^ I'd say it's generally smoother, and a bit quieter. It has been so long since I did my PS comparisons though, I can't remember the details right now, but I did post them in one of the "Audiophile" forum linear PS threads (maybe look for one I started, I'd guess last summer). Background sonic quietness, the sense that the music is coming out of "pure" blackness, is the one area that the SBT can't touch (pretty cheap...) my best CD transport (via AES/EBU rather than S/PDIF) into the same DAC.
I have to say that balanced power (BP) makes more diff here than the linear PS did (pretty typical when applied to sources). And I tried a bunch of them, nothing fancy though. And I won't plug anything with switching PSs into my BP supply permanently, don't want to pollute it lol. So a linear PS wasn't really an option for me, unless I stop being a silly audiophile... I have even run the SBT on a tightly regulated 6VDC, and it was fine. Then I tried a "6VDC" wall-wart, one rated for 600mA so its voltage at 400mA continuous draw wouldn't be too high (ones rated for higher current may put out 8-10V at low loads). This was fine too. Both of these were noticeably better than the stock switcher, and not much different than the "fancy" more proper PS I use. I am not recommending either of these BTW, I only did it because they are common items that I already had (6VDC is much more common for "adapters" than 5VDC) and I wanted to see the effect before I built something "better" or at least more permanent (and with a power switch). Also bear in mind I am doing my "serious" listening through a system that has no op-amps in the audio circuits, and after the SBT is truly balanced (not balanced added on to single-ended). It is a VERY quiet system, BP sure helps that. I hear every little tiny thing, even when I don't want to... When I feed the SBT into my Denon AVR, like I'm listening to now, most of the HW/SW changes I've made/tried with the SBT have little to no sonic effect as far as I can tell. The preamp output cicuitry (cheap op-amps) of the AVR (and it's no bottom-liner either) is just too hazy and obscuring to be satisfying for me, but OK for background listening. Just saying that YMMV depending what the SBT feeds, so start slow/cheap (like I did with the adapters) before you go hog wild and then find out it makes little diff for all the effort. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cfraser's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=48869 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82648 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
