Upping cd sound

Revisits, where much on the International current affairs front is up in the air which would make blogging on any one theme a struggle apart from the feeling we might need a break, is coming in this week after a change in the middle of 2022.

Physical media in 2026 seems to be back as streaming has dropped off a little, downloading outside of some more niche areas like classical music have dropped considerably from the mid 2010's.

From the "vinyl revival" where we are now seeing more classical titles new and older, "classic" accounts appearing on lp and deluxe popular editions and not from speciality labels such as Mobile Fidelity and Analogue Productions but the major labels.

Some artists are producing small runs of pre-recorded cassette and some better players are coming on to the market that had been dormant for like eons and even the cd, unloved in the last decade is making a comeback (and many used discs can be had for peanuts).

When in 2017 I acquired a sacd player having a fair number of hybrids - discs that have a regular cd and a super audio cd layer on a single surface - I had expected a steady stream of new releases in the classical field and a number of speciality popular releases. 

The classical numbers overall have decreased with only Bis issuing all its titles in that form, Chandos only issue a small number even though HD downloads for all are available and while Japan and HongKong see a good number of limited releases, they are hard to get and frequently very expensive when they have to be imported directly by you.

Toss in a shortage popular new(ish) titles and the fact you may have over 80% of your discs as regular cds the question arises "are we getting all we could from them" as early digital recordings of tghe same resolution often sounded at least as good if not better than the discs beyond the odd click?

We tried a SMSL external digital to analogue convertor in 2022 which as a bit better but when your 1987 all digital Depeche Mode album still sounds better on record than cd then it is well worth looking at other options.

Historically digital hifi products are at their lowest base prices thanks to volume production and many enterprising Chinese based companies and FiiO are one I've know from the earliest portable players of digital files in the mid 2010's that delivered amazing results for the money.

Much is made in audiophile circles about the type of circuit and chips used to decode the noughts and ones to sound and generally it was held the resistive ladder sort was best but they typically costs thousands and much less expensive "Delta/Sigma" chips tended to be used in the more affordable offerings.

The market in the last eighteen months has changed radically with those resistive "R2R" dropping in price and late last year FiiO introduced two inexpensive digital to analogue convertors that share a common aspect - a headphone output for computer desktop usage - and this R2R convertor.

The K13 is the second model down currently selling for around £280 which is peanuts really with a fairly full feature set so you can use it with Smartphones via BlueTooth, usb plus optical and coaxial digital inputs.

You can bypass the internal power supply for a higher quality one via a dc input that gives you an upgrading path and have options of using Oversampling or not which I didn't as I feel the sound is more musical without that.

This, when I plugged it in and give it a few hours "warm up", sounded really amazing bringing greater tonal colour, depth and projection than you have any right to expect at this price and demonstrating excellent low level linearity.

I haven't heard anything sound this good since I first experienced compact disc in 1986 and while higher resolution sources such as sacd's and HD Downloads can offer more "air" and improved sound-staging, given the shortages of them and that there exists a digital recording legacy where the sound is locked in 16 bit 4.1 or 48hkz forms for life, anything that can play it natively this well is well worth it. 

Tarun's review on "A British Audiophile" was spot on - you'd need to spend around four or more times as much for a real improvement so for £280 this was well worth doing.