Home Source Components

Although the title of this thread is the CH Precision C1 DAC, I'd like to start off by saying that when I first got the BHSE ( June 2012 ), it obviously came with stock Mullard tubes, and Earspeaker's used were my 009's. Now when I first heard those 009's with the BHSE I was very impressed with the first few songs I listened to, it was when I started listening to Peter Gabriel's " Sledge Hammer " and " Big Time " the problem started which was a piercing uncomfortable treble, and I found that piercing treble was with a lot of song's in my collection. Because of that problem, I was going to sell my 009's and get a pair of 007's, but decided to try some Psvane PH tubes inste…

Well it happened, our old Philips DVP642 finally gave up the ghost last night and it couldn't come at a more inopportune time with Christmas just around the corner. I had figured my next DVD player would be one of the Oppo's but given the time of year and the fact I can't get one here and it would probably cost over $200 to get one online and have it shipped here I'm not sure if I can sell the wife on it or not. The DVD player will be used mostly for Divx capabilities so maximum Xvid and Divx compatibility is a must. It will also be used with a Mission Cyrus 1 and Paradigm Atoms for music, mostly background, but we still like it to sound decent. There's also the possib…

Holy poop this seems cheap! http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=255711

Can someone recommend something cheap I can use as an external USB Amp/DAC for testing purposes? Looking for something under 50 bucks.

Considering how awesome the 2 channel EHHA amp is and how cheap the kits are I have been considering going balanced (if balanced actually sounds better, seems to be differing opines on this) what is a decent balanced USB (pc only) DAC that is cheap as dog poo? The Gamma 2 with mods will do it but we still don't have a price or date on that yet and the Buffalo is over what I can afford. Would a balanced opus with a USB receiver do well enough? I've never heard a balanced rig so I don't know if they're worth the extra or not.

Guys, do you like Dave, how is it?

An interesting new DAC with bluetooth and USB input by Chord, looks like a good computer source. Chordette Gem

I'm in the market for a proper (i.e. non-iPod) source, and I was hoping you guys could help me out. My current home rig consists of a Dynahi, Millett, and RS-1s (with said iPod as source). The Channel Islands Audio VDA-1 has been suggested by a couple of people as being good value on the used market, and I'm currently in touch with someone selling one with the VAC-1 and "Revelation Audio Labs" cable for around $400. I have been doing some DAC research on head-fi, but it is hard to get impressions of the VDA-1 vs. other DACs, as it's discontinued. The price is a little steep, but a bit better than you might think, as the seller is also Canadian (I avoid 14% tax and $25…

So the next step for me after I run the Bugle for a while will be to try a SUT with an MM tube phono stage. Of course I'm already looking for an appropriate SUT, and it appears that the Cinemag transformers are within my price range, and supposedly they have a synergy with the DL-103 line of carts. There are two builders I've come across. anumber1 on agon and capnbob on eBay. I have read that anumber1 is a popular guy on aa, but I've never spoken with him. Capnbob responded to a question I had quickly last night, and he regularly sells Altec and Cinemag SUTs which always go quickly. However, capnbob's price is $85 more then anumber1's. Also, anumber1's layout of ins on…

Actual impressions to come later, only a pic for now. Plinius is less deep and slightly shorter, and the curves are sharper on it.

Me again... So, I'm now looking for a decent phono stage. I've decided that I am going to place my turntable at the back of my room (17ft from front to back). Basically, I want to keep the analog rig far away from the subs etc. at the front of the room. The cartridge is a Clearaudio Accurate and here are the specs on that:

I tried one of these on a lark. It looked like it would work on my Regas, with their teenie weenie stubby little spindles. My really old Planar 3's spindle was too short even for this gizmo. But my merely old one accepts the thing just fine. Amazingly, it actually works. It ain't no Sota Reflex Clamp but it does help bass and image focus. It costs $29 and works on spindle-challenged tables, so what's not to love? (If you haven't seen one, it's a little clear plastic saucer that looks like it just escaped from under a cup of cafe Cubano, or maybe from being the lid for a cat food tin. I'm sure most of the 29 bucks goes to paying off the mold. I don't see mu…

Hi folks, some of my local head caser point me to this site [url=http://cplay.sourceforge.net/pmwiki.php]cMP

Guys, I'm looking for a way to use my trusty Bantam DAC on a pretty minimalistic system running Arch. Requirement is not to be gnome or KDE based and I'd prefer something command-line oriented. Anyone have any experience with the following: C* Music Player is a very feature-rich ncurses-based music player. MOC (Music On Console) is an ncurses console audio player with support for the MP3, Ogg, and WAV formats. ncmpc is a curses client for mpd. ncmpcpp is an almost exact clone of ncmpc with some new features. Sonata is an elegant GTK+ music client for mpd. cplay is a curses front-end for various audio players.

Indie bands have been releasing cassettes for a few years, but now a new cassette player has been released. I was cleaning my place and stumbled on some old cassettes... taking some time to listen through all of them (especially since many of them are unlabeled/mislabeled) on my ancient Walkman. Unfortunately, this new player doesn't measure or perform very well, but perhaps it will stir the big players into producing something better. https://www.wearerewind.com

So, I'm looking to grab some sort of external sound card for a number of purposes. My requirements are: PC based External >= 24/192 I need to be able to use this with RMAA, SpeakerWorkshop, LSPCad, etc. hence the PC requirement. The 24/192 is a requirement on the analog inputs for things like RMAA and needle-drops eventually. Budget is flexible One that caught my eye so far is the Edirol FA-66, but I'd be interested in seeing what else would qualify.

...to either replace or chain off of my 0404 usb. Music: Rock and Electronic, not much jazz or folk or acoustic, the occasional classical listen. Amps: aside from the 0404 are a Rockhopper M^3, a Gilmore Lite Headphones are: HD650, K601, DT250, K271. Long, wordy version: I'd need it to either have toslink or coax inputs, or if usb only be able to fully replace the I/O functionality of an 0404 usb - I make use of the analog in and occasionally the second digitial input (it will mix the usb and spdif inputs). This unfortunately rules out the duet, as it won't play nice with everything else. Keeping the 0404 is fine by me, though. I had an eye on the amp-le…

We talked a lot about R2R dacs on Stax thread because of some bullshit design choices, And given the attention of the R2R, especially discrete dacs, I wanted to post all the findings in this thread. Discrete modules I found to play with: Transient Modules (the dac modules of 2nd and 3rd gen Metrum dacs) and Diy parts based on it (most of the parts they are selling as oem but diy parts are also avaliable): http://www.transient-audio.nl/ all parts can be found under this website http://www.transient-audio.nl/Ordering.html this is how to order guide Soekris Modules (there are two modules avaliable on each segment [oem and diy line], t…

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…

First, does anyone have dimensions and a guess on weight? Second, how's the headout on this unit? Decent or great job with Grados? Finally, anyone know of a good online source for purchase of this DAC?

*Gets straight to the point* https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=226826 Its not a replacement for foobar (only plays one file at time, doesn't support anything besides flac and wav), but I think it actually sounds better. It gobbles up 1gb of my RAM with AWE on though and the file I'm playing is only 300mb~ The main improvement I think I'm hearing is in the soundstage, there seems to be a lot more depth now, and the sounds are nicely spaced out when it sometimes gets a bit cluttered with foobar. This is where I heard about it: http://www.odysseyaudiohk.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1215105279

I know that Audio Aero Prima SE and Opus 21 have it, but are there any others? Few others I've seen has been well over my budget. I can spend up to $3000, though less is always preferred.

This is pretty much the first time I've had a chance to spend any quality time with the Pico DAC prototype that Justin was kind enough to send me since I've been out of town all weekend. My system in transition at the moment so I only have the Duet as my headphone amp and won't have me monoblock back for my speaker rig until Wednesday. At the moment I'm using the mini out of the Pico for my 650's with the Pico connected usb to my Mac Mini. I'm using the volume control of itunes to control the Pico. I realize this isn't the optimum set up but it's the best I can do until later in the week when my speaker rig is back in action. I have to say that Pico sounds great. …

Well I just sold off all my old stuff and I am without a system and have a handful of cash. My budget is $1000. I am considering these: 1. a new Lavry DA10 - $975 2. a used, modded Benchmark DAC1 - $825 AudiogoN ForSale: Benchmark DAC1 silver 3. A modded bel canto DAC2+ - $750 on head-fi here: FS: bel canto DAC2+ (Legendary Edwood balanced mod) - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio 4. A used, unmodded Benchmark DAC1 - $760 AudiogoN ForSale: Benchmark dac1 blk non-usb 5. Other suggestions? thank you! I was really leaning to the Lavry for a while but now I am not quite sure. Tell me what you think.

Hi everyone I want to create a new bedroom rig to replace my old sony minitower. I will be using the next gen ipod nano that will arrive in september as the heart of the rig and then probbably the onkyo ipod transport, i can connect a dac to that via spdiff or coax but I am not sure which one yet. I want one with xlr output and either spdiff or coax input. I want to spend 400 euro max. I was thinking about the dacmagic but the little dot dac_i uses the seem dac chip and has xlr out although the rest of the chips or implementation might be different. It is a lot cheaper though. I was also thinking about the buffalo II with placid power supply and the line stage legatt…