I've been living with the AudioQuest Dragonfly USB DAC for a couple of weeks now. I stand by my review earlier--music sounds more relaxed, more resolving, more natural than the straight analog feed from my laptop.
Two weeks later, I'm hearing the best digital music in my house yet. However, the Dragonfly isn't doing it by itself. Consider the Dragonfly a gateway to a world of better sound. I can't speak to Windows-based computer sound anymore, but I know for a fact that Macs upsample iTunes to a 24-bit/96 Khz data stream. To do the audio on a DVD, you have to have a 24/96 DAC. So instead of having two DACs or clocks, the Mac simply upsamples a CD's 16/44.1 Khz datastream to 24/96.
Upsampling to 24 bits is nice, because it lowers the noise floor by 8 bits (256 increments of amplitude). However, upconverting 44.1 Khz to 96 Khz doesn't work out evenly mathematically, which means the datastream gets somewhat chopped up.
However, the Dragonfly can provide native mode conversion at 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 Khz. So if you want even better sound from iTunes, you'd want to send an 88.2 Khz data stream to the DAC so the CD-based rips (44.1Khz) get upsampled at exactly 1:2. How to do that? Fortunately there are several music management software programs out there. Several are very good, some are free, and some are very reasonable. For Mac users, two excellent music managers that can work as plug-ins to iTunes are Songbird and Audirvana. I am currently doing the free 15-day evaluation of Audirvana but fully expect to pony up the $50 for the license. There are versions of Songbird that are free.
For Windows, the music manager that seems to consistently rise to the top is J. River Media Center (JRMC). It's good enough that some Mac users are awaiting the release of a Mac version around December.
Audirvana Plus, the one I'm using, provides some features that make use easy and improve the sonic capabilities, but are also representative of features available on many of these programs:
It can work as an iTune plug-in. This is handy for continuing to use the iTunes interface while benefiting from Audirvana's additional sonic capabilities.
Audirvana can read a variety of file formats not recognized by iTunes, including FLAC. The hi-def downloads (24/88.2 and 24/96) available from HDTracks.com are in FLAC format.
Audirvana enables you to turn off upsampling or to control which upsampling scheme is used. I have mine set to 2x up sampling. All my Apple iTunes files of 16/44.1 are upsampled to 24/88.2, which the Dragonfly is all too happy to decode. And the 1:2 ratio does result in smoother treble over upsampling to 24/96--on my system in my living room.
Audirvana can function as an independent player or as an iTunes plug-in. I use it in independent mode to play the hi-res FLAC files.
Audirvana can read and play hi-def audio files. I downloaded a 24/96 sampler album in FLAC format from HDTracks and the Audirvana player can play the files flawlessly. In fact, playing native 24/96 hi-res files through the Dragonfly is the best digital sound I've had in my home.
Audirvana enables you to reserve an adjustable amount of RAM to buffer music files. This eliminates any sonic differences you might otherwise have from variations in disk access speeds. For example, I keep my music files on a portable USB 2.0 drive, which is not a fast a data transfer. I have over 5GB of RAM reserved for music buffering when running Audirvana, so the music files are brought into RAM before being read and played.
The Dragonfly has tiny LEDs to light up the Dragonfly graphic. They are color-coded according to status or sample rate. Red for Standby, green for 44.1kHz, blue for 48kHz, amber for 88.2kHz, and magenta for 96kHz. So far my Dragonfly has confirmed the switches between 96 and 88.2 Khhttps://www.hdtracks...=HD603497931163z sampling rates, plus red for standby when I turn off iTunes.
All things considered, we're not talking about a lot of money here. If you already have a laptop you can turn into a music server, you can get the Dragonfly for $250, an external hard drive to hold several hundred lossless albums for $80-100, and $50 for the playback software. From there, if you want to see what you get with four times a CD's data density by purchasing some HDTracks downloads at 24/88.2 or 24/96 Khz, you're looking at another $17.98 per album.
What you get back is sound quality beyond most affordable CD players, plus a centralized, easily organized and operated music database, and the ability to get even higher resolution music files. There's nothing like it for a party or fuss-free background music. It's also valuable for practice, because it's easier to hear the track you're playing along with when it's at full resolution and decoded smoothly. And remember, the Dragonfly is a headphone amp as well.
Edited to add:
One of the cool things about going HD digital audio is that HDTracks offers many hi-res downloads of vintage classic rock, pop, & R&B. These hi-res versions leave those crappily re-mastered CD reissues in the dust. The Warner Storefront alone offers early Ray Charles, Clapton, Waylon Jennings, Aretha Franklin, and many others, as well as recent releases. in particular, I found Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra, an LP I owned way back, and a fitting memento of recently departed Jon Lord.
Secondly, if you get a more ambitious Asynchronous USB DAC that can decode 192Khz sampling rate in native mode, HDTracks offers many releases in that format as well. Yes, they're $8 more than the 24/96's, but in many cases, this is a bit-for-bit copy of the master tape. How often do you have access to that? The Dragonfly only goes to 96 Khz, but for just $100 more, the Musical Fidelity V-DAC Mk II goes to 192 Khz. It's not as portable as the Dragonfly, but it accepts input via USB, Toslink, and coax S/PDIF. This would enable you to have full 24-bit/196 KHz resolution in your home.
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JohnnyB
I've been living with the AudioQuest Dragonfly USB DAC for a couple of weeks now. I stand by my review earlier--music sounds more relaxed, more resolving, more natural than the straight analog feed from my laptop.
Two weeks later, I'm hearing the best digital music in my house yet. However, the Dragonfly isn't doing it by itself. Consider the Dragonfly a gateway to a world of better sound. I can't speak to Windows-based computer sound anymore, but I know for a fact that Macs upsample iTunes to a 24-bit/96 Khz data stream. To do the audio on a DVD, you have to have a 24/96 DAC. So instead of having two DACs or clocks, the Mac simply upsamples a CD's 16/44.1 Khz datastream to 24/96.
Upsampling to 24 bits is nice, because it lowers the noise floor by 8 bits (256 increments of amplitude). However, upconverting 44.1 Khz to 96 Khz doesn't work out evenly mathematically, which means the datastream gets somewhat chopped up.
However, the Dragonfly can provide native mode conversion at 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 Khz. So if you want even better sound from iTunes, you'd want to send an 88.2 Khz data stream to the DAC so the CD-based rips (44.1Khz) get upsampled at exactly 1:2. How to do that? Fortunately there are several music management software programs out there. Several are very good, some are free, and some are very reasonable. For Mac users, two excellent music managers that can work as plug-ins to iTunes are Songbird and Audirvana. I am currently doing the free 15-day evaluation of Audirvana but fully expect to pony up the $50 for the license. There are versions of Songbird that are free.
For Windows, the music manager that seems to consistently rise to the top is J. River Media Center (JRMC). It's good enough that some Mac users are awaiting the release of a Mac version around December.
Audirvana Plus, the one I'm using, provides some features that make use easy and improve the sonic capabilities, but are also representative of features available on many of these programs:
The Dragonfly has tiny LEDs to light up the Dragonfly graphic. They are color-coded according to status or sample rate. Red for Standby, green for 44.1kHz, blue for 48kHz, amber for 88.2kHz, and magenta for 96kHz. So far my Dragonfly has confirmed the switches between 96 and 88.2 Khhttps://www.hdtracks...=HD603497931163z sampling rates, plus red for standby when I turn off iTunes.
All things considered, we're not talking about a lot of money here. If you already have a laptop you can turn into a music server, you can get the Dragonfly for $250, an external hard drive to hold several hundred lossless albums for $80-100, and $50 for the playback software. From there, if you want to see what you get with four times a CD's data density by purchasing some HDTracks downloads at 24/88.2 or 24/96 Khz, you're looking at another $17.98 per album.
What you get back is sound quality beyond most affordable CD players, plus a centralized, easily organized and operated music database, and the ability to get even higher resolution music files. There's nothing like it for a party or fuss-free background music. It's also valuable for practice, because it's easier to hear the track you're playing along with when it's at full resolution and decoded smoothly. And remember, the Dragonfly is a headphone amp as well.
Edited to add:
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