Home Source Components

Having a handfull of Squeezeboxes in the house I was hoping to try my hand at DRC for my speaker setup. After working throurgh to creation of a filter with DRC and Inguz, it would seem Inguz doesn't work with the latest version of LMC. I could always try and run an earlier version, but I figures I would see what others have had sucess with? BruteFIR seems like another option but I am LINUX retarded and it looks to be a bit configuration intensive.

Hey everyone I have been feeling an itch to to get a DAC capable of 24bit/96Khz or better. I currently have and love my Stax DAC talent. About what level of current DAC would exceed the quality of my current DAC? Do $500 DACs now exceed the quality of classic DACs? Or would I need to spend over $1000 or more to notice a difference? For those that don't know the DAC has a Burr Brown PCM63P which can do 20bit/48Khz. Some specs are Digital Filter: 20bit Oversampling: 8x Bit conversion: 20/16 Total harmonic distortion: 0.0015% (1kHz, 0dB) 0.015% (1kHz,-20dB); 1.5% (1kHz,-60dB) Frequency response: DC ... 20kHz (± 0.5dB) S / N ratio: 118dB Dynamic Range: 104dB C…

If you've got a recommend on a DAC that'll take a USB 24/192 feed, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I like the sound of Sabre, but Wolfson chips would be OK too. I'm willing to spend up to $2K. Should have the new amp sometime next week, but won't have a DAC to feed it. T.

No doubt there will be plenty of announcements at CES 2012 of interest to us, so I thought I'd start a thread to keep track of the sources announced at the show . Who knows, maybe we can encourage Tyll, or other visitors to get a closer look for us. I'll start off with something that might interest Dinny CES 2012: Arcam to launch £2000 FMJ D33 DAC With the market now full of new-generation digital audio devices and sources, Arcam is proud to introduce its latest and highest performing DAC to date, the D33 SuperDAC. Using state of the art dual Burr Brown PCM1792, 24bit / 192kHz converters (one per channel), twin toroidal transformers in the power …

OK, so I've had this thing running for about an hour. At first I was meh. It was connected to my dekstop machine (Win7) using just USB, out to the Ventus and the ATH-ESW9s. It seemed so laid back up top. Weird. The ESW9s don't usually sound that way. Neither does the Ventus. Odd. So I swapped out the Ventus for the CKKIII that was behind me. What the hell. Ah. Better. More musical. More air. Things opened up quite a bit. Then I swapped in the HD600s. Finally! I didn't expect this combination to work so well. Of course, we all know about system synergy here, right? This is definitely a case where the reviews I read were off. 'Nuff said. I'm lik…

Hey all, I'm always a little nervous about posting here because...well we all know why. It's part of the reason I love this forum so much but mainly lurk and learn. Anyhow, my primary DAC has for many years been the good old' E-mu 0404 USB, and sadly it's had its last day. Now I need a new DAC to connect to my Asus G73 gaming laptop (no S/PDIF sadly so USB is a requirement) and the rest of my rig is my prototype (though awesome) CTH I acquired from a very nice chap on that other site and my beloved Wenge-cup Thunderpants TP1s. Which, by the way, I was delighted to see such positive praise for here when I showed them off after I got them back from Smeggy. Just …

I haven't seen this DAC being talked about here so I will just leave this here. Designs-wise, the DAC interesting because apparently it uses 4 "industrial-grade" non-oversampling DACs (2 per channel) whatever they are and it doesn't have a digital filter. Price-wise, it seems reasonable enough. The most expensive model with black anodized case and external PSU will set you back €710 or a little less under $1000. Shame it's still single-ended and has no built-in USB. Here is the home-site and a white paper posted there detailing this NOS digital filter-less concept. I wonder what do our resident DAC experts like Filburt and Colin have to say about this as the con…

Been looking at 'gon and notice that there are few Ayre D-1xe on sale at somewhat attractive prices. Right now I use a Linn Klimax DS to feed a speaker system with headphone amps connected via loop out from the preamp using RCA. If I were to get an Ayre player, I would use that as a dedicated source for my headphone amps using the balanced connection, instead of RCA. I have heard Ayre's current line of CDPs, but have not done any comparsion with the Linn (never saw the point). Will I be totally bumbed going from a top Linn to a very old top Ayre? Anyone heard both and can comment?

I've got an HP G56 laptop (no digital out), and I'd like an easy (read cheap) solution to route all of my iTunes music into my DAC. My Adcom GDA 700 DAC has toslink, S/PDIF, and AES/EBU, but no USB. Is there an outboard soundcard of some type that would work well for me? Or another solution that is cost effective, as I do plan on getting the Cambridge iPod dock at some point in the near future, and won't need the laptop at that point. I'm not up to date on CPU based music systems.

Via Various leaks on the web. http://www.wickeddigital.com.au/index.php/2011-09-04-22-32-08/news/87-new-cambridge-audio-dacmagic-plus http://mundoaudiofilo.forumotion.net/t2096-cambridge-audio-dac-magic-plus Or use google translate on http://www.sempre-audio.at/Cambridge_Audio_praesentiert_DACMagic.id.1869.htm Pricing TBD ... But "Plus" built in Headphone / pre amp for active speakers might make this interesting for the desktop.

https://audiofest.net/2011/downloads/Special/WyredR.pdf Some nifty products there but that Music Server in particular has my attention. I love my DAC-2.

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

I've made an audio friend down here who imports the dCS range and has a slightly-used Debussy he's looking to unload at an advantageous (though still eye watering) price. Does the HC brain trust have an opinion on the dCS house sound in general or their Ring DAC topology in particular? I will have a chance to live with it in my system for a while before making any decisions. Another option is to wait for the first shipment of the new DAC from Aesthetix, who he also carries. The Pandora uses (as I understand it) roughly the same digital board as my current Ayre QB9, but with a beefed-up power supply and analog section (and toobs, obviously). Charles Hansen has been repping…

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 …

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

Well the darn thing won't turn on. Google comes up with a couple of hard resets, both don't work. Don't have another box or power adapter to test that. It was being real funky yesterday and kept on trying to re update when it had been updated already. Yarg!!!

Does anyone have any experience with any of the docks that bypass the iPod's internal DAC? I'm thinking about buying such a device to use with my home DAC, and would appreciate any relevant info. I'm aware of the Wadia and the Onkyo, any others of note? A decent used Wadia 170i goes for about $250, and that's appealing.

Schiit just announced a DAC: http://schiit.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=0&products_id=7 Can anyone speak for their choice of parts? Input Receiver, USB: C-Media CM6631 D/A Conversion IC: AKM4399 Kinda tempted even though I don't need a DAC right now....

Help. So it's looking like I need another source. This is equally caused by a room change and stupidly selling the 13 Parasounds I owned recently. I strangely work for company that gives one-off bonuses with gift certificates. Although the list of certs is vast (if only I was looking for a iron skillet, maternity dress or rifle), for audio it comes down to Amazon.com. This is a secondary source so if possible it would be great if I could find an Amazonian solution here. That would probably mean one of these. I always have a Pico DAC to fall back to, but the Parasounds (and Lavry) show I can stretch further. There are some Benchmarks, a PS Audio and some Musical Infideliti…

anyone tried one of these? http://tech.uk.msn.com/audio/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=158211805

Yet another futher different dac. Seems like a decent product, the Joloda Glass FX tube dac. I agree, the name is a little pretentious. I have a Jolida tuner here somewhere, the JD 402. (Out of production now.) After digging around, there were a few places for a while that offered some upgrades to the unit, which caught my attention. And when I got inside it myself, I saw that yes, there were some obvious things to change that would be both easy and useful. For starters, caps, wiring, wire routing, tubes, etc. So on to the tube dac. A standard round of questions apply. Anyone heard it? Anyone have one? Anyone think this is a great/crappy buy? I'm asking …

I did a search for Brennan here and both hits were well into necro territory so here goes: I'd never heard of them before (which doesn't mean much, as usual) but saw an ad for them in the WSJ today that got my attention. http://www.brennan.co.uk/itemlist.php/clasrefr/units They sell through Amazon and it's a Fulfiment by Amazon setup which is nice. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_electronics?_encoding=UTF8&node=172282&field-brandtextbin=Brennan What do you all think? What's the story on these folks? Anyone try out any of their products?

Recently changed over my rig a little (including moving to a 16-bit DAC and thus back to an Airport Express) and when listening to several quietish opera tracks over the weekend I noticed many pops not there before. Originally thought something may have happened to the file, but narrowed it down to the APX. Have play files through Squeezebox Touch (fine), two Airport Expresses (not fine), on multiple outlets (not fine), under various power conditioning (not fine), with two DACs (not fine), wireless or wired (not fine), AirPlay from main computer or iPad (not fine) and a ton of tracks since (not fine). Firmware on both shows 7.5.2, which is current. Anyone else have proble…

HF thread here This guy's review and measurements here I'm not about to comment on the legitimacy of the measurements, but the uDAC-2 is apparently pretty shitty. NuForce seems to agree but not really care that it's shitty. John Atkinson measured a NuForce CD player, and it was also real shitty. This doesn't speak of the entire NuForce lineup, but I do find it amusing considering the relative popularity of that brand over thar. Can I safely conclude that HF has terrible taste in everything?

I'm still using the Trends UD-10.1 but since it is limited to 16/44.1 I'd like to upgrade to something newer. Has anybody any experience with the newer models out there? Multiple outputs is a plus (I'm catching up to Dinny with the number of DAC's here) and I don't really care about the price or the size. I did a quick search and the M2Tech Evo looks good but what else is out there?