Anyone up for a UK diyAudio Meet?

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#603
Vikash said:
...After swapping with Al's laptop using just the headphone output into his valve pre made a significant difference to my ears. Could it be the DAC in the EMU? Well we tried the valve pre on the end of the EMU and again it sounded much better - so it seems not. Valves? Maybe it was the distortion that sounded better? To be continued...
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I'm tending towards the thought that perhaps the isolation transformers on the input of the heretical were the important bit...

I can't believe I missed the disco tunes! I have loads but didn't play them for fear of being laughed at...
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I'm too old to care about being laughed at! 😉
 
#604
SimontY said:
Laptops, fine... Onboard sound - not so fine!!! Yes, we're definately talking DACs here. The output stage is a big deal in a CD player, so should it be in an offboard soundcard.

I've never heard onboard sound like Al's laptop was putting out (due to nice gear on the other end!) but naturally it was sorely lacking in detail, space, dynamics, proper treble, resolution etc.

Next year this won't happen. I will make sure of it! Already looking forward to the next meet!! Do we have to wait a whole year??
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I agree. I can't think of a reason why laptop sound would be bad, as long as you use a decent (outboard) DAC. The digital bit stream from the player is with zero errors anyway, so if the DAC is allright, with low jitter etc, it should sound first class, or, more correct, it would show whatever was in the recording. That then becomes the limiting factor. And, believe me, there are LOTS of bad recordings out there for which the DAC, amp, speaker etc gets blamed.

Jan Didden
 
#614
After swapping with Al's laptop using just the headphone output into his valve pre made a significant difference to my ears. Could it be the DAC in the EMU? Well we tried the valve pre on the end of the EMU and again it sounded much better - so it seems not. Valves? Maybe it was the distortion that sounded better?
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No, it was the sheer excellence of the preamp design. 😉

With due respect to sploo (I think he's generally right here), it isn't the distortion in this case (Al's preamp has vanishingly low distortion), it's more likely the isolation provided by the excellent input transformers. In real-world systems in real-world environments, the benefits of breaking up those grounds are significant.
 
#616
Hi everyone. I just got home....Looks like a shame i missed the Sunday. It was great to meet everyone, really interesting, i think i've come away with a years worth DIY of development work for my system, thank's to Jan 🙂

Does anybody know the full details of the Jordan speaker setup that was producing the AWESOME, accurate Bass ??? at a guess i would say the Q on the bass alignment was 0.5 :xeye:
 
#619
Sploo, Al's point was that the transformer stage was helping the sound by rejecting garbage 😉 Not being a noisy transformer stage.

I used to buy Hifi World when it first came out. It had a good DIY pullout and seemingly quite good reviews. Then it went a bit mad with silly modifications and it lost credibility for me. Not bothered with it for years now. I get all my info from the web.
 
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