Community Corner

Last Minute Father's Day Gift for the Music Lover?

With some time on my hands, and most of my days spent in front of the computer, I realized I could no longer take the tinny sound put out by my $150 pair of speakers. Yeah, I know, that's a lot for computer speakers, but I spend more time with them than any other appliance and they not only affect my mood, but my ability to work long hours.

So what do you do to make a computer with its limited ability to put out rich-sounding music, better, and even close to the standards you'd use in your living room?

Here are a few solutions. 

1. Channel D Pure Music: Their website sucks. Their documentation is like reading a term paper. Their advertising is non-existent. But never have I found something that made such a big difference so quickly. For $129, you download the program, it links with iTunes and immediately Dad's music sounds warmer and deeper.

They give you a free demo, so you don't have to take my word for it. I listened for an hour and coughed up the dough. I knew I wasn't going to go back to the tinny, crunchy, fake sound the computer was giving me. 

I'm no expert on the whys and wherefores. I just have a few tests. If applause sounds like crumpling paper, the system is bad. If high-hat symbols sound like a kid's toy instead of a long, ringing endorsement of a passage, it ain't music. It's like a black and white TV compared to a big-screen LCD. 

Here's Jason Kennedy's explanation from TechRadar:
"Pure Music appeals for a number of reasons: it retains the iTunes interface, which is an easy system for accessing music and making playlists; it automatically changes the sample rate to match the source material – something that you ordinarily have to go into Audio MIDI set up to do every time you play a hi-res file – and it can upsample to suit the DAC it's streaming to.

It will do this either in multiples of two, so that 44.1 becomes 88.2 or higher, or push sample rates up to the highest that the DAC can accept (384kHz). It's also very easy to switch upsampling for A/B comparisons. The resulting stream can be sent via USB, optical digital or a dedicated soundcard." 

Yeah, what he said.

Find out what's happening in Santa Cruzwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

His review goes on: "Pure increases focus, integrity of sound and image solidity. There is significantly greater definition and this improves timing as well as detail resolution, so bass lines are much more on the ball and transparency of better recordings is clearly enhanced."

My review: I bought it. Tried it. The computer music sounded better. Best and fastest result for $129 I can remember.

Find out what's happening in Santa Cruzwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

2. AudioQuest Dragonfly: A digital to analog converter that's the size of a portable USB storage device. D to A or DACS warm up the 1s and 0s of digital music, making it sound more like vinyl, which, the New York Times told us this week, is coming back. Here's this year's version, but Google it and you see they do this story every year or so.

Warmth really does make a difference to someone who has to listen to music for long periods. Without it, music begins to sound annoying. I'm not talking about rap here, which is meant to sound that way.

I haven't spent the $250 for the Dragonfly, but probably will. My best recommendation is from ToneAudio, a website I trust. It picked it as a product of the year, alongside the $31,000 preamp,  and the $26,000 turntable. 

It may be the cheapest product ever picked by them, but it shows that great sound is more available to the masses.

3. Blue Aura Blacklight Hybrid Vacuum Tube Amplifier: A retro throwback to the days when amplifiers were run by tubes and had a sound as warm and radiant as the light they produced. This one is only $500 and designed for a desktop computer system. I don't have it. But would love to. It's available at www.audiogon.com

4. Westone and Ultimate Ears earbuds: This is supposedly the year of the headphones, with Dr. Dre expanding his beats line and everyone else trying to capture the market of iPodders and gamers. But really, if you want the best sound, like the sound musicians get on stage these days, you have to go with the in-ear models. I have both. The Westones are sublime for anything with acoustic instruments, jazz and classical and the Ultimate Ears are a little brighter, probably better for hip-hop or rock. 

They both shut out the world and let in the music.

There aren't many things in life where you can spend under $500 and know that you have the best one made. Either of these would qualify.






Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here