Despite the dearth of serious music over the past few weeks, there have been momentous developments. It all started when I persuaded my parents to give me a full-year subscription to the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall. Earlier this year I had seen Rattle's take on Mahler's Resurrection live and was impressed by the quality of the whole concept. So now with a full year stretching out before me in which to see more than 100 archived concerts, 30 live concerts and a very nice collection of interviews and documentary films, I started to think earnestly about other options to listen to the music. My little AKG headset directly plugged into the MacBook is fine, but it would be nice to benefit of the full 320 kbps that is offered by the Berliner.
The solution was surprisingly simple. I just had to connect my computer via a USB A to mini-B cable to my Grace M902 DAC and that was it. Beautiful streaming sound through my B&W 804s! I was captivated. Suddenly a host of new opportunities suggested themselves. What about digital transmissions from classical radio station? And indeed, I soon found the Concerthuis by Dutch Radio 4 and could listen to their archived collection of more than 100 live concerts. Fantastic! Same with France Musique, Arte TV, and so on.
Given that the M902 functions as a high quality headphone amp, there was no problem at all to listen to the performances via the splendid Beyerdynamic T1. Quite a difference with the AKG!
Then onwards to the iPad. Same kind of connection via the USB cable to the Grace and I could watch the Berliner on this flimsy, shiny disc whilst listening to great sound. Wow! I was over the moon, feeling like a little boy with too much money in the candy store. The sheer volume of music you can just tune into is amazing.
In terms of quality of sound, I like what I hear. The concerts by the Berliner are of stellar quality. I can't hear the difference with a good (!) CD. But even the Concerthuis seems to transmit at a very decent quality. It's probably only 128 kbps but I can't really hear it. I do hear the compromises in quality though when listening to the 15 minute previews of the Naxos Musical Library. That is an amazing phenomenon that I didn't even know existed. It's a library that gives access to more than 50.000 CDs from many 'smaller' labels (meaning not Universal Music), including Naxos itself, but also Chandos, BIS, Da Capo, ZigZag, BBC Legends etc. It's simply intimidating. All that becomes accessible at 128 kpbs for 220 euro/year. I think this is an amazing offer. I haven't perused it yet, but I may do so in the future, even if only for research purposes. For now I have more than enough to listen to.
Likely there are improvements possible in terms of sound quality. Whether the quality of the USB cable makes a difference is a matter of debate. Some say it doesn't and others (like Wim Vanderstraeten from Link) say it does. I am not planning to invest in a high end cable for the time being. The other thing is that the Grace is a very good DAC but the USB transfer mode is synchronous which allegedly is not the best for audio. The M902 is, however, not able to do this. The new M903 is, but there is no upgrade path from one to the other. Oh well, so be it. For the time being I'll stick to what I have.
Another thing which becomes a realistic option now is to start playing music from hard disk. I have an acute space problem when it comes to CDs and I might put certain parts of my collection (pop music, to start with) on a hard drive to listen to. I have been reading up on the Bryston BDP-1 which seems like an eminently sensible concept to me: it's just a reader. Storage and DAC remain outboard which should improve the quality of the whole setup.
I haven't been listening a lot to any of the new music sources. Lack of time, to an extent. But there is also the strange psychological mechanism that the more abundant the music resources are I have access to, the more circumspect I become in using them. I really do not want to fall into the trap of consumptive listening, but want to give whatever I listen to adequate time and attention. Maybe I am getting too worked up about it all, but that's the way I am feeling about it. To be continued ...
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