Atlantic wrote: > Very interesting thoughts. (I don't know anything about DACs and > today's amps - we only have traditional analogue kit, actually just > integrated miniHiFi systems with various analogue inputs.) I think > you're saying that most analogue conventional amps are ok, but not the > multichannel kit (such as the OP's Denon?). I've been thinking about > the Harmon Kardon range - in particular the stereo items such as > > http://uk.harmankardon.com/harman-kardon-product-detail-uk/hk-3490.html > > It's a very big box, though. This has digital in (co-ax, and optical - > are those a 'standard', do you think, so that the Squeezebox digital > outputs would 'just work' into these) and presumably has a DAC and, I > guess reasonable conventional amps? Do you feel that this kind of kit > has better 2-channel performance than the sort of AV equipment that you > were worried about? And, the same question as the OP raised, external > DAC could be placed between an SQbox and this amp, so only using the amp > as an analogue device? In your view, using analogue power stages is ok > from the point of view of next step up in quality, (or not)? > > Again, thanks for the basic but very useful (to me, too) thread > > regards, Atlantic
What I say is Multichannel HT amsp are ok but they still have limitations, the DAC and the digital stuff is the best part of an HT amp so use that if you got such an amp . A stand alone DAC is out of place in this setup as you better feed the digital signal to the HT amp . Given the budget the DAC money is better spent on speakers Example a friend of mine has my old Dynaudio Contour 1.3SE and Contour Center driven by an HK home theater receiver (no subwoofer ) ,this works "OK" :) it can get more relaxed and refined with the best stuff ,but definitely functional . . You can hear that it is almost there sonically but struggles a bit at higher spl with those speakers then . I had an HK reciever a decade ago (for HT ) it would probably melt with those speakers So the breed is better than they used to be . Their strength is really that due the mass production of such amps you get a lot for the money even if only use 1/3 of what they have , and there is fierce price competition . To better them by a big margin there is separate pre and power amps that blow them away ,but the money involved is something else . I had a sort of "hybrid" system a 12 years ago a real pre-amp and a power amp a HT reciver on the side feeding the center and the surround speakers and front channels trough the pream.p CD player conected to the preampe DVD conected to the HT amp . In the end I had 3 power amps and the HT amp was only used via it's pre outs , but real 2ch was bupased using my preamp and CD player . The nice analog preamp (Sirius aka GamuT) and the HK ht reciver . was replaced by a Meridian HT processor to simplify and improve stuff + a DVDA player/dvd player from Meridian this also replaced my CD player , I had this until a power amp failure triggered me to go all in with Meridian :) a subwoofer also joined the party but i forgot when . Now the box count is up again there is blueray player beside my trusty old DVDA/DVD player ? The DVDA player can not yet go to the recycling bin , because I'm yet to find a way to stream discrete 5.1 24/96 FLAC (Squeezebox does not do it ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96780 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
