peanutbutterjam

Thanks for the advice, and I actually totally agree with you. I haven't heard a really bad CD player so this must have some truth. However, as much as I know this to be the case, practicality is an issue. The fact is that over the past few years I've archived the vast majority of the CDs I've come across in lossless formats. To cut the long story short, most of my music is in digital lossless. I suppose this is exactly part of the issue with vinyl, other than the costs. What exactly are you going to do with your entire CD collection now? Esp considering that you might just never find your favorite pieces on your ideal medium. If a person was rich enough he might be able to afford both setups and slowly build up his collection, but that is really just the luxury. Frankly I was extremely tempted to get a CDP couple of weeks ago. But practicality must come in. I am acutely aware of the far better cost-performance ratio of a CDP compared to a DAC, but ultimately this is first about my music then the equipment. I wish now that my music is on CD medium, but that not being the case being able to hear my favorite pieces is first priority for me. A good DAC is never cheap. Definitely so. But that isn't really the question. The question is how best to maximize the performance with a limited budget. In a way that is why we are all here, to find out just how much performance that $x can give you.

Haha so is he the sith lord or the apprentice? Wow nice. You chopped the extension?

Haha I totally respect your collection What's the other dynamic?

side

Hi guys, Anyone heard of this DAC before? I've searched around but this practically doesn't even seem to exist on the internet. Only came across 1-2 forum posts saying its pretty good, but totally not substantial. No reviews whatsoever. Just shoot if you know anything

Totally agree. That's EXACTLY what happened with at Eric's. In all honesty I was rather hoping to hear nothing, so that those doubts can be put to rest once and for all. But I guess I visited the wrong person Completely agree. I've talked to this old guy before, can't rmb his name, but he was telling me how he "upgraded" all his stuff now and then. After a long while, he came across some component that he previously upgraded from and really liked it, and only then realized that he was going in a circle since it was his expectations going round. Easier said than done though. I've caught myself a few times guilty of that I'm quite a bit more lucky. I have a couple of wall sockets that are near my setup that I can use. But I was thinking, is no distributor better than a good distributor? If that's the case, I might as well forgo that and consider using the funds on the wall sockets themselves.

Eric's idea of "budget" is making my hair stand I think my rig needs quite a bit more work on the amp and esp the DAC side before the power cords play starts

Came across this nice article, don't know if someone has shared it before but here it is: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/eac-foob...ictorial-402765

Hm this seems pretty exciting, and I hate to be a wet blanket, but I have my serious doubts. But before that, a disclaimer, I read that page, but I haven't had time to read the "read on" part. Glancing through, there seem to be some cartoons on that page, interspersed with graphs. And disclaimer 2: I'm tired. Ok to continue: I don't know. I'm no physics professor, but this seems to be complete bull to me. It sounds exactly like someone was trying to bluff his way through with technical jargon. Feel free to google "group velocity". Firstly, this implies that they have a really good idea how this "group velocity" affects sound presentation. At this moment, how a sound wave relate to presentation is still controversial at best, nobody can say for sure how to mathematically represent audio ideas like "clarity" or "dynamic" or "detailed". I.e. I'm saying that given a graph plot of a sound wave, nobody can really analyze how that will really sound with respect to these audio terms. Sure there are advances in digital audio technology, digital reproduction of space and imaging is getting better day by day, but till now these are still far off the radar of audiophile application. Is it because we are all mountain tortoises unwilling to give technology a go? Hardly. Very simply put, we are not anywhere near successfully scientifically analyzing a sound wave yet. So now, these ppl claim that the can give a "natural sounding "illuminated" dynamic" sound by manipulating the physics of a power supply. If nobody can even detail the effects of a audio signal on performance, I leave you to draw your own conclusions about power. [edited] Closure: Point is, if they had sold this product just saying "it sounds good", period, I might just buy that argument because I have yet to find a scientific argument why 2 power cords sound different. But using science to smoke through is a completely different thing altogether. They are claiming to know the answer to that question, and more. They are claiming to know how to manipulate these qualities to produce something approximating ideal. And reading their article doesn't seem to lead me to anything scientifically meaningful. Someone should open that box up and take an internal pic. That would be entirely fascinating. Edit: Ok, they seem to explain a little of that "frequency dispersion correction via group velocity management" later. Hm ok. I get what they are referring to. But that doesn't mean it is true. Negetive dispersion qualities? Correct me if I'm wrong but am I reading negative refractive index? That is currently used in optical fiber technology? Besides, do they know what kind of scale they are talking about? Speed of light varies at ratios of 10^-14 with respect to frequency. Speed of light itself is only 3x10^8. And the most obvious point, group velocity management in electrical power??? Firstly I don't buy the skin idea. While it IS true that STATIC electrical charge only resides on the surface of a perfect conductor, this is completely untrue for electrical current. Next, this whole idea of allowing the high frequencies to get "lost" just translates to me as this: a $5k high pass filter. Great.

Hm you could try Jojo's Little Country. I believe at his asking price that is about the best value for budget tube amps. Frankly there are not much choice with budget tube headamps. You might want to give the millet max a shot too.

I dunno... While I'm totally convinced that power DOES make a difference, I still not convinced that it is an improvement per se. (Of course not compared to stock, but rather to cheap DIY cables like belden.) More like a different sound which can be used to tweak your system. Of course that is said with just Eric's few cables, nvr tried any of those scary looking cables yet. I guess I'm lucky, I've got enough wall sockets to play with. Hm maybe I should try out calvin's suggestion of changing the wall sockets after I get a DAC

I really love being here. You guys make me forget about the recession Kidding

Don't you have a preamp for your monitor speakers? How do you run your cans currently then? Monitoring cans.... How about 4070?

Wow. Very nice work there Ivant. Just one question, why didn't you use the mounting board? @jig_sg: Yeah how's those things coming along? (Kidult's getting v tempted already )

Do take the inside pics also

Eric, you're using the kimber cable for your HDD??? What's wrong the the ferrite cores?

Your B22 is running on 2 or 3 channels?

Hm yep this is generally true about 16 bit. However, Benchmark claims that their USB can do bit perfect transfer up to 24bit. Bel-Canto also produces a USB to SPDIF converter that they claim can extract 24bit. Any one has any experience with this? Wow must go try your rig after you matched something to it

Yeah it won't be cheap this way. But if you're really looking for budget, I won't recommend the iTransport + DAC, instead you might want to consider just using the line out (yeah sucks but this is real budget). Get a cheap used integerated amp, and grab some used bookshelves. High end sound? Definitely not, but certainly listenable. Cheap? Darn cheap. And yeah don't even bother with lossy stuff. You probably could hear the difference even with the above stuff.

Many ppl just get a power distributor with US sockets.

Yes. NOS just mean Non-Over-Sampling. NOS DACs can either have opamps or not. Some use discrete opamp topologies, some use IC opamps. Point is, NOS DACs are just a kind of DAC which does not use oversampling chips. Period. It does not mean old or new, nor does it refer to its amp stage topology. Older DACs are usually NOS since upsampling chips are a relatively new thing. Some claim NOS is better, some claim upsample is better, blah blah blah. I can only say that its very difficult to A/B this, because most DACs with upsampling does not allow you to switch off the upsampling. If at all, they usually only allow selection of 96kHz/192kHz upsampling modes. Having said that this really begs the question why chip companies bother developing upsampling chips if its useless. They aren't that cheap either. Now as a matter of fact (unless i got it wrong), upsampling IS NOT oversampling, though how so I have no idea. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can share?

I guess he meant that like makeup it doesn't make an auntie a hottie but it makes a pretty girl a miss universe? Eric's DAC gave me something to think about. I liked the way that the upsampling modes and the output stages can be played with. If it had USB inputs it would have been way perfect.

Yeah it was really scary. I always thought that any improvements, if any at all, would be minute as tweaks usually goes. But no, this was really something else. Changing the power cords had more effect that changing some interconnects. But its really an issue with matching. It seems like icing on the cake, it won't make a lousy cake taste nice, but it would certainly make a good cake out of the world. And you need to find the right flavour of icing for the right cake. But no, can't get them yet, cause I haven't got a DAC yet, so no point getting it if I can't match my equipment properly. Which one are you thinking of getting btw? You might want to give a go at the belden 83803, I found it pretty good too, though it didn't really fit Eric's stuff as well as his current set did. Cheap too.

Went down to Eric's place yesterday. (Thanks Eric! ) Tried out his Oyaide Tunami and Black Sands power cords. Frankly before this I was at best a skeptic. Now I'm a total believer. And Eric was v nice to not say anything before I developed my impressions, so I don't really think I imagined them since it more or less coincided with his. Those 2 really added the icing on his already nice rig.

Nice one. I think its darn cool how the Kidult's hair and PS-1's match