General Asylum

Posted by Old Listener (A) on July 06, 2011 at 09:17:19

In Reply to: RE: houses posted by rick_m on July 06, 2011 at 07:26:35

The maker calls it a monitor controller. It has SPDIF inputs - coax and Toslink and an optical ADAT input but not USB or Firewire inputs. Volume control knob. Balanced analog output, headphone out and digital outputs as well. I use balanced analog to unbalanced cables into Audioengine A5 powered speakers.

I'm not a fan of SPDIF but for < $ 300, I can stand it. The street price for the DAC went up sharply just before I bought mine and I would not consider it as good a deal at $ 500 plus. Florida Music Co. was still advertising the DAC at < $ 300 and they arranged to get another unit at the old price from the maker/importer.

I think it sounds better than the Juli@ card but the volume level is higher with the balanced to unbalanced connection than with the Juli@ unbalanced output. The hum problems below made comparisons more complicated and took up my attention for a few days.

I experimented a bit with coax and Toslink connections from the Juli@ and didn't hear a major difference. Now I use coax SPDIF from the Juli@ card in my dedicated MusicPC and Toslink from an AudioTrak Prodigy HD2 card in my personal PC. The Toslink output from that card is flaky so it isn't a long term solution. So do I buy another Juli@ card ($ 129) to replace the AudioTrak or do I just replace my personal PC by a Win 7 PC with Toslink out from the motherboard ($700-900.) That would otherwise be next year's expenditure.

The DAC has a 12V wall wart and that caused some hum problems if I used both inputs to the A5 speakers. There is no electrical isolation between inputs and the A5s have their own power supply - a recipe for hum problems. I had beaten the hum using an isolation transformer in one path to the A5s but with the extra power supply from the DAC, that didn't work. I wound up using the DAC to switch between the personal PC and MusicPC input with a single connection to the A5s.

I considered the DAC as a tool for exploring configuration issues in my multi-room, multi-PC setup. I've always been very careful with purchases so I have never had a junkbox with extra stuff like soundcards and DACs to play with. (A bit like your philosophy of not wasting money or anything else.) This DAC was the first audio purchase I've made to give me some extra capacity to try different configurations.

I couldn't try some some configurations because I couldn't pull additional cables through the wall between my office and the library with my main system. The next logical step is to improve the through wall cable facilities so that I can consolidate all the gear in my home office. I'm not up to moving file cabinets and a large desk so that project might be awhile.

Once I get all the gear in one room, I'll be in the market for another DAC. There are lots of < $ 500 DACs with USB and SPDIF input coming out now. The USB only RME Babyface pro-audio DAC at $ 750 looks good because those guys can write good drivers.

Bill