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When the sound is never good enough


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Over the last few weeks I've spent a lot of money on trying to get good sound from my iMac. Prior to this pursuit, I was reasonably happy with the sound coming out of the computer as I didn't know any better. I then embarked upon a journey of investing in external equipment to better the iMac's sound quality. Since then I've gone through a pair of studio monitors, two DACs, countless USB and analogue interconnects and days of frustration. I thought I had got to the sound I wanted until a couple of days ago when I was listening in the dead of night with almost no ambient noise around. My studio monitors produce a crackling/static sound. I got to the point of thinking about investing in gadgets to 'clean up' the USB interface through galvanic isolation.

 

Last night I plugged my Beyerdynamic T51i headphones straight into the 3.5mm headphones jack of my iMac, bypassing the external DAC and studio monitors, and I was rewarded with beautiful, warm sound. All I want is for that same sound to appear through my speakers..

 

So now I'm at a crossroads. I can continue to pay more and more for cables and gadgets to seek that sound quality that I'd be happy with, or start from scratch again and just buy a pair of 'HiFi' active speakers that will take the 3.5mm headphones out from my iMac and play the sound that I know is clean and unruffled.

 

Has anyone else gone down this avenue where you continue to plug more devices into the chain in that eternal, wallet-emptying, pursuit of audio nirvana or just settled for a more basic setup that sounds 'good' to you?

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13 minutes ago, danadam said:

May it be their internal amp hiss?

 

No, it's well over and above the amp hiss - it's a loud scratching and crackling noise. Rokits are, sadly, notorious for it. The shop I bought them from is sending me a ground loop isolator to see if improves things.

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Don't your Rokits have RCA in jacks? Just use a 3.5mm> RCA cable or adapter. It could simply be that you prefer your headphones to your speakers. There's nothing odd about that.

Forrest:

Win10 i9 9900KS/GTX1060 HQPlayer4>Win10 NAA

DSD>Pavel's DSC2.6>Bent Audio TAP>

Parasound JC1>"Naked" Quad ESL63/Tannoy PS350B subs<100Hz

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