You guys are making me feel old-fashioned with my amps-on-a-shelf, long-speaker-cables setup. Oh well - at least I've gone active w/ DSP and man, there's no turning back from that.
Very interesting project. I've been contemplating this myself. How are you going to implement the volume control? Just run everything at 24 bits and control the volume on the spdif interface? Or do you want to use out of band signaling and run the digital interface bit perfect to the speaker?
If you had a light dependant resistor based volume control, you could have a conveniently placed variable resistor to control the LEDs, or just have resistor ladders controlled by relays.
My 50 year old turntable doesn't have a digital output, nor does my 40 year old tuner.
Since I have no urge to throw away albums I like with content that's unavailable in a digital format, what would sitting a DAC near a speaker do?
And if you're a digital user, why go for TOSLINK and its lower sampling frequencies?
Radio hobbyists did that with metal tubes like the 6L6. The added cooling from the oil allowed them to get much more power from them, or at least wear the tube out before it failed from overstress.
Galvanic isolation AKA eliminate a ground loop but with lower cost and higher SQ than a coupling transformer.
I currently run my optical connections at 24 bit/ 96kHz. Formerly I've run 24 bit/ 192kHz. Not officially supported but it worked anyway. I just use it for 2 channels.
The answer is obvious, you get a turntable for each speaker, double your record collection, and work out a way to drop both styluses at the same time.
slightly funning you, but Cyril bateman discovered this testing a normal quality amplifier without stupid wire. And as threads on here have shown matching characteristic impedance can have measurable effects. Audible? I'm on the fence on that one...
This is DIY, I can go any direction i want surely as long as I'm willing to accept certain people consider me odd, which has been the story of my life. Anyway studios seem to have no problem with DB25 being used for 8 balanced connections, made popular by tascam? or is that unproved...
copper costs, so the wire with most copper will be the most expensive surely?
And that's fine you make your living from that. However I'm doing this as a hobby so can chose the path less trodden for my personal pleasure. Plus I would argue strongly that domestic audio signal levels are far from best practice. Good enough for rock and roll, but not best.
Of course I caught it AND thought of it. And on balance and looking at the data I decided that using balanced interconnects was what I wanted to do.
It is absolutely proven and there is an AES standard for it. The studios use DB25 and RJ45 connectors. And seriously, the interconnect is less expensive than the equivalent RCA because it is based on high volume industrial ethernet prices i.e. not a lot. Now you can go buy some mega$ audiophile-approved Ethernet but you don't have to.
You/we are allowed to be odd. I am sure our partners decided that aeons ago 🙂
I haven't checked, but maybe there are even less costly Chinese fakes of boutique ethernet cables.
Maybe with braided sheaths with snakeskin patterns, mellow to venomous types.
Maybe with braided sheaths with snakeskin patterns, mellow to venomous types.
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As long as it is not the constrictor type which will be detrimental to the soundstage.
If you want "quality sound" but still stick to records you hook the cartridge output up to an AD converter, do the deemphasis digitally and then go from there. That also makes it easy to play pre-RIAA standardised records.
Talking about somebody else's weird pet theory for sound improvement (i.e. snake oil) is a bit like telling a mother her baby is ugly. It just isn't done if you have more than 2 brain cells. Better to keep your lip buttoned and keep your exasperated snickering internal IMO.
Assuming this sentence is ironic, I believe that nobody can make themselves a teacher (this is a saying of my country and I don't know if I translated it correct) because even if mathematics is an exact science, IMO the Audio is (yet) not.
So I try to be humble, I mean with myself, and with my beliefs about what comes out from my system and why it comes out in that way.
Each component that adds or subtracts to the signal path can be involved as a sort of "variable" in my system and can give good or bad results, in my system and in my perception.
Even if I agree that generally speaking less is on the (analog) signal the better, it is not an absolute rule since the purpose of listening is not (or should not be, in my opinion) to buy or build minimalistic devices, but to gather a good-sounding system, that's my system.
The judge can only be myself and nobody else because the system (and the ears) is/are mine (there are no two equal ones).
So, it depends on the parts and depends on the signal, and it depends on "where" you put the parts, in my opinion.
Just as an example, with digital signal I use USB Isolator (ADuM4160) even not using a PC, but a Digital Transport, and I love the resulting (better) sound to the point that I bought two more units as possibly spare.
Sometimes more may be better.
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It's not ironic. In all seriousness, I don't believe a part is as good as no part, when it has to do with passing an.analog signal.
What I replied to is the answer to my query- what does sitting a DAC next to a speaker have to do with the analog signal from my turntable or tuner.
The answer was that I should convert my analog turntable and tuner signals to digital, send it to DACs sitting next to speakers and convert the signals back to analog prior to sending them to the speaker. Saying this logic makes me regard myself as a teacher is completely unrelated to what I stated.
Are you saying converting an analog signal to digital, then converting it to analog again with all that extra signal processing somehow improves the signal?
What I replied to is the answer to my query- what does sitting a DAC next to a speaker have to do with the analog signal from my turntable or tuner.
The answer was that I should convert my analog turntable and tuner signals to digital, send it to DACs sitting next to speakers and convert the signals back to analog prior to sending them to the speaker. Saying this logic makes me regard myself as a teacher is completely unrelated to what I stated.
Are you saying converting an analog signal to digital, then converting it to analog again with all that extra signal processing somehow improves the signal?
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