sounds better than another.  Psychoacoustics is not my field.