Re: Overkill?

Hamish Guthrey wrote:

>A clinet of mine has a pair of B&W 802s running off a Plinius SA102 power
>and Plinius CD-LAD pre (www.PliniusAudio.com).  We added an AT running
>through a Meridian 566 DA, with stunning results.  It would be interesting
>to see if a SPDIF mod for the AT is possible, as the TosLink connection is
>definatly the weakest link in the chain.
>
>
I looked into that a while ago. The output is on the board right beside
the toslink, just
needs to be soldered on. The hard part is that a couple of resistors are
missing but
if the AT board is simply built of some reference design (which it looks
like), it should
be possible to figure out which ones. There I gave up, I'm a software
guy, for christ sake ;-)

I played with coax/toslink somehow on other things and I must say, the
difference is not worth
bothering (at least on my gear which admittingly is not in the class of
B&Ws and 566DA
[next step, but I'm torn right now towards Quads]). What made some
difference was
an expensive TosLink cable (stranded glass) which for mere 100$ or so
improved
what I hear compared to a $5 cheapo-plastic one.
The digital coax I have on all other gear often causes ground loops and is
more fidgety (even gold-plated stuff needs to be reseted from time to
time, I opted
for pure-silver interconnects which I can _highly_ recommend if one can
bear the
price tag. That clearly
made a very noticable difference, more on the RCA preamp to amp than
digital
though. Beside healing the top register touch-of-harshness I had [albeit
normally
it is said that silver is bright!] I don't have to reset the connectors
since silver oxide
is conducting very well).

 From experience, I think that a mod that could improve the AT quality
significantly would be
a decent power supply instead of the chinese 5$ piece. Easy mod but
expensive [given
the price of AT].

>Another client is using an AirPort Express based music system, running
>through a Benchmark Media DAC1
>(http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/digital/dac1/default.asp).  This is a top
>quality pro DA with a variable level, meaning he can run it straight into
>his poweramp.  Not the cheapest DA on the market (US$900ish), but even so it
>is excellent value.
>
>....if only I could afford some of these toys in my own house... :)
>
>
Read the audio forums a lot and scour used-gear places. For maybe 20%
price of things
like B&W and Meridian you can achieve 90% of the results. From there on
you hone
your tastes and wait for your bank account to grow and your wife to
realize that you spending
the money on such gear is better than on red-light pleasures ;-)

Actually, once you honed your tastes I found you need a room
to use the high-end stuff that you don't have ;-) Room modes start to
play a very large role
from a certain quality of sound on. Once your ear compares the boomy,
blooming bass
of average setup compared to a properly setup/corrected room it is hard
to go back.

    your mileage may vary


    -- tony

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