crispy98007

Has anyone done a hands-on A/B comparison of the 2 interfaces by these 2 companies? Anyone who has, your comments, listening and otherwise, are appreciated!

Found the Kramer, can you post a link for this "Porta" potty please? Obviously you guys are ahead of me in finding out about these gizmos, but if nothing will pass 24/192 except the Atlonas, my bus isn't going anywhere for awhile. I'll just deal with standard res stuff from the Bluray and stream audio from the PC with the Weiss INT202 or the M2 EVO or something. White flag. Anyone compared the INT202 and the EVO? It's probably all been said before, but it ain't easy to wade through pages and pages of blog. Thanks in advance.

You can find a really nice passive preamp (stepped attenuator actually), at www.goldpt.com . They use surface mounted metal film resistors and everything is hand-built and tested and it's made in the USA. Less is more, really well made and extremely transparent. Can be ordered in several different impedances to match any load. I bought the SA-1X and am very happy with it.

I hadn't seen the HD577, only the 570, sorry. Regardless, they must have D/A's in them if they have analog outs, no? The 570 does have coax out, true, but it still screams "Made In China". It's a big ugly stamped sheet-metal box that reminds me of a cheap car amplifier. All I was really saying is if M2Tech made a box similar to the EVO with an HDMI de-embedder in a small package like the EVO I'd much prefer something of that grade to an Atlona. The Atlona doesn't specify 24/192 support, unless you've found something I haven't. And why even bother with analog outs? A DVD or Bluray player with multichannel outs would accomplish the same thing, no? Anyway I certainly wasn't talking about modding an EVO, it's just a suggestion to the mfrs about what to make next. To all you peeps that were talking about ST-optical...I used to have an Accuphase DP90/DC-91 CD/DAC. I bought it from Dick Olsher at Stereophile (his review sample) many moons ago and it came with a really high grade ST cable. I can say without a doubt, that that combo sounded it's very best with that cable, even over some very high end AES cables. It's made by Ultra Resolution Technologies out of California, 805-531-1001. Whether they're still in business I don't know. ST indeed is a glass cable, not plastic like Toslink. They claim 1.2GHz bandwidth, an 'ultra-high quality polish resulting in greater purity', and 0.5dB loss connectors. Needless to say, I sold the Accuphase some years later with the stock ST cable and kept this one, in the hopes I could use it again someday. I think it was $600 or $700 at the time. The package is dated 1995.

New to the forum...hi to all. I'll digress, or regress here for a moment. I too am trying to get a Bluray player to feed a SPDIF signal into an Esoteric DAC at full res - up to 24/192, and play any kind of disc I throw at it. The Altona box is the only thing out there that strips a digital signal off HDMI still, right? Can't some company get their sh** together and build something with a coax output and 24/192 support and not some cheesy box with a Toslink output, TRS analog outs and awful DACs? I was just on the phone with Tim Crable, the head tech at Esoteric, and they're playing with the M2 Hi-Face EVO as I write this; he says it's fantastic. Now they just need to add an HDMI input and this is the golden box we've all been waiting for. If anyone knows of anything besides the Altona, let us know!