audioengr
Responses from audioengr
| How important are transports? Jeff_jones - No, It is not the AC power "pollution". It is generally the jitter spectrum that varies from one transport to the next and the edge-rate of the S/PDIF signal, as well as the impedance mismatch. I have found lots of transport S/PDIF ou... | |
| What are TCXO and Superclock? TCXO is a temperature controlled oscillator. The advantage is that the frequency tolerance is very tight.Superclock is a module oscillator that has circuitry to minimize jitter in the output signal. It may drift and change frequency more than the ... | |
| Coaxial or Toslink digital output from a PC Why dont you get an adapter for the AE so you can use the Toslink output to drive a glass fiber cable to your Bel canto DAC? Sounds quite good. Even better when modified to have a Coax output. Your Bel Canto is not my cup of tea, but that is perso... | |
| Sony S7700, S7000, or ??? best low cost transport? The Pioneer DV-47A or Ai are both good DVD players that make excellent transports. Recommend a superclock inside though. | |
| Can the Sony S7700 play CDRs ? 7700 will play MOST CD-R's, not DVD-R's. Makes a great transport. | |
| Upgrade question Your speakers will not sing with a Denon. You should be looking for a low-impedance higher-power amp and preamp, such as a Odyssey Stratos, McCormack or similar. | |
| Besides the soundcard.... does the computer itself If you use a PCI card, the answer is yes. If you use an outboard USB to S/PDIF converter with it's own power supply, no. The issue is PC clock and PC power. | |
| How good is Benchmark DAC1 comparing to...... Alex - Too bad we could not do the shootout. Guess we will never know now.. Unless you will be at the Denver show in Oct.??? I plan to be there. BTW - your buddy David C. spent some time listening in our suite - he wanted to hear the shootout too.... | |
| How good is Benchmark DAC1 comparing to...... Dne - I'm happy for you that you like it so much. It is better than the majority of DAC's available, however I compare it and all other DAC's to my reference DAC. Here is a post on some mods to the Benchmark:http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/view... | |
| Will the Big Ben improve the 24 MXL? Of the jitter reducers, the Big Ben seems to work the best IMO. Noticable improvement. | |
| Should I buy a DAC? The advantage of buying a good DAC is that you can use it also with a laptop to play ripped CD's. This can be superior to any transport or player. This was demonstrated at CES last week. | |
| How good is Benchmark DAC1 comparing to...... The stock Benchmark DAC-1 has the most pristine and clear highs of any of these DAC's. However, the op-amps used cause the midrange and mid-bass to be a bit thin. This can be improved by changing op-amps or other mods, but the highs will not be qu... | |
| Is 24/192 all hype? Sean and BigKids hit the nail on the head. It's not the chips so much as the implementation. It's the board layout, the power supply, what type of parts were used etc... | |
| Music from hard drive better than CD? Using a USB to S/PDIF coaxial converter or an AirPort Express with coaxial out will definitely outperform any transport on the market, including modded ones. I have compared these. Also, using Foobar2K to upsample to 24/96 is even better. This is ... | |
| DAC for AirportExpress around $1k? Get a good glass fiber Toslink cable and a Benchmark DAC-1, Birdland or dAck!. |