My name is Dianne and I am an audiophile! I have been since my teens (1960s) when my first job was working on TVs and radios for an audiophile and I picked up the bad habit. In my 20s (1970) I went on to work for a major electronics wholesaler in eastern Canada, in their "high end audio shop" doing repairs and testing of only the best high-end audio equipment. I ran the Marantz test lab where we verified the specs of every item we sold.
Being an employee gave me access to any stock I wanted to buy at wholesale plus 10% and I had seen just about every brand come across my test bench so I knew what equipment had the best specs regardless of the name on the front or the price. I put together my own Hi Fi system based around a hand-picked Concord CR-260 that had better performance than units selling for 10x the price. I built 8 cubic foot 3-way speaker boxes incorporating Philips 15" woofers, dome tweeters, and a quality cross-over. I also had a top quality turntable and cartridge (courtesy of manufacturers promotional programs) and, much later, added premium quality reel-to-reel tape and a CD player when they first came out.
When the iPad, the Internet, and personal computers came along in the late 80s, I wandered from the audiophile path and into the world of downloadable mediocre fidelity music, attracted to the profusion of music available free or cheaply.
I recently dusted off my receiver/amplifier and CD player and woke up the 8 cubic foot speakers. Playing some of my symphonic CDs I "realized the error of my ways" and how much I missed high quality sound! That got me wondering about the state of audiophelia today. CD players are nice and they were a quantum step forward in the 1980s but that was three decades ago. Technology has continued to advance and I am thinking about adding something better to the front end of my system, a better music source.
Now I have never been one to buy in to hype, fads, and wild claims - I believe only in specs: frequency response, dynamic range, noise and THD. I also know that the price tag doesn't necessarily represent the overall functional quality of a piece of equipment.
With better than CD quality music files available for download via the Internet these days I have been wondering about adding a DAC to my system. I don't need built-in amplifier, or headphone jacks, or anything fancy (and certainly not expensive - I live on a meagre pension! - just a good DAC with Line Out jacks that I can feed to my amplifier and a way to feed it music files from a hard drive fast enough.
I am out of my field of experience here (with DACs and such) and would appreciate suggestions on how to achieve my goals without costing a great deal of $$. I want quality sound and don't care who's name is on the front - performance is what matters!
(Sorry for the LONG introduction LOL!)
My name is Dianne and I am an audiophile! I have been since my teens (1960s) when my first job was working on TVs and radios for an audiophile and I picked up the bad habit. In my 20s (1970) I went on to work for a major electronics wholesaler in eastern Canada, in their "high end audio shop" doing repairs and testing of only the best high-end audio equipment. I ran the Marantz test lab where we verified the specs of every item we sold.
Being an employee gave me access to any stock I wanted to buy at wholesale plus 10% and I had seen just about every brand come across my test bench so I knew what equipment had the best specs regardless of the name on the front or the price. I put together my own Hi Fi system based around a hand-picked Concord CR-260 that had better performance than units selling for 10x the price. I built 8 cubic foot 3-way speaker boxes incorporating Philips 15" woofers, dome tweeters, and a quality cross-over. I also had a top quality turntable and cartridge (courtesy of manufacturers promotional programs) and, much later, added premium quality reel-to-reel tape and a CD player when they first came out.
When the iPad, the Internet, and personal computers came along in the late 80s, I wandered from the audiophile path and into the world of downloadable mediocre fidelity music, attracted to the profusion of music available free or cheaply.
I recently dusted off my receiver/amplifier and CD player and woke up the 8 cubic foot speakers. Playing some of my symphonic CDs I "realized the error of my ways" and how much I missed high quality sound! That got me wondering about the state of audiophelia today. CD players are nice and they were a quantum step forward in the 1980s but that was three decades ago. Technology has continued to advance and I am thinking about adding something better to the front end of my system, a better music source.
Now I have never been one to buy in to hype, fads, and wild claims - I believe only in specs: frequency response, dynamic range, noise and THD. I also know that the price tag doesn't necessarily represent the overall functional quality of a piece of equipment.
With better than CD quality music files available for download via the Internet these days I have been wondering about adding a DAC to my system. I don't need built-in amplifier, or headphone jacks, or anything fancy (and certainly not expensive - I live on a meagre pension! - just a good DAC with Line Out jacks that I can feed to my amplifier and a way to feed it music files from a hard drive fast enough.
I am out of my field of experience here (with DACs and such) and would appreciate suggestions on how to achieve my goals without costing a great deal of $$. I want quality sound and don't care who's name is on the front - performance is what matters!
(Sorry for the LONG introduction LOL!)