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ForkInBrain

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  1. No high pitch hum from my c390dd. Had my 11 and 12 year old kids verify, as my 41 year olds ears may not pick it up. If it reproduces for you when simply plugged in and nothing else connected, you could try it out in a few different outlets in your house, or even work or a friend's place, to verify it isn't specific to your one outlet. The only oddity I've observed with my c390dd is an extremely quiet buzzing coming from my PM1 tweeters after shutting the unit off (or when playing from a source that is itself off). The buzzing is always gone by morning, so I assume this is a capacitor or similar slowly draining. I must get my ear within 2-3 inches of the tweeter to even hear it -- I only discovered it because silence from the c390dd was so black I went looking for hiss. :-)
  2. If I were you I'd take maximum kahuna's advice and try an affordable optical cable. At least you'd have something to compare the v-link to. Then get to those speakers! My speaker upgrades were obvious winners and were satisfying even played by pedestrian AVR playing MOG at 16/44 out of a Sonos. I'll be building any future system from the speaker downward.
  3. One thing to keep in mind is that the NAD can't do more than than 92 kHz over USB, but it can accept 192 kHz over its other digital inputs. The Mac mini can't emit more than 92 KHz over S/PDIF, but it can do 192 kHz over USB. So there is a bit of a mismatch. Also, reviews have said the NAD's USB input isn't as good as its S/PDIF inputs. Whether this will matter to you isn't clear. I bought a NAD C 390 DD a few days ago. 24bit/92 kHz and 24bit/48 kHz content (FLAC) sounds extremely good over USB from my Mac using Audirvana. Speakers are B&W PM1. But I don't have an ideal room for HiFi sound, and like you I'm new to all this. I also saw a video where a NAD salesman said a 24/192 kHz USB capable MDC card is planned for the C 390DD. Who knows, it may sound awesome. Currently the NAD manual recommends using the AES/EBU input for 192 kHz music, which I notice some of the higher end USB converters support. I don't know if I could even hear the difference between 92 kHz music and higher sample rates. But I thought I'd point out the issues and jargon I've discovered so far. If I were you, I would get a fairly cheap USB to S/PDIF converter for your Onkyo, assuming you really will upgrade, since you have no idea what you'll want once you get your NAD. With the NAD, start with USB from the mini. Look at high end converters after the NAD is in place ands you've listened to it for weeks or months. Incidentally, the C 390DD playing 24 bit content from my Mac is a noticeable step up from a Sonos playing 16 bit /48 kHz FLAC to a Denon 1911 AVR. Even my decidedly non-audiophile wife noticed. Minds you, I would say it sounded great with the Denon, but the upgrade beings more punch and realism to the sound.
  4. From my experience setting up a 2.0 music/HT system for the living room and then a headphone system for work, I can only say: Compared to headphones, speaker choices are harder because of room effects. No online review can predict what will work in your room, especially for low bass. You will learn a lot by taking stuff home and trying it out. You may save money by buying from stores with great return policies. In a few cases it took me a few weeks to figure out what was missing from a speaker. The speaker matters most, then source, then DAC/amp. I personally spent a lot of time dissatisfied with the speakers I was trying out before I doubled my budget and got B&W PM1 (not for near field). For my case, going with great speakers and average components (eg lower and Denon AVR), finally made the system click. There is no internet forum or spreadsheet in the world that can tell you how to maximize your value here. There are too many unkowns and subjective factors, and it takes time to figure out if something works for you. If I were you, I'd buy both the KEFs and plan on returning one. You may love both and return the expensive one, or you may hear a difference worth paying for.
  5. I got an email answer from them in 30 minutes on Wednesday. How long have your messages gone unanswered?
  6. +1 An inexpensive cable may get the bits across just fine. Definitely have a friend blind test a $30 cable against your choice of $500 cable to see if you can tell any difference.
  7. Personally, I'm apt to be lazy with ratings. The time I put into rating things doesn't usually transfer from system to system, and so usually has a lifetime of maybe a few years before the system I entered them in becomes obsolete (or craps out and corrupts my preferences file, re-setting all my ratings). Now, if my ratings were stored permanently "in the cloud" and shared across Pandora, iTunes, and MOG, Amazon, and every other music site and music sales site, and the ratings were used to good effect to surface cool stuff I might like, then I'd be interested in rating things more. The skill at which Pandora surfaces (and suppresses) music is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible. Heck I'd even like it if they were integrated with Ticketmaster and every other music live music ticketing and promotion system, so I'd could discover good, nearby, live music. But back to your question, maybe you don't have to do all that work. Through my day job I've learned a little bit about rating systems and human entered ratings on things like songs. Assuming your program is smart enough, you don't need to rate every song. If you rate what you especially like highly, and what you especially don't like low. The software, if fancy enough, can infer reasonable ratings for every song in your collection based on what other people have rated. This is how, e.g., iTunes "Genius" playlists work. They effectively profile you and figure out that you do or don't like, say, blues with electric guitars and gritty female lead singers. Though that works off data collected from all iTunes users and requires pretty fancy software "in the cloud." I don't know if the software you're using is that fancy. For un-fancy software, I think ratings are really just a lazy way of deleting songs from your collection (rate 1 star) or creating "music I love" playlists (rate highly). There is no way to shortcut manual rating for this. In these systems I don't see the point of anything but a 1 star or a 5 star rating.
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