Home Source Components

Well, seems like I've been gone way too long, but I guess nobody missed me either here or on Headfi. Oh well. Anyway . . . looking for a cheap DAC/Headphone amp for my office. I've had plenty of nice ones that I liked (Bryston, Benchmark, etc.) but would like to get decent quality, and a built-in headphone amp. I know in the upper end, there are some good candidates -- Benchmark, Lavry, Grace, Mytek. But what about in the $500 range or below? I researched and researched, and came across the Teac UD-H01. So, at the risk of asking a stupid, headfi-like question, is this thing any good? I mean, I want cheap, but I don't want to crappy. All the buzzwords seem to …

Cartridge reco's for Technics owners typically fall into the Denon MC camp for compliance matching, and classic sonics. However, the Ortofon Concorde integrated shell/cartridge presents some interesting potential usability/setup benefits. Anyone have any experience with KAB's custom hi-fi version: Thoughts on the general subject? Thoughts on which stylus is best (STY20/30/40)?

Anyone keeping an eye on this one? Might be of some interest... Teddy Pardo TeddyDac DAC review - nightmusic - Digital Drive Teddy Pardo home of TeddyCap TeddyXPS power supply for Naim Audio replaces HiCap and XPS

OK to have one for non-specific vinyl discussions? Vinyl relevant links on Head-Case http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/4450-hagerman-bugle-dl-103-revisited.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/do-yourself/3931-pass-pearl-pcbs-related-parts.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/6471-linear-tracking-tone-arms-experience.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/3070-zyx-bloom-best-bargain-mc-under-5-000-a.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/home-source-components/5684-mc-phono-stage-review-rogue-stealth-vs-benz-lukaschek-pp-1-t8.html http://www.head-case.org/forums/audio-accessories/5193-what-do-i-need-t…

A black one. I got the Apollo home and plugged it in. I did not wait for any warm-up what-so-ever. Holy cow! What great sounds. Way better than the E5 and I still have to break it in. I coulden't even think of how much greater a sound the upcomming Saturn might be. How could it be any better??? The sound is like analogue or being like Single Power's finest amp and most all other source units sounding like an OK solid state amp in comparison. I heard the G08 at the last meet for a limited time and was not bowled over. However it was only a brief few selections and A/B'd it with the E5 and found it only slightly better. The Apollo beats the G08 by a wide margine, at least. …

... is your video card. When combined with an AV receiver, the current generation of video cards, both ATI and Nvidia, offer HDMI 1.4a support, allowing your video card to digitally output lossless 192 kHz quality to your AV receiver (Dolby TrueHD and all that jazz.) Could this possibly be the solution to building a decent computer listening rig, when noisy internal sound cards that everyone has been shying away from have proved to be incompetent? The only problem I see with this is that most DACs and stereo receivers do not accept HDMI input, which raises the question, are there any components out there that can effectively utilize this? Or more specificall…

This journey has been long and painful, after many dacs, and much lost money, I have yet to find a dac that I can settle on, or at least be happy with for now, until i can afford a high end piece of gear. I thought it would be easy.... people with tin ears tell us that just about all dacs sound alike... with wide spread concensus one would think that the decisoin would be easy. well, it's not. 1. The raves about the modded zhaolus convinced me to buy one, but that's where things went wrong. it's not that the zhaolu isn't a good piece of gear, it's that the one I got is horrible. Ori did his famous mod on mine.. and it broke 3 times! wires became loose, there was all kin…

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3121804&postcount=5 Cmon now. Granted I don't own an iPod, but why is this the current thought: that an iPod can be an absolute reference source. I'd like to think my $400 DAC sounds much better. What's the deal here? Do these fanboys really believe their iPod is this good?

Just some pics of the nude stylus I thought were cool. You can see the dust on it, I need to get a record cleaning machine.

and my mini-dac is for sale. anyone?

My latest signal path has started with Roon, which is a piece of software I really enjoy. It sounded excellent, but recently I found that I could fuck with it a little more and spend time twiddling knobs, and I'm powerless to resist that. Most notably, Roon makes it simple to delegate all the actual "file playing" duties to another program, HQPlayer. Roon and HQPlayer represent significantly different approaches to music playback and management. Roon focuses on metadata, art, liner notes, reviews: basically the kind of edifying stuff you read and think about while listening to music. HQPlayer focuses on filters, and by Jesus are there ever a lot of them. And…

It seems like I've been trying to do this for years and WFH may finally force the issue enough into the forefront that I do something. So, what I'm basically looking for is a stand-alone music server, with onboard storage capacity, decent library management tools, and a reliably updated GUI. I'm not against the obvious Mac Mini choice as I have external DAC options that make that doable, but would be interested in hearing folks other thoughts on this. Budget is not unlimited and the Brooklyn solutions of the world need not apply. I've looked and can't really find anything that gets me very excited.

Well, I finally got my last piece of gear yesterday: the Phonomena II. I had it sent to my parents' house since I'm hardly ever home to receive stuff. I will pick it up today (ordered it along with new inner sleeves for LP's - no point washing if I put them back in the old ones). I will also compare it with the highly-regarded as bang-for-buck CA 640P (which I got a good deal on in Audiogon). The 640P wasn't a planned purchase, but I read it is a good piece of gear. We'll see how the Phonomena II (at $600 new) does against it. Not to mention there are two cartridges in the house now (used MC cartridge ZYX Bloom and new MM cartridge AT150mlx). I won't begin any test…

I've had my CDP-2 for a year and a half now, and I really like it. It's the best source I've ever owned. It doesn't have all of the slam that the four DAC chips inside my Adcom GCD-750 produce, but it's much more nimble sounding. Oddly enough, it has great synergy with my 12L Actives. It's not a fair fight, but I prefer the sound of my CDP-2 to my humble Pico DAC (which is great for what it is.) In fact, I like it better than any of the other DACs in my house. The CDP-2 goes for $1200-ish new, AFAIK. What I'd like hear about is any DACs in the price range that best it. I read in another thread on here that the $1500 price bracket for DACs is a crowded one. A num…

While helping my older brother move a couple weeks ago he mentioned that he was going to ebay his TT. I had remembered it being a decent player so I offered to keep it in the family. So as of today, I'm the proud owner of a pretty mint Thorens TD 160 MKI. It has the original tonearm and cartridge, the latter of which will be replaced as soon as funds present themselves. Also, tomorrow I'll be ordering up the DIY version of the Hagerman Bugle which I've been told should fit nicely into my mid-fi vinyl plans. Best part is the TT came complete with 30 albums or so including some original Zeppelin and other stuff my brother had picked up along the way. Nate

Having been out of the game for a while, the rapid development of DAC tech (or at least the verbiage dedicated to same) appears to have accelerated even more. I'd appreciate it if you fine folks could catch me up as to where we stand. What is the latest and greatest tech? What are some of the basic must-haves in a DAC today? Which chipses tend to sound best? And, most importantly, which ones have the prettiest lights?

And I'm thinking about making an impulse purchase. I've been wanting to bring my computer/foobar/flac back into the audio family for a while now, and reading iron dreamer's and others' comments makes me think the signature of the aqvox might be too my liking (overall laid back, emphasis on the midrange, decent enough soundstage). Plus it has lots of options to tweak, which is fun, what with the oversampling, filters, and what have you. And I figure I could offload it without losing my shirt if I didn't like it. So should I do it? Is this a decent price? http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlconv&1189793122

Hey guys, Recently I have been considering this... www.lessloss.com ...as a replacement for my Lavry. Any thoughts? I am undecided right now, mainly due to the cost. - Jay

I've made sure all of my cart is correctly connected but I'm not getting any music through the right channel and there is a loud buzzing hum that sounds like perhaps it's not properly grounded or something. Can anybody help me figure out how to fix this problem?

So ever since I've gotten into headphones couple of years back, I've been intrigued by vinyl. Everytime I think about pursuing vinyl, I tell myself it's too much of a pain and I stop thinking about it. It helps in that I know very little about vinyl. Of late, I've been pondering if I should just sell one of my rigs (most likely the Stax rig) and get a vinyl setup. What do you all think of that, and vinyl in general?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html I'll be in the funny pictures thread.

EDIT/MODIFY 3/7/06: Through speaking with a variety of people I've decided on the JMW-9. Wisdom no longer sought! (thanks?) (I'll try to condense as much as possible). I had a terrible accident a few weeks ago which ruined my cartidge's stylus (Clearaudio Aurum Beta S Wood moving magnet) and due to the scheme (scam?) of when trading in an old cart for a new, I went with the much greater discount offered by choosing a more expensive cart-Dynavector Karat 17D2 MK.II moving coil. The discount offered for a cart of similar or just a little more value than the Beta S was too small. I recognized what was happening but didn't protest as it was my plan to move eventually…

So the sickness is sucking me in yet again, and I've sold my beloved Opus DAC to try a Buffalo. I haven't heard a Buffalo, but why should that stop me from ripping the heart of my system out and taking a blind chance on the Buffalo? There are of coarse a few members I trust that have the Buffalo already, and their brief impressions are quite positive. However a little reassurance never hurt, so tell me about the Buffalo guys and gals. How many have heard it?

i'm assuming "home source components" qualify as anything that needs to be plugged in or is too heavy to transport...so i'll post here ) i used to own a lavry da10, feeding an hd650 balanced through a moon audio blue dragon. sold it off a while ago. it has always been my favorite headphone rig, partially for the transportability of it. i think i'm going to pick one up again... i fed the da10 with either a cheap dvd player via coax or an airport express via optical, depending on the situation. now that i have a macbook, i plan on using optical out of the laptop directly. just wondering if anyone has any experience using the macbook's optical out and how it compares a…

Well, I'm looking for a CD transport that has AES digital out, because the coaxial input on my Lavry is already taken up by my computer. My budget is around $500.