rbstehno

Responses from rbstehno

How to Play iTunes Through My HiFi
the dac 3 has a usb input but it is inferior to the other inputs. if you have a dac 2 already, get an airport express, a good jitter remover (monarchy, genesis, and others), and hook up the jitter device with a toslink from the AE or your macs tos... 
CD transport vs streamer?
i have been using a mac as a music server for quite some time now. hooking up a mac or apple tv or an AE straight to a dac does not do justice to the sound. it is much better than not using a dac but if you insert a jitter device between the mac a... 
"Tube Like" SS Integrated Amps
look into a hybrid amp which is tube preamp with a ss amp section. i have owned a few and right now own the 1301 and 1701 jolida hybrid integrated amps. they are both built like a tank and sound wonderful. i upgraded the tubes in the 1701 this pas... 
Requesting input from iMac users
magfan, get a jitter reduction device and place it between the airport express and the CA unit. you will hear a big difference. 
Jolida 102B vs. 1501a for Triangle Cometes
i just purchased a jolida 1701. NICE! thing is built like a tank. the 1301 is also amazing for such a small unit. the 1701 isn't that small. i upgraded the tubes to electro-harmonix, big difference over the factory tubes. what is also nice is that... 
Jolida 102B vs. 1501a for Triangle Cometes
i agree with the 1301. i also have a 1301 teamed up with totem inwalls and a sub in my den. plays bigger than what you might a 30 watt will do. 
Requesting input from iMac users
the sound you get from the mac is ok, nothing to write home about. when you attach a jitter device to the mac using the toslink to reduce or eliminate the jitter and at the same time converting to a coax cable, then attach an external dac to that,... 
SoundString Cables
i have their speaker cables and jumpers. great sound and great price. 
Biwiring Mani-2's...
i used to bi-wire my mani's with 2 pairs of dimarzio speaker cables: both terminated at the amp, and 1 pair to each the tweeter and woofer. i have since upgraded my cables and have gone the speaker jumper route instead of bi-wire. 
Qestions: iTunes Downloading & iTouch as a Remote
the songs you download from itunes are pretty low quality. i would recommend ripping cds into itunes using a ripper like xld.i keep my volume slider on my iphone to about 90-95% of max. seems to work. 
CD transport vs streamer?
i use jitter devices from my mac before going into an external dac. the sound is every bit as good as my classe cdp-10 player, which is an excellent player. the jitter device and dac cost more than the classe did but you can get excellent sound fr... 
Now Hear This
in the past, i had almost all nht speakers from the super zeros, super ones, 1.5's, and the 2.9's. all of them are very cool sounding speakers. nothing laid back about them. i went all totem and the totem are less fatiguing, much more musical. the... 
Replacing Totems One's
a nice amp for the totem model 1 would be a ma6900 integrated. this would be a sweet setup. i had the model 1's with the ma6500 integrated and that was before the ma6900 was out. you could go with the ma6500, but i would recommend a rel strata III... 
Wilson Sophia 2 vs Revel Salon2--fair comparison?
Both very good speakers. the new salon 2's i think are a better than the watt puppy 8's, which are better than the new sophia's. the studio 2's are also very good and those would save you some money and 1 heck of a speaker. IMO! 
Replacing Totems One's
i have had many pairs of totem speakers (model 1's, arros, inwall, and now have multiple pairs of mani 2's and none of them have been forward sounding. It might be caused by your amp/preamp, cables, front end, etc... i have driven the totems with ...