July 2016 Podcast

[cwt]

Jul 1, 2016 19:08:20 GMT -5 novisnick said:

And that my friend is whats wrong with so many DACs, Way TOO clinical sounding, lets add some smooth sound to the edges with a good set of tubes!  

There is a solution Nick ; as we all know ;

Tube amplifiers have much more distortion than solid-state amplifiers, but most of it is second-order, which is quite musical. That's why it's called "harmonic" distortion.
Second-harmonic distortion is exactly the same note, an octave above. Ditto for higher-order even harmonics; they are also the same note more octaves above.
Even-order harmonic distortion can be so pleasant that back in the 1970s the Aphex Aural Exciter was very popular in recording and broadcast specifically because it was designed to generate and add these harmonic distortions! You can still buy it today.

Plug this in and your off
www.amazon.com/Aphex-Exciter-Rack-Mount-Processor/dp/B004NDHWN8?ie=UTF8&keywords=aphex%20aural%20exciter&linkCode=sl1&linkId=FD6HZYD3VIXLRF3C&qid=1432576236&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&sr=8-1&tag=kenrockwellcom

[novisnick]

Jul 2, 2016 7:02:14 GMT -5 cwt said:

Jul 1, 2016 19:08:20 GMT -5 novisnick said:

And that my friend is whats wrong with so many DACs, Way TOO clinical sounding, lets add some smooth sound to the edges with a good set of tubes!  

There is a solution Nick ; as we all know ;

Tube amplifiers have much more distortion than solid-state amplifiers, but most of it is second-order, which is quite musical. That's why it's called "harmonic" distortion.
Second-harmonic distortion is exactly the same note, an octave above. Ditto for higher-order even harmonics; they are also the same note more octaves above.
Even-order harmonic distortion can be so pleasant that back in the 1970s the Aphex Aural Exciter was very popular in recording and broadcast specifically because it was designed to generate and add these harmonic distortions! You can still buy it today.

Plug this in and your off
www.amazon.com/Aphex-Exciter-Rack-Mount-Processor/dp/B004NDHWN8?ie=UTF8&keywords=aphex%20aural%20exciter&linkCode=sl1&linkId=FD6HZYD3VIXLRF3C&qid=1432576236&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&sr=8-1&tag=kenrockwellcom

Sorry my friend, I don't have a use for this device. My music sounds sublime.  I was ststing that many, many DACs are a little high in treble, something thats not good with my speakers.

have you ever heard what a great tubes preamp can do for music? AHhhhhh,,,,,,,,,, 

Thanks again, sorry if I wasn't bery clear about my statement.

Nick

[cwt]

Jul 2, 2016 9:47:26 GMT -5 novisnick said:

Sorry my friend, I don't have a use for this device. My music sounds sublime.  I was ststing that many, many DACs are a little high in treble, something thats not good with my speakers.

"High in treble" eh ; must be hard to take a sacd with a response above 20khz No I certainly appreciate that ; I have ribbon tweeters that go to 40khz flat . Good thing my ears have a natural rolloff thats not as good as it used to be

[coldfusion]

Jul 1, 2016 6:57:46 GMT -5 rbk123 said:

Jun 30, 2016 18:36:29 GMT -5 LCSeminole said:

Personally I'm chomping at the bit to get one of these for my Sennheisers.

Personally I know zero/zip/zilch about the headphone arena. What would be the potential performance differences of the new A-100 + a DAC vs. the DC-1 if you used both just for headphones?

The DC1 puts out 1W max (at 47ohm) down to 90mW (at 600ohm). The mini will put out much more power. Some headphones (like HiFiMan HE-6) are notoriously hard to drive.

So it depends on the headphones. For easy to drive headphones, you'd likely be better off with the DC-1, as the mini will have more noise (at least the prior model did).

[LCSeminole]

Jul 1, 2016 6:57:46 GMT -5 rbk123 said:

Jun 30, 2016 18:36:29 GMT -5 LCSeminole said:

Personally I'm chomping at the bit to get one of these for my Sennheisers.

Personally I know zero/zip/zilch about the headphone arena. What would be the potential performance differences of the new A-100 + a DAC vs. the DC-1 if you used both just for headphones?

This new A-100 will be able to more than handle the harder to drive headphones, while I'm no expert either on headphones the DC-1 does an adequate job of driving my Sennheiser HD600's but seems to run out of gas when I really want to push the envelope a bit where it has no problem at all with my easier to drive Phiaton MS430's. The new A-100 looks to be a fix for this.

[LCSeminole]

Jul 2, 2016 17:48:28 GMT -5 coldfusion said:

Jul 1, 2016 6:57:46 GMT -5 rbk123 said:

Personally I know zero/zip/zilch about the headphone arena. What would be the potential performance differences of the new A-100 + a DAC vs. the DC-1 if you used both just for headphones?

The DC1 puts out 1W max (at 47ohm) down to 90mW (at 600ohm). The mini will put out much more power. Some headphones (like HiFiMan HE-6) are notoriously hard to drive.

So it depends on the headphones. For easy to drive headphones, you'd likely be better off with the DC-1, as the mini will have more noise (at least the prior model did).

From what Big Dan says(quoted below) the new A-100 has improved in the noise department so I'm expecting this to be an improvement on the earlier A-100.

May 28, 2016 15:46:00 GMT -5 Dan Laufman said:

The A-100 has a headphone output driven directly from the amplifier stage. It has a current liming resistor that can be overridden by a simple removable link or easily modified to optimize for a particular type of headphone load. It'll drive the pants off of low efficiency phones, like planars. Also, it's much quieter then the original A-100 and uses the new amplifier design too.

[rbk123]

Very intriguing. When you get the A-100 will you use the DC-1's DAC's to front it?

I look forward to hearing what your thoughts are after some solid time with it.

[LCSeminole]

Jul 2, 2016 20:12:05 GMT -5 rbk123 said:

Very intriguing. When you get the A-100 will you use the DC-1's DAC's to front it?

I look forward to hearing what your thoughts are after some solid time with it.

That's the plan, I already have a spot right next to my DC-1. I've been intrigued with the headphone realm for some time and didn't want to spend a fortune on dedicated headphone amps and expensive headphones, so when I got the Sennheiser HD600's for a song off Amazon(not to mention I had some gift cards to help out) I figured I was on my way inexpensively.

[sid24]

Any news on the Emersa line? Specifically what happened to EMP-1??

Really can't wait to get my hands on a budget 7.1 pre/pro.

I guess the BasX MC-700 is also delayed