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The Best for the Least


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1 minute ago, beerandmusic said:

^^^ btw, if you buy an asus vivo vm60, it has optical out and you won't even need an allo bridge....it will sound great for pcm out the optical for cheap.

 

 

 

The 501 and a great USB chipset. It works fantastic for me - I have many DSD files in my library.

Current:  Daphile on an AMD A10-9500 with 16 GB RAM

DAC - TEAC UD-501 DAC 

Pre-amp - Rotel RC-1590

Amplification - Benchmark AHB2 amplifier

Speakers - Revel M126Be with 2 REL 7/ti subwoofers

Cables - Tara Labs RSC Reference and Blue Jean Cable Balanced Interconnects

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2 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

 

The 501 and a great USB chipset. It works fantastic for me - I have many DSD files in my library.

 

what do you mean by a a "great usb chipset"?  I used to think usb sounded great until i started trying other alternatives.  is your pc optimized for music or do you have any "usb toys"?  If not, i suggest experimenting, you may be surprised.

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15 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

Pre-dates both they were stacked almost immediately after their introduction. I first heard them in 1970.

 

Cool, were you impressed when the first versions were released? 

 

I understand the initial offering had problems with the tweeters, which Advent corrected by replacing with orange "fried-egg" tweeters.

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7 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

what do you mean by a a "great usb chipset"?  I used to think usb sounded great until i started trying other alternatives.  is your pc optimized for music or do you have any "usb toys"?  If not, i suggest experimenting, you may be surprised.

 

That PC is just for music - period. I don't use it for anything else.  I have tried optical and was not impressed (from a CD player yeas, not from the PC). I have no noise at all from the USB.

 

Archimago and others really did write excellent reviews of this DAC. 

Current:  Daphile on an AMD A10-9500 with 16 GB RAM

DAC - TEAC UD-501 DAC 

Pre-amp - Rotel RC-1590

Amplification - Benchmark AHB2 amplifier

Speakers - Revel M126Be with 2 REL 7/ti subwoofers

Cables - Tara Labs RSC Reference and Blue Jean Cable Balanced Interconnects

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12 minutes ago, bigbob said:

 

Cool, were you impressed when the first versions were released? 

 

I understand the initial offering had problems with the tweeters, which Advent corrected by replacing with orange "fried-egg" tweeters.

 

Yes especially stacked and still am. I'd of reliability problems with the tweeter but never encountered it personally. 

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35 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

not going there (grin

I haven't either, not even with JRiver playing 'silence' (which is still a bitstream) which is  the 'worst case'.

 

And that's  with an ear inside the speaker cone, which is a Tannoy 'dual concentric'  so the tweeter is close to my ear too, and the amp is  turned up to 11.

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6 minutes ago, Spacehound said:

I haven't either, not even with JRiver playing 'silence' (which is still a bitstream) which is  the 'worst case'.

 

And that's  with an ear inside the speaker cone, which is a Tannoy 'dual concentric'  so the tweeter is close to my ear too, and the amp is  turned up to 11.

 

I build my own PC's I buy ultra quiet PS's (which cost more) and I buy MS spec MB's (for example Gigabyte's are called Ultra Stable). I had my ear to the cones on mine, full volume with nary a hint of noise coming out. 

Current:  Daphile on an AMD A10-9500 with 16 GB RAM

DAC - TEAC UD-501 DAC 

Pre-amp - Rotel RC-1590

Amplification - Benchmark AHB2 amplifier

Speakers - Revel M126Be with 2 REL 7/ti subwoofers

Cables - Tara Labs RSC Reference and Blue Jean Cable Balanced Interconnects

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3 hours ago, Spacehound said:

Regarding Chord I can only speak for the Mojo, which is excellent (I mostly use it in my car attached to an iPod running the  Onkyo HF Player app, which reduces the iPod to just a 'drive', does PCM up to 192 and converts DSD  to PCM (which is pointless with the Mojo as that does DSD fine  but it does no harm).

 

 

What head unit and amp do you have in your car?

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28 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

What head unit and amp do you have in your car?

A Mercedes 'Audio 10'. The only input it has other than a handsfree  phone connection via Bluetooth is a   rather insensitive 3.5mm 'aux' analog socket.

 

The Mojo's got a powerful amplifier, which is why I bought it, I knew  it would  drive  the aux socket properly. 

 

If you use the Mojo with an iOS box you have to buy the Apple 'camera  cable', Lightning to USB. The regular charging cable won't work. With an Android box you need an 'OTG' cable, but not all Android boxes support that.

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16 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Thanks - I am looking for some aftermarket items to drive Focals & play files well + AM/FM.

It will even drive my big Tannoy speakers  to a reasonable, but certainly not loud, level :)

 

It's got a volume control, set by two buttons, up and down. If you press them both at the same time as you press the  power button it sets a 'line' level which is a fixed 3 volts, but unlike the variable output it doesn't remember that next time. On purpose, to avoid overloading headphones.

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3 hours ago, bigbob said:

 

You have hit the biggest nail right on the head, with such force as to seat its head on the surface of the board.

 

I could not agree with you more and were are in the process of testing that very set-up (albeit with a RasPi outputting to the Multibit via USB-- although I am considering the SPDIF digital connection in our second round of testing)

 

@BobSherman, I would appreciate your further input with regards to digital coaxial vs. USB, as I am not that familiar with the differences--and what impact that would have.

 

It is my opinion that USB connections are more accessible to more devices in the entry-level. But, for the Audiophile listener, it may well be a better arrangement.

The pi shares the bus between USB and Ethernet, far from an ideal situation. The Hats connect via I2s from the Pi so you solve the shared bus problem. The DigiOne  also re clocks and send a very clean super low jitter SPDIF signal to the DAC.  Further improvement can be had by using a linear power supply.

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5 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

I picked up a pair of LS3/5a for $25 at a garage sale....they sounded amazing for their size....unfortunately i sold them on ebay for $1100 within 24hrs of buying them...(that was several years back ago before I even got back into music)...I wish i held on to them longer...i bet those LS3/6s are superb.  Do you not run them with a sub?

 

They'd sound better with a sub, yes, but the lounge is quite small and I have to share it with the rest of the family...

When we finally settle in a couple of years time I will probably buy a Swarm.

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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1 hour ago, botrytis said:

 

I build my own PC's I buy ultra quiet PS's (which cost more) and I buy MS spec MB's (for example Gigabyte's are called Ultra Stable). I had my ear to the cones on mine, full volume with nary a hint of noise coming out. 

I don't do any fancy stuff.  The PC is an i7 Lenovo 'tower' with an Nvidia graphics card and two extra internal disk drives (I use it for things other than audio), no cable cost more than twenty dollars, and there  are no little boxes to 'improve' things.

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23 minutes ago, BobSherman said:

The pi shares the bus between USB and Ethernet, far from an ideal situation. The Hats connect via I2s from the Pi so you solve the shared bus problem. The DigiOne  also re clocks and send a very clean super low jitter SPDIF signal to the DAC.  Further improvement can be had by using a linear power supply.

 

 

Thanks, that clears up some of my questions. I am excited about using a RasPi as a music server, and both the iFi iOne (which I am currently reviewing) and Modi Multibit (which should be here for review next week). It appears that DigiOne with S/PDIF would be the way to go.  At $249, the ladder DAC of the Multi might just be the decisive factor in building a "plug and play" computer-based Audiophile system when coupled to the RasPi. It would be foolhardy for me to say that USB noise is not a factor, as I have found that noise is something you don't realize is degrading the SQ until it is gone. The iFi Active Noise Cancellation in the iPurifier2 and built into the iOne was noticeable, so the iFi iPurifier 2 is a necessary addition to the $99 Modi 2 in my system. (And using it with iFi iOne was 'overkill'--which we discovered when it was pulled out of the signal path, and everything opened up.)

'Double' ANC actually adversely affected the sound.

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9 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

DCS is out of my budget anyway...what's your take on Chord?

 

Technology in itself is not the answer. I heard the most expensive iteration of the dCS range about a dozen years ago, and the sound was dreadful - it had everything wrong about it, classic "digital sound", what people have been scathing about since the early years. It was a system problem, as nearly all these situations are - but it didn't help that the particular rig when playing vinyl was superbly good, as a contrast.

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3 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Technology in itself is not the answer. I heard the most expensive iteration of the dCS range about a dozen years ago, and the sound was dreadful - it had everything wrong about it, classic "digital sound", what people have been scathing about since the early years. It was a system problem, as nearly all these situations are - but it didn't help that the particular rig when playing vinyl was superbly good, as a contrast.

 

I heard the dcs Anniversary Edition late last year and I preferred the Audio Research DAC to the 80K monster. So, I can believe that.

Current:  Daphile on an AMD A10-9500 with 16 GB RAM

DAC - TEAC UD-501 DAC 

Pre-amp - Rotel RC-1590

Amplification - Benchmark AHB2 amplifier

Speakers - Revel M126Be with 2 REL 7/ti subwoofers

Cables - Tara Labs RSC Reference and Blue Jean Cable Balanced Interconnects

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9 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Okay, that is an engineering solution which supposedly "makes it better" - but what specifically is "better", that's measurable?

 

everything is subjective anymore....we only got our ears to judge if we like better...most people realize that in most cases the measurements don't tell the story anymore....surely you have been on this site long enough to know that by now. 

 

I don't know if i will like the chords better than anything else i have tried, but if any dac has more hoopla than the chords I am not aware of it...I know i was not impressed around all the hoopla that surrounded the schiits (greatest dac ever), so it may be a similar story, but right now it is the only DAC that has my intrigue (well maybe the holospring too)...  I will likely wait until they come out with the qutererthanqutest and can get the qutest at 30% off retail though before trying.

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31 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

 

everything is subjective anymore....we only got our ears to judge if we like better...most people realize that in most cases the measurements don't tell the story anymore....surely you have been on this site long enough to know that by now. 

 

 

 

 

Oh, My Gawd, you mean listening to music is a reliable test of audio equipment?

Who knew?

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On 2/7/2018 at 6:03 PM, Spacehound said:

And if a small group or chamber quartet was playing   in your room you would  still 'suffer' the room's effects.

 

So what's the point?

What room effect? Have you listened in my place?  Who told you that I am suffering not enjoying the music from my system. Are you listening to room effect and not the music from your system? 

 

Whereas it is your belief that no room acoustic treatment is mandatory, mine is not.  How many people here consider priority of acoustic treatment over the equipment? 

 

I try to refrain myself from believing you are arbitrary to without actually living in our place and without listening in my place but compelling others to concur with your belief but your repeated replies confirm that you are. 

MetalNuts

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