Pars

Yep. That's a given

Hope you have a great time Colin!

The CEC drive is belt-drive, correct? I can see belt-drive on a turntable but I thought CD drives change speed depending upon where on the disc it is reading? This is something that I would not think belt-drive would be good for. There are probably a lot of other differences in the SPDIF interfaces, etc. as well.

I'd agree. When I got back into hifi, I started down the cable path (ala audioasylum, risch, etc.). Reading the newsgroups (rec.audio.*), I ran across some posts by Bruno Putzeys, at that time a digital engineer for Philips, who posted that yes, he could hear differences in cables, but as an engineer it bothered him because instinctively he knew that he shouldn't be hearing these. He went on to form a hypothesis that these differences existed mainly because of impedance mismatches. Not sure if he ever did anything about that. But at any rate, my view of cables is that they are expensive tone controls. This along with my experiences led me to conclude that going down the expensive commercial cable path was not for me. Sure, I DIY cables from time to time (latest neotech UPOCC jon risch silver-recipe construction type, similar to what spritzer does). Do I think they sound different? Don't know; I put them in the system; they sound good; I leave them alone;D Quality construction, materials etc., yes. Crazy prices? No. And sure Marc, you start playing around with passive filters (essentially) on cables, you can make them sound different. And probably upset some electronics in the process. Think MIT cables with their little boxes at the ends.

Play Pebble...

x3; this was a very nice idea on your part!

Someone has been busy...

I would think it would be rather easy to show in RMAA?

See The β22 Stereo Amplifier, Parts List: "Please note that in the 3-channel "active ground" configuration, some part values in the ground channel differ from that of the left and right channels. See the following table:"

Happy Birthday!

oh fuck... you broke it

BTW, where do you (you being any of you woodworking dudes) recommend buying wood finishing products? I don't even seem to find varnish at places such as Home Depot, etc. (unless I am looking at the wrong thing). Polyurethane, sure; varnish, no.

As in Tellig?

That would make more sense if there was a panel behind the front panel that it was mounted to via a mounting nut. That is how my preamp is done for the switches, pot, etc. That jack that MisterX pointed out looks like it could be a contender other than the lack of gold plating.

You would have thought they would have made the PCB larger and mounted it securely and use that to support the jack. Gluing it in as Nate said is pretty lame and bound to fail sooner or later.

Happy Birthday!

I actually see some value in AC/DC. Metallica on the other hand...

I don't doubt that they all get all the data there. SPDIF is not just data however; there is an RF frequency clock riding on that data which is really more of an analog signal as it is not the levels that are of interest but the edges (timing). At 2.8MHz, reflections, etc. become an issue. Really poor interface design, and the whole reason for reclocking schemes, ASRCs, etc., which do jitter reduction and make the DAC less dependent upon the transport timing. And I should have said "One probable reason why I've heard digital cables sound different." since I don't use an external DAC and haven't personally gone thru myriads of digital cables as some I've read seem to do.

Yeah, between that thread and the Valab DAC mod thread (Valab NOS DAC - subjective listening and modifications - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio), plenty of crud on the inside of the monitor (great analogy by the way... my monitor is glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read it ). I keep getting the visual of jumping the shark in that one, but decided better to just stay out of these types of threads and treat them as a car crash in progress.

That's only 53C, so not that hot. I know TDA1541As habitually run hot.. many develop distortions, lots of time only in one channel, so you will see people putting DIP heatsinks, etc. on them. Never measured temp on them nor read temps anywhere though.

AES/EBU is supposed to be 110 ohm (like SPDIF is supposed to be 75 ohms). An XLR connector is not. The majority of implementations of either are also not properly terminated at the char. impedance. And probably don't use coax or controlled impedance cabling/PCB traces either. It still works, but not optimally. One probable reason why digital cables sound different.

I assume the panel is metal? Aluminum? Steel? You could probably get most if not all of it with something like an xacto knife or the like. Possibly have to carefully drill it out. Or use a ream, again carefully. That jack doesn't look familiar. Was it completely broken apart like that when you opened the amp? That would explain the no resistance. But yeah, the entire jack needs to be replaced.

Oh gawd... Audio Asylum

Like they said. Sorry to hear that Duggeh.

I looked at that. It wasn't that stellar. Nice backpedal BTW!