Kawai_man

Hi I have a mac that has a firewire 400 and 800 inputs, I was wondering if there would be any improvement if I connect my firewire interface which is firewire 400 into the 800 port instead?

If your gonna go with a tube dac I would highly recommend the xindak dac-5 or a Tadac I own both which I connect through spdif with my hiface, I've also owned the Music Hall 25.2dac which is quite nice but the xindak and tadac are just on a whole other level sound-wise and are not that much more, the xindak is quite special in that it uses two torroidal transformers one for the digital section and another for the the analog it also has upsampling and jitter reduction, it has a lot of detail and everything sounds really realistic. The tadac only uses one toroidal transformer but it has a tremendous soundstage and a lot of detail the only thing I dont like is that the volume knob has to be more than 3/4 of the way up to sound good, it has a tubiness knob so you can blend the sound between tube and solid-state. I haven't heard the Havana but I also hear its quite good its NOS so it has no oversampling and I believe it uses one toroidal transformer for both the digital and analog section. With the hiface anyone of these would be a killer set-up.

My max budget is 350, about 70% of my listening will be movies and youtube the rest will be FLAC music files. I've looked around and done some research an the firewire ones that kinda peaked my interest is the echo audiofire2 which supposedly has really good converters, the same as some RME fireface units. The tc konnekt 6 is also suppose to be pretty good but although I don't care that much for aesthetics I would find all the flashing lights it has really distracting.

Hi I want to get an external DAC for my mac mini, I want the dac to have balanced outputs so I can connect them to my active monitors. The only USB async devices I know of are the E-mu 0404 and the HRT musicstreamer pro which is 500 and over my budget. There's also the firewire option, some people say that on Mac's firewire is async, is this true? There's some nice firewire recording interfaces for under 350 Ive read that some of these supposedly have really high quality d/a converters built-in but but I don't now how to tell if they have good d/a converters, I would like to get any recommendations from people who use these as dac's or know of any good ones out there, there's the apogee duet which everyone says sounds good but I would like to know about the other ones too. My max budget is 350 and Ill most likely be looking for a used unit. So which would give me the best sound quality a USB async like the e-mu 0404 in my case or a firewire interface? thanks

Is the e-mu 0202 async like the 0404? Is there a big difference in sound between the D/A converters of each device? I want to get one of these for my active monitors which I mainly watch movies and listen to music on.

Ive been interested in getting one of those accopian linear PS's, but in the website they call them linear regulated power supplies, does anyone if these are actual linear power supplies that use a transformer to step down the voltage or are they switching power supplies with just linear regulation? Does anyone know how these usb isolators work, from what I know a usb device needs the ground or else the computer wont detect it, do these ground isolators just add enough resistance with resistors to the ground wire so that rf doesn't travel down it but it still maintains a good enough electrical connection?

Hi for a macbook pro its quite easy, when you cut the cable theres only two wires insside a positive and negative I attached some electrical banana plugs to them to connect them into the power supply, then you set the correct voltage on the power supply and make sure to plug the cable into into positive and negative inputs which is very important or you could fry your laptop. This would apply to most laptops or small computers that use an external power supply, but for the big ones they use what I believe is called an atx power supply which supplies different voltages to the computer, in this case I wouldnt know how to connect a linear power supply. It's really easy if you have basic understanding of electricity and you know how to use a multimeter to check polarity, but if you don't know anything it could be a little dangerous for your electronics and to you.

Hi Zoltan glad to see you took my advice and made a post here, too add my 2 cents I'll just repeat what I said at the head-fi thread and added a bit about pci sound cards External DAC's are extremely overated most of them suck or are just not worth the price for the small improvements they make, it seems that the best way to get good sound from an external dac is to get one that uses async protocol over USB or get a firewire dac which I believe are all async, I just got an e-mu 0404 usb which I'm hoping will sound better than my 600 dollar dac I had. Other than those a good PCI soundcard will probably give you the best results many of them have built-in noise suppression and/or shielding. I remember reading a thread at another forum from a guy who was pissed off because his e-mu 0404 pci card sounded better than his 1000$ Benchmark dac-1. here are the dac's I know of that are async over usb, musiland monitor 02 E-mu 0404 usb tascam 144 All HRT music streamers, except for the one they sell for 100 Wavelength dac's

I use a mastech hy3005d linear power supply that I connect to my macbook pro, I cut magsafe cable from the original power supply and attached banana plugs to the ends and connect it into the linear PS. Theres was a noticeable sound improvement and also the computer graphics look a little better and it also runs a little faster which was unexpected but a nice improvement as well

Im looking to add a subwoofer to my setup , my setup consists of a music hall 25.5 tube dac, trends audio t-amp paired with whiplash ion single driver speakers http://www.cryo-parts.com/whiplash_audio_speakers.html I want to add a subwoofer to this set-up and it seems the best way to connect a sub to my setup would be to split the rca outputs from my DAC so one set goes to my t-amp and the other to the active subwoofer. My room size is 12x14x10 and I only listen at low to medium volumes fom about 7-8ft away. Ive narrowed down the these features I want the sub to have 1. Active (aka powered subwoofers) 2. Class D amplification (Ive read this will match better since my amp is class D) 3. adjustable crossover frequency, so I can match the sound to be more seamless with my speakers 4. Small size , I dont need alot of bass or really loud bass, I think maybe a 5-6.5" woofer should do 5.Id like to spend less than 200 but I can push that up to 250, ill be looking for a used one so if I dont like it I can sell it without a big hit to my wallet Ive been looking around a bit and Ive only fund one sub that fits my specs the Nuforce w-1 but id like to get more options. I would appreciate and recommendations for a sub or any suggestions. thanks in advance