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New Dragonfly 1.2


LarryC

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Audioquest has come out with an upgrade to the very well-regarded Dragonfly USB DAC -- the Dragonfly 1.2. It looks and functions just like the original, but is said by engineering insiders to be better all the way around.

The Absolute Sound this month gave it special attention by featuring it in a brief lead article.

The best part is A/Q reduced the price by 40%!!!!

Now $150 instead of $250. FYI.

Edited by LarryC
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Thanks Larry. I had not heard of the thing before. It seems quite impressive. I keep wondering how serious I am about "computer music." I knod of wander back and forth between thinking it's handy but doesn't sound very good to it's always going to suck so don't invest any time in it. Maybe this is an answer? Kinda cool that it is so affordable.

With a good DAC and a decent service like MOG, it doesn't suck. At least that's been my experience. I also listen to a lot of different things that I wouldn't otherwise hear.

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I keep wondering how serious I am about "computer music." I knod of wander back and forth between thinking it's handy but doesn't sound very good to it's always going to suck so don't invest any time in it. Maybe this is an answer? Kinda cool that it is so affordable.

My music professor teacher plays his CDs and my DVDs on his Macs, and both of us are very impressed with the improved quality and musicality of the sound. It's even clearly audible over the tiny speakers in the Mac laptop.

For me, it's an improved quality of convenience -- I play CD's and DVD's on both my Dell desktop in the basement (Klipsch 2.1 Promedias) and a MacBook Pro (internal speakers) on the main floor. And, yes, both have Dragonfly's, and I get good musical sound out of both.

These days, I seem to be focusing more on the music and less on particular audio quality aspects. I don't have to turn to my tube K-horn system to like what I hear.

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In my experience a computer can equal the sound of a cd player and I am sorry I don't mean actually playing the actual CD in the computer's CD drawer. As joessportster refers to in bit streams, I have taken my CD collection and converted it to FLAC, I then use Media Monkey to handle the meta data and library duties. I use a music streamer DAC and with tweaking the audio output plugins from Media Monkey the sound quality was comparable. I can sometimes hear subtle differences between the two platforms when I attempt to compare, which I have not done in a while. I too use the computer to listen to my CD collection.

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Especially since I don't have 40+ years of collecting vinyl, tape, or CD. I can see how it would be difficult to switch away from such an expansive library over to file based media. Also, the potential for losing access to favorite music in the switch is no doubt daunting.

However, by going this route I don't have to spend time or money tweaking: turntables, cartridges, tape heads, CD players, phono preamps, multi-input preamps, power cables, multiple sets of interconnects, vinyl cleaners, cd cleaners, audio racks, isolation tables, etc.

Both methods have their flaws and benefits. Both are difficult to switch from if you have any sort of time and money invested (or not).

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Ha, am I? I store all of my music on a DIY NAS called UnRAID. With this I am able to build in drive redundancy and monitoring to ensure data resilience. It also allows me to install a few useful apps: Beets for library management and tagging against the MusicBrainz database, Subsonic for automatic transcoding and streaming to my iPhone or laptop when I'm not at home. So I have access to my full library when I'm driving, working at the office, at a party with my Klipsch KMC-3, etc.

I'm then able to play my music through the use of JRiver Media Center (mac) and JRemote (iPad) for full FLAC support when I'm at home. I have an amp and a source, with my music stored separately.This route allows me to spend more time, money, and effort on the MUSIC.

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On line with this little dac, i considered it but ultimately went with the Schiit modi usb dac, I have just upgraded to the bifrost, and so if any forum members are curious about trying a small usb dac i would happily supply the modi as a loaner. the modi was actually cheaper at 99.00 usa made with warranty

Heres a link to info on the modi

http://schiit.com/products/modi

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Simple, indeed.

How long have you been gathering music on vinyl? How large is your library? How many gear iterations have you gone through to get where you are now?

I'm impressed with how you have things set up. So you want a true confession? I don't want to hijack this thread with analog talk.

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