audioengr
Responses from audioengr
| Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD The Overdrive SE DAC has earned several best of shows and just got a positive review from Audiostream:http://www.audiostream.com/content/empirical-audio-overdrive-se-usb-dacpreThis has the big advantage of eliminating the preamp as well as providi... | |
| New to digital high-end, need help "At what price point can I expect a DAC to make a dramatic difference?"more than $1K but maybe not as high as $3KA Qute DAC ($1795) with the right power supply ($699) and USB cable filter ($199) is quite excellent. The ripping/playback software an... | |
| Neil Young's Pono music player raises millions The problem IMO is that Neil Young understands the problem, but he is not technical enough to understand the right approach for a solution.Also, why in the world is this on Kickstarter in the first place? Young has enough money to make this happen... | |
| Best USB Asynchronous DAC 24/192 under $600? Help Concero from Canada. Google it. | |
| Computer output to DAC, which route? "you don't NEED an Offramp if you go USB"True, but the sound quality will be improved a lot if you do, even with a USB DAC. Lots of customers are doing this.Steve N.Empirical Audio | |
| Some older CDs play much lower than newer ones Most modern recordings have a lot of compression applied in the mixing process. This will make them louder, but will compromise the dynamic range.Some older recordings were captured at lower levels, because they were afraid to approach the 0dB lim... | |
| DAC newbie question You will have better results getting the inexpensive Pure i20 on Amazon for $85. It has excellent DAC inside and excellent digital output as well. It is a digital iPod docking station. Make sure you have the 30-pin connector on your iPod. I have c... | |
| Length of digital cable? The best performing and also the best price coax cable is my 4-foot BNC-BNC cable with RCA adapters. Beats everything in customer shootouts, at any price. Silver with expanded Teflon dielectric and terminated to low-loss true 75 ohm BNC connectors... | |
| Upgraded power supply for the Wadia 170 I iPod dock You might be better off to change to a Pure i20. $85 on Amazon. Even using the stock wallwart it crushes the Wadia. Even the DAC in it is outstanding.If you upgrade the PS, its hard to beat a paulhynesdesign.com supply. you may have a long wait ho... | |
| Length of digital cable? The 1.5m cable length is a good guideline. Shorter cables can be problematic depending on the signal risetime. The 1.5m length insures that any jitter causing reflections occur too late to have any impact. Really short, say 6 inches can also be go... | |
| Femto clocks ,every unit should have one NoNoise - Silver wires are even more dicey that you can imagine. The metallurgy and treatment are critical. Copper is much easier, but the performance of silver is better assuming good implementation.The Antipodes server I have used at shows. It i... | |
| Femto clocks ,every unit should have one Audioman - implementing a working femtoclock circuit and actually achieving really low jitter at the system-level are two entirely different things.Break-in has to do with power supply elements, such as capacitors in the decoupling and power regul... | |
| Length of digital cable? "Although BNC would theoretically be preferable to RCA connection, there is actually next to no audible difference between an spdif using either. Steve mentions that the BNC must be designed for a particular cable, which frankly is a dubious state... | |
| Femto clocks ,every unit should have one Just because a clock is rated on a bench with a $1K power supply to have 85Fsec of jitter, this does not mean that it will perform this well in the circuit. If the power and grounding system is not top-notch, you can easily get 500 psec of jitter ... | |
| Digital Shorting Plugs These plugs make no difference whatsoever. There is no technical reason why they should. Inputs do not radiate, so no reason to put caps on them. If they pick-up stray noise, then it is a bad design.The only REAL plug that is effective would be fo... |