Home Source Components

You can see what my current, primary home rig for headphone useage currently is. My sound quality is fantastic except for two things: 1.) I need to find a way to inject some more warmth without taking away from everything else. 2.) There's a touch of harshess that shows up at times that could stand to be refined out of there. This is not an earth shattering, extreme problem. That being said, I'm considering all kind of things from an external DAC that would turn my Onkyo 1000 into a glorified transport, a different set of cans although I'd hate to lose the 701's strengths, possibly a new source outright, or maybe some kind of "accessory" like this: http…

I know that some of my pals here are transferring their vinyl collections to digital. Most are using some kind of DAW to split, trim and perhaps add fades to the resulting files which are usually the size of an album side. I'm a big believer in "less it more" in audio and that goes double for editing digital. Light weight programs tend to sound better, are much faster and above all, are a breeze to learn. To that end, I have 5 different programs that I use for audio editing/processing depending on what needs to be done. I could have one DAW that does all that (maybe lacking one or two of the functions) but they tend to be what folks call "bloatware" and have 100's of …

Neko Audio D100 Impressions After being a speaker only guy for awhile I wanted to put together a headphone rig again for late night listening sessions. I had never sold my 650's so I had the headphone part covered and then I was fortunate enough to get a Dynahi at a fantastic price. Leaving the source as the only thing left to get, I knew I wanted a dac as I was planning to use the Squeezebox as the transport. I've heard quite a few dacs in the $1k price range over the years and none really ever satisfied me and some I flat out hated then I recalled reading this thread about a new transformer coupled dac. I've had very good experiences with transforme…

Auspicious name, though I know not if it is indeed in reference to the goddess. WM8804/2*PCM1794/24 bit-192kHz/Jensen trafo-coupled output stage/$1295.

Needing something small-ish that had some sort of digital output. USB is fine. I'd like to send the output to a DAC as well as have some kind of internet connectivity. For starters, I'm not a big apple fan, but am willing to give it a try if it's far away the best source. I'd probably bring it to work and rock out there, then bring it home for moving tunes on to it if need be. 3G not necessary, wifi would be fine. I'd be keen onand Android tablets, but Google continues to skip implementing USB host mode. That is, USB host mode without some damn cable hack. Comments? Suggestions? OK. Thanks! Brian

Despite the low price this looks interesting. Those HF-ers will probably be all over this one given its price. Can anyone provide some insight on the selection of parts? Stereophile: Oh Nose, Not Another One! "The Music Hall dac25.2 ($600) uses an Electro-Harmonix 6922 tube, a Texas Instruments PCM1796 24-bi/192kHz DAC chip, a TI SRC4192 Asynchronous sample-rate converter (with a high-precision active crystal oscillator master clock), and four digital inputs (S/PDIF, TOSLINK, XLR, and USB). It sports re-clocking and user-adjustable upsampling (96kHz or 192kHz). It outputs analog via XLR or RCA."

Stereophile blog entry Google

Saw this on the other side. Specs are pretty much identical to the existing 306 Pro, except you can haz toobs. 306: 303T:

Thinking of going with a new dac, as an upgrade from my apogee minidac. I've been using USB and have primarily flac files (ape, ogg as well). Mainly i'm debating going with a benchmark dac1/is2(usb conversion) , or maybe a transporter to avoid USB all together. It seems the onbard usb options on most dacs are considered inferior transports to an alternative like this. No complaints with my mindac, but I know I can do a bit better with these fancier transport options available. I don't have any oversampling either and I know that i'm not utilizing the full potential of this DAC. Anyway i've read a bit about the empiricle audio is2 dac1 mods, and also been trying …

So I'm gonna have around $400 soon (yay for selling my supermacro ) and I'm looking to upgrade from my Entech Number Cruncher to be used with a CK2III and Grado 225s (woodied hopefully in the near future) The DACs that I'm thinking of are the MSB Link III w/o upgrades, Headroom MicroDAC (new and old) and OPUS dac. If you have any suggestions, tell me!

Stereophile: Wadia Need Next? DAC only $999 DAC w/ HP amp $1499 No, I don't need a new DAC, my DacMagic is very good

Emotiva Audio XDA-1 Digital-to-Analog Converter I saw a thread about Emotiva's $299 DAC on Audiocircle. I will get a chance to check it out at RMAF this weekend.

John Westlake (formerly of Cambridge and Pink Triangle IIRC, though I am not sure of all of his history) posted a link to a DAC that he designed recently using the ESS Sabre DAC as the basis: Signal Path International - Era Speakers & Peachtree Audio - Introducing Nova Reference thread on diyaudio: diyAudio Forums - Da-capo issue (John W?) - Page 16 Might be a good option for those interested in the Sabre but not up to building your own. EDIT: John Westlake seems to know his shit from all I have seen from him on a couple of forums so I would think anything he is involved in would be worth a listen. I have not heard this DAC (and wouldn't be the one to judg…

Got this notification in my email today, posting it up since not everyone here is signed up to TTVJ: New Dac/Preamp?headphone amp from luxman: http://www.ttvjaudio...duct=725&image= There's also a new turntable from luxman: http://www.ttvjaudio...p?idProduct=724 as well as an integrated amp from luxman (though this obviously doesn't fall into source category, unless source of joy counts): http://www.ttvjaudio...p?idProduct=726

This is the stock layout, not columns ur or any third party! So clean and white and minimalisticly Scandinavian! Its got a freaking spectrum analyzer! No more firing up audition to check out the graphs... The graph on the pic- first half is 192 cbr mp3, then i switched to a flac, you can clearly see the ownage.

It was posted on the other forum here: DA11, Lavry new DA - headphone feature - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio It was mentioned that the USB is up to 24 bits and 96KHz. I copied and pasted the info below: Introducing the LavryBlack DA11- Lavry Engineering takes stereo DA conversion to a new level! Features like a USB input, programmable settings, infrared remote capability, and the proprietary >PiC< Playback Image Control

Unveiled at CES and almost no one noticed, where was all the press? I demand impressions even if they're only visual! Accuphase DP-600: Accuphase Laboratory, Inc.?DP-600 (MSRP unknown) Luxman D-08: On a Higher Note :: D-08 Stereo SACD / CD Music Player ($14K) And even Denon's new DCD-SX: Denon unveils Flagship SACD player, DCD-SX - SlashGear Zero chance I'll buy any of these but Luxman's other new D-06 CDP is only $8K which is kinda awfully tempting... (and I gotta say, these new Luxman CDPs are very nice-looking)

Right direct from Oppo themselves on their Twitter page: https://twitter.com/OPPODIGITAL Best bets: Dual core at least, 4k, latest Marvell QDEO video processing, wouldn't be surprised to see a higher end variant come out in 2013 to succeed the 95. Overall, I expect to see further improvements and streamlining/addition of features for the Internet, streaming, supported files, etc. etc. That's been their cycle to a tee and it's a safe bet it's going to happen again here if that's anything to go by. Stay tuned.

Just caught this on computeraudiophile's site. I've got ayrewave, amarra, I've used pure music and twilight and this one is nice. I just drag and drop the cd I want to play from my music folder in itunes and it loads right up. Has memory play and auto sample rate change as well, best of all it is open source and free for the moment at least. http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/New-OSX-Opensource-audiophile-player-Audirvana

So I was looking through Sound & Visions report on new products in NY show, came upon a turntable section. They had a picture of the new Pro-Ject Essential turntable, and I realized it's used to play those old 1970's albums backwards to get all the satanic messages. Little surprised no one has corrected that picture, it's been up for a while

New DAC from Rega: http://www.rega.co.uk/html/DAC.htm Wolfson chipses. I like Wolfson chipses. Discuss.

Available at late June, ~ 6500 Euro There will be a new turntable at above the level of P9 from the brochure: Matched laser Archiving During manufacture we will match 3 identical laser units. One will be fitted in the player the other two will have the product serial number marked on them and will be archived here at the Rega factory offering guaranteed product longevity and peace of mind for every customer. http://www.my-hiend.com/leoyeh/2009c/ISISinfoflyer.pdf

I just paid DigiPete for his SACDModded Denon 3910, and damn, I am itching to try all my SACDs out.

Bought a Sony Modwright 999es second hand over at HF. Just got it in today! I've only listened to a few SACDs I purchase to check it out, but so far it is pretty magical. Couple of pics: Dedicated power supply: Only immediate impressions are that vocals on SACDs (depeche mode sofad, roxy music avalaon, harnoncourt mozart's requiem) seem much more real. Everything sounds wider, more rounded, all the various instruments seem to have a specific place they exist in. Very cool. The Mozart sounds wonderful. Looking forward to doing an AB test with the redbook FLACS of this through my DA100. The DM sofad I have mixed feelings about. The mix is very, ver…

I've been bitten by the upgrade bug, and once I liberate some gear, I'll have about 1k to spend on a new source to replace my mf a3.24. Two questions: Firstly, will 1k be enough to purchase a source that is several steps ahead of the MF dac, and, if so, then what would you recommend?