Some general advice for a starter from the UK please!

[Phil Bishop]

OK Chris,

 

Just to confirm your recommendation re Mac, it was a the middle Macbook with Superdrive and 2GB RAM? I may order one very soon although prices just seem to have gone up in UK. I thought I should maybe order a remote at the same time - are these useful? What do you think to upgrading to 250 Gb hard drive? I thought I would not purchase an external hard drive to start with.

 

Could you also point me in the direction of a suitable optical lead you referred to earlier with the mini plug on the Mac end and the standard plug on the DAC end?

 

Many thanks again Chris.

 

Phil

 

[TimH]

Thought I would jump in here real quick on the toslink cable question. Chris, (and Phil) I know we've shared info on Monster's mini plug to standard toslink cable, and I think you bought one as did I. It seems to work OK but I continued my search. I found this outfit in Canada:

 

http://www.sysconcept.ca/product_info.php?products_id=219

 

I ordered a custom length (6 meters) and received it a few days ago. (They will do custom lengths to order, which is nice.) Coming from Canada it took several days for delivery. The price per meter is significantly less than Monster. The quality of the optical cable itself seems better (a bit thicker and heavier duty) than the Monster and the connectors definitely seem better. And best of all it sounds good. I realize that with toslink in general, and possibly at this long length, I'm setting myself up for jitter issues, but as the mantra goes around here, "sounds good to me". I'm using this for the time being to go right from my Macbook into my A/V receiver several feet away that has a pretty decent DAC. My next step will be to audition a good DAC, but in the meantime this toslink cable seems to do the job I'm asking of it pretty well.

 

TheOtherTim

 

 

[Phil Bishop]

TheOtherTim (or anyone else),

 

Thanks! Can you alsp provide a web address where I can find the Monster version? I have failed to find it via some Googling!

 

Phil

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Here is the Monster version http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=790

 

The bottom two on the list are the mini to standard. I purchased mine from shopallmonster.com