CDP and cable assistance required

lAmBoY

lAmBoY

Lothario and Libertine
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I have a problem now that I have finally buried the micromega stage5 (god rest her sole).

I have £1K to £1.5K that I am willing to spunk on a new player or dac - I plan to only go 2nd hand or exdemo (unless there is a new player/dac worthy of attention).

With my setup it is hard to get any demos of kit - I guess this is the price to pay when you dont go the popular kit route :(

Kit:

CDP - micromega stage5 (now 6 feet under)

dvd - sony dvp725d (s'ok, a little long in the tooth)

PVR - Sky+ (assorted versions;))

spkrs - Amphion Xenons

Amp - belcanto evo 2i

rack - rdc aspekt 4 shelf with isol platform

i/c cables - kimber ks1120 select balanced i/c

spkr cables - monster (some old shite ive had for 12 years)

power cables - kettle plug shite.

Sooooo, any advise on new cdp or dac would be greatly apreciated:)

I like an open dynamic sound - smack the bitch up bass and enter sandman thwack, coupled with smattering of skunk anansie/diana krall/lisa loeb vocals and prince like production.

Basically a player that will do it all with good imaging and seperation (so I guess flat earth is not my bag baby).

Also advise on cables, but I will only go upto £200 squids on these each.

some piccies:
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I am thinking DAC will be the best route so I can add a media player at a later date.

Thanks in advance folks:)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
As stated in another thread .....the Quad 99cdp has the sound you want plus the addition digital inputs and varriable outputs. The cost is varriable £700-1000 depending on source.
 
Sqeezebox 2 £160 - £190

Wireless ADSL Modem £65

Wireless PCI card £15

250 GB hard disk £120

...and the Quad if you still want to play CDs in the living room. Otherwise, any suitable quality DAC for your remaining budget.

Sorted.
 
In my line of work I think I could muster 2 or 3Tb for eerrrm nowt:)

The media player is a future project of mine - I have the mobo + cpu + memory - all i need is a 'living room' chassis. I will have a box that stores DVDs as well as audio that fits under the tv - I dont really want to use my home PC as that is dedicated to home finances, browsing and ermmm p0rn:^) (only jesting)

I may just use a wirless NAS box for storage (networked attached storage).
 
Surely I could get something better than the quad with my budget (especially exdemo/2nd hand)???
 
Even the quietest hard drives can still be heard clearly in a living room. You really want to put the computer somewhere else. It's hard to make a truly silent one with the current state of hardware although it is improving slowly. Hence my suggestion of a Squeezebox 2.

It's only a matter of time before someone introduces decent silent streaming video over an 802.11g network. Or you could hard wire with gigabit Ethernet.

If the Quad doesn't suit, there are plenty of DACs out there. Any second now, various people will pop up and tell you to get a Benchmark DAC 1 or a Dax Decade or a Chord 64 or... etc. etc.
 
My media player will be a totaly fanless solution using the most up-to-date CE hard drives - whilst I dont expect it to be totally silent I aim to get below ambient noise levels eg it should 'appear' silent.
 
I don't want to put you off but there is still the little problem of 200+ Watts of heat. Yes you can get a fanless power supply. Yes you can put a huge fanless heatsink on your processor. But at the end of all that, you still have 200+ Watts of heat (plus whatever the disks and graphics card are chucking out) that has to be got from inside the case to outside the case. That requires a lot of very well thought out ventilation. I found not a single commercial case, HTPC or otherwise, that was suitable. I've come up with a design for a DIY case but it still involves fans and baffles to absorb the fan noise. I guess the Zalman Reserator would work but it's expensive. Water cooling may help but you still need a huge heatsink somewhere on the outside of the case. Look at my ATC SIA2-150 for an idea of the amount of heatsinking that is required! If you do find a case that works at a reasonable price, please let me know :)
 
technobear said:
If the Quad doesn't suit, there are plenty of DACs out there. Any second now, various people will pop up and tell you to get a Benchmark DAC 1 or a Dax Decade or a Chord 64 or... etc. etc.
Click to expand...

I like the fact on Julians Audio Synthesis DAC that you can have more than one input. This means you could put a transport and a squeezebox through it at the same time if you get a squeezebox in the future.

I dont know what other cd players/dacs you can do that on..
 

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