Tír Na HiFi

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.

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

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 :) )

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.