Hard disk music question

[Ken Moreland]

Fran, you're right about the shipping cost from US around 90$US .Called up Minicircuits in UK and they also use couriers only and in addition they have a surcharge of 20 pounds for any order less than 500 euro. Either way it's pricey from shipping point of view even though the part is not.

[Fran]

Basically I bought 6 of them and it cost 100 euro incl all.....

[jkeny]

Bear in mind that these attenuators make your SPDIF cable the equivalent of a top of the range SPDIF cable (actually it makes it better than that - I have scope shots showing what these attenuators do to the signal which Fran has seen). So compare what you would pay for one of these cables (99.9999% pure Bosons suspended in an electromagnetic field to keep the quantum effects non random :) )

[Fran]

I got a lend of an old laptop last night - but spent most of the night doing the various updates etc so I haven't installed or tried the hiface/foobar on it yet. Its bloody slow though - shockingly so in fact.

Wonder will it run foobar and the hiface ok.....


Fran

[Ken Moreland]

Found the 10db attenuator for sale in Estonia at 18.95 euro and postage 2.50 euro to Ireland from http://www.yeint.ee/products/542/539
I just hate handing money to UPS/DHL etc.

I am going to order and try the 10db model , they don't have any others on their website but they order from Minicircuits so I am sure they can do the range.

[Fran]

Ken, if you want you can borrow one of mine to try first. The minicircuits code for them is HAT-XX-75x - the XX is the attenuation and the x just means its ROHS compliant. I bought 6, 10 and 15 dB and intend playing a bit to see what suits best. But right now, I'm currently using 2 x 6dB on a normal level SPDIF signal and haven't had any problems. You can't know for sure without trying, but I reckon these will work on most transports/DACs (even those with normal level SPDIF)

Maybe we could arrange to hook up and you can try see if 1 x 10dB is better than 2 x 6dB at either end of the cable etc etc.

You know these are BNC, so if you don't have BNC on the DAC/source, then you will need adaptors?


Fran

[Ken Moreland]

Thanks for the offer Fran. I have ordered a 10dB one from Estonia for 22 euro all in including postage. When it comes I'll try it and get a feel for it and then I'll try borrowing a 6dB from you to compare. The folk in Estonia were very helpful but they don't do credit cards or Paypal so a trip to the bank was necessary.

Right now I'm trying to download the complete album of Diana Krall Live in Paris (which I have on CD and have ripped in .wav format)from http://www.24bit96khz.org/viewlisting.php?id=367 as a free download but it is tedious as it is broken up into 6 parts and part of the objective of the download site is to get you to pay for a premium download service.

[Fran]

A1 Ken. Must look at that site - btw, a download manager is a big help in those situations......

[Fran]

I did little experiment last night with some attenuators. I tried my squeezebox and NOS DAC with and without them.

With - sound good alright...

with 6dB - definited improvement in sound, treble and bass noticeably cleaner, music seemingly more effortless and easier to listen to.

with 10dB - DAC wouldn't lock to the signal.

The attentuator was on the DAC end of the cable (because theres a BNC there and not at the exit from the squeezebox).

No question that these things work IMHO. It certainly elevates the sonic quality of the squeezebox.

Fran

[Ken Moreland]

The website http://www.24bit96khz.org/ offers free downloads of recordings in mainly 24bit/96khz format although there are some in other formats as well. A lot of the recordings were taken from vinyl ,some from SACD and Studio masters,and uploaded by contributors. It is possible to download for free but it's a nightmare with arbitrary delays and cancellations so I succumbed and paid my $9 for 30days of straightforward downloading. The files are broken up into 200Mb sections in .rar format and must be opened with something like OpenKnife (free download) . The trick is to put all the sections in one folder and open the first with OpenKnife and all the individual Flac tracks are opened in a new sub folder. Downloading in the evening is very slow taking several hours to download one album http://www.24bit96khz.org/viewlisting.php?id=104 but only 15 minutes this morning for http://www.24bit96khz.org/viewlisting.php?id=824 , presumably because of US traffic.