Home Source Components

This looks to be a very nice DAC. He offers a blank boards with smd chips already soldered on if you want to put your own together. I'm considering putting one together, but I think I'd have to sell the Opus to do it, and I don't want to do that You can see the DAC at http://www.ecdesigns.nl/dacs/di16/di16.html

Recently upgraded my DAC from Stello to MSB Power DAC (no USB, but with remote volume control). Some basic ergonomic gaffes: - No volume indicator - Volume setting isn't saved after unplugging the DAC, and the default seems to be minimum volume - No mute button - Remote control's power button doesn't do anything (the DAC's power button switches between pure battery to battery + charger) Also, the volume control is digital, so I have it at max whenever possible. Tested using either HP-2 + ECSS or Tetra 120U + Gainclone. As of now, I only have my integrated sound card's digital out (waiting for a decently implemented and priced USB->SPDIF converter). Sound…

I have managed to score a Rega Planar 3 for about $US70 which I think ? is a good deal. It doesn't have a tonearm, but is otherwise is in good working condition. This was somewhat of an impulse buy, as bloody usual. And I am just about to prove my ignorance of all things vinyl. This will be hooked to a WOO 2. So I am going to need a tonearm, cartridge and a Phono stage of some sort. I am willing to spend a few hundred on each. So a few questions:- Is the Rega RB300 a good tonearm for the money?? I have seen different opinions here and on the other site. I could be very easily persuaded to look at other options. What is a suitable cartridge to go with the RB300 …

Hey guys, The rig has landed. Now, I am completely overwhelmed by this thing. I've put up the basic pieces, and the motor is spinning the platter fine. Now comes the arm. The cartridge is pre-mounted on the arm. The issue is that the arm seems to be tilted inwards a bit. I'm trying to read the manual, but I'm just not going to get anywhere by myself. I'm extremely wanting to learn this stuff, but I need some sort of guide / teacher. Is there anyone in the Southern California region who would like to help me at my place? Dinner's on me! Great Indian food or maybe something else. Basically I want to make sure all the settings are correct before the firs…

I've been looking for an external DAC and found this Blue Circle Audio. Haven't been able to find out much about it. One Soundstage review which didn't say much. Sketchy on detail. I haven't been able to determine the chip used. Not much info on forums regarding this DAC. Talked to a dealer yesterday and apparently it's not selling well. Introduced in March, 2007 so it's been out awhile. Has anyone heard this? Or maybe the BC501? Any thoughts other than it is butt ugly? BC owners seem to be a rabid bunch and repeat buyers, which is saying something. The dealer network seems pretty much composed of TV repair guys. Now there's an industry that's just about gone. Not…

Well hell has frozen over, the cubs have won the world series, George Bush has said something clever, I will be buying an iMac. All patently unlikely a few short months ago but I will most likely be buying an iMac to do multipurpose duty in our kitchen dining area. One of its duties will be to act as the server for squeezcenter. I am currently running squeezcenter 7.0 on my laptop but it will need to be out and about most of the summer so I need a more permanent solution. Is anyone running squeezcenter on a MAC? Any glitches or problems? Thanks.

So here's my problem. I have a Powerbook G4 with 80 gigs of hard drive space on it. I have 672 songs in my iTunes library after clearing it out and it comes to a whopping 27 gigs because everything is ripped in ALAC. I recently sold my home gear because I just don't use it enough to warrant having it anymore and I need the money since I'm in college. I've been using my portable setup and my cheap ass computer speakers as of late. So basically it's onboard headphone jack for the speakers and my 3G 10 gig iPod. This leaves me with little space on my hard drive on both the computer and iPod, which is a problem cause I can't put anymore music on either, and I always want m…

I'm really enjoying the flexibility of this litte source, but it's led me to a decision on my computer setup. Right now, I have all my music on an external HD(2 actually) but it's time to bump up the space available as these are pretty much filled. So, is it better to continue with the external HD connected by USB2/Firewire or should I upgrade the aging HD on my server/desktop? I could bump up the HD on the desktop and keep the external HD's for backups. The desktop HD hasn't given a problem but it is an older drive which for my peace of mind could stand an upgrade. What's the thought? Btw, anyone got tips on a quick and painless way of cloning my existing HD onto the…

I like the Super Jewel Box cases that come with SACDs, but it looks like they're getting hard to find (Acoustic Sounds still seems to have them). Also, I'm wondering if somebody makes good cases for regular CDs that fit the front and back (+ spine) labels properly. P.S. Has anybody heard the new Blu Spec CD2 discs? I'm thinking of getting Michael Jackson's Thriller in this format just for fun.

The Denon 3910 has been to APL, Hotrod and now ??. What will the resultant sound be like? Hotrod did the dual dack (per channel) mod as well as the power supply mod. APL did the Multi clock mod and poor audio output mod. And ??? is doing the Audio Output mods as well as possibly re-doing the power supply mods. What will it sound like? Who knows. : : :

Well my black D02 arrived yesterday, I picked it up at the post office on the way home from work. Unfortunately I had to go to my in-laws for supper so I didn't get to listen right away but I did open the box to get a look. Boy, this is one stunning piece of equipment, the case work is just incredible, pictures just don't do it justice. This is the type of case you would find on multi-kilobuck gear not something that sells in the $500 range. Another unfortunate occurence was customs opened the box and it appears they didn't repack it very well so the bottom back corners suffered some damage, nothing too serious just a bit disappointing. When I finally got my new b…

Contemplating replacing my SqueezeCenter/Squeezebox 3 x3/sometimes iPeng setup with an Airport Express x3/iTunes/Airfoil/Remote-iPhone app deal. Tired of scanning my library for new music and would be a plus to capture other audio streams (with Airfoil). The Squeezebox internet radio steaming is nice though. And the Remote app is just smoother than using iPeng (at least at this point and likely near future at least with laptops ... hunting for IPs...). On a MacBook and will likely stay on OS X as primary operating system so no problems using iTunes. Anyone else do this "downgrade"? Any comments?

Have you tried this DSP software bundle with calibrating interface? I just saw it advertised on a HDTracks newsletter. https://www.theoretica.us/bacch4mac/CheskyLanding16.html I think it's very expensive and the charge for annual tech service seems... ludicrous? yet if it really works well it could be interesting for headphone listening or even speakers 3D enhancement.

Alright, so I'm still debating my next source upgrade, I had pretty much decided on a Storm Digital D02 (or baby D02 depending on whether I feel my shelf can handle the over 20 lbs of the regular D02) to be paired up with my Headamp GS-1 but in the past couple of days I've been reading more about people using the balanced outputs of the Lavry DA10 and I've also been reading more about the benefits of recabled, balanced headphones which has brought the DA10 back into consideration. I expect the D02 + GS-1 combo would give me a similar but improved sound over what I have now and because of the GS-1's versatility it would give me a very flexible system that can easily be …

While my Marantz has been very enjoyable for the short time I've owned it, I cannot help but wonder what I will move to after I am finished with this unit. Really it comes down to sticking with redbooks and simply moving up to a better cdp (Cambridge 840C, Marantz SA8001 are a few possibilities) or keeping the 5001 as a transport and grabbing a dedicated DAC (CIA VDA2 interests me greatly). The flexibility of a standalone DAC would be nice, but is not totally necessary. Budget will probably be under $1,000. The rig as it sits now is CD5001 > SP MPX3 > JVC DX1000/Denon D2000. All suggestions are appreciated, thanks much.

Just posting an observation I've made with digital transports. I'm sure jitter plays some part in why some sound different from others. But something else I've noticed lately is that the output signal level from a digital transport also seems to make a difference with regards to sound quality. I noticed this recently since I have a few DACs right now in the house, all with varying analog output levels. Ranging from 2- 3.5 vrms through the RCA (single ended) output. Sometimes the output on the high output DACs is just a bit too much with my amps (lacking headroom on the headphone amp's volume pot is annoying), which is what started me to mess around with the volume level o…

What's the best method of connecting transport to DAC via either spdif or aes/ebu encoding, in real life? I have the option of doing one of the following (from transport -> DAC): 1. BNC 75 -> RCA ~75 2. RCA ~75 -> RCA ~75 3. XLR 110 -> XLR 110 4. toslink -> toslink I have been going through my emag book and coax is theoretically the perfect medium at transmitting high-frequency signals over a length of 1M. I have been trying different combination with blue jeans cable, and they all sound different. So what's objectively the best connection in the real world?

I often play a movie to help me fall asleep. Of course, this means that a DVD can run overnight or even for days at a time if I forget to remove the DVD. I've gone through a series of inexpensive (<$100) DVD players. They run fine for a couple of months and then I'll find the image frozen on the screen and the player will no longer initialize a DVD. I thought that maybe the laser lens was dirty so I took the most recent failure apart to see what was going on. It turns out that the drive will no longer spin the disk. The machine is a Toshiba SD-K840 (a Costco special) and the drive seems to be direct (i.e. no belt). I considered getting a new drive, but decided inste…

I've got a netbook running XP with redbook FLAC files played by Foobar, that I hooked up to the miniDAC via USB, so I should just set the Apogee USB ASIO driver to 44.1/16 bit, right? Any reason to set it at 24 bit? (Still waiting for my PICO to arrive, but I dusted off the miniDAC to try with the netbook. I've been using the 840C primarily, and I'd forgotten how good the miniDAC sounds!)

Just received my Squeezebox Duet that I have been waiting two weeks for. It appears the receiver is DOA. The light on the front doesn't light up. It appears everything on the powersupply side works fine. Guess I have to ship it all back and wait a month for a replacement

Now that both the Wavelength Cosecant USB DAC v3 (now with ASYNC mode) and the Benchmark USB DAC 1 and DAC 1-PRE support 24-bit audio at sample rates up to 96 kHz without the installation of any drivers or other special software. I am having a hard time choosing between them. My primary headphones are the Ultrasone UE 9 and the Grado GS 1000. Has anyone out there heard both side to side at any of the meets??? Are there specific advantages of one over the other? Why did Benchmark choose not to implement the asynchronous mode of USB ? Is this really a better way to go? There is a big price diff between the two and the Benchmark gives you a preamp and headphone amps to…

So, I bought that Capitole SE CD player on Audiogon, sent off my check, I'm a happy lil' clam and...Let's go look and see the "sold" sign. Yeah, that's the ticket. But to my horror and dismay, the post...poof, up in smoke, gone with the wind, etc, etc, etc. Now I thought it was customery to keep posts up and put a bold "sold" so everyone would know that one lucky person got the prize and everyone else didn't. I mean, isn't that the good 'ol American Way? So did something BAD happen here? Or are there mysterious ways that things dissappear that I don't know about and...most importantly: Does this decrease the likelihood of me ever seeing my Capitole come hither? …

I bought and returned a Yamaha S1800 universal player (that apparently does pure DSD) because it was a joke. The regular CD layers sent from my Mac over optical to my Monarchy 18B beat it in every way--I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Is there any SA-CD player under $1000 (used or new) that can do things with SA-CD (greater detail, more realism, bigger soundstage) that the aging Monarchy 18B can't do with CD? I'd really appreciate your recommendations. I'm quite pleased with the front end of my system--Gilmore Lite and the 650s.

His budget is 350 bucks... I don't think he minds camping ebay/audiogon, but if its something that is immediately available then that would be more ideal. I know sony direct drive for cheap bucks is a pretty good deal so maybe a list of models/links for those would be perfect.

... 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…