Pars

What laser do these use, and how involved is it to change them? I have done the Philips CDM4 in my Rotel once and have two spares, as these are pretty much unobtainable anymore, and that was pretty much drop a new one in For those thinking about the Krell, my advice would be to find out what mechanism they use and see how much they are and how available they are (and whether it seems like supply is drying up). If you pick up a spare or two, that would last you along time... probably longer than many of you keep your gear around here

Pallet of what? SCD-1s? Or Krells?

Damn you x2... on 12

Yeah, I was kinda floored by how big the Menace was when Nate was standing by it. In the build thread, there wasn't anything to get a reference from.

nahhh, its FM fuckin majix

I think he meant that you were going to do the amp without an internal DAC now (using the DAC in your integrated whatever it is) and do an external DAC later. Yes, you will need a volume control on the Beta.

That should work... the tape monitor on most integrated amps/preamps is before the volume control, so you will need a volume control on your amp (B22). But it is at line level, so it has not been amplified (much).

That is kind of key... what the builder is willing and comfortable using and putting into the B22 for you... One DAC that I would look at would be the new Twisted Pear Sabre DAC with some sort of discrete I/V. But I'm not sure what your budget is for the DAC... As for using an external DAC, it shouldn't be a loss of quality as far as attaching it to the B22. The built-in DAC would be hardwired to the input switch I suppose? Pretty much the same thing for the external, plus a couple of RCA jacks and an interconnect cable. Depends on how much you believe in interconnects, etc. influencing sound.

Re: PCM1704 and passive I/V http://www.diyhifi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1520 Gordon Rankin of Wavelength Audio, last post in thread. The OP was looking for someone to change out the PCM he blowed up real good on HF also

Well, that depends alot on what you used for the built in DAC. If your thoughts were to do something like an ALien DAC built in, then that is going to be pretty inexpensive, and that can either be USB powered or you could go ahead and power it via the amp PSU if you could get the right voltage (reliably). I had assumed that you were intending on having a built-in DAC commensurate with the Beta22 level (but wasn't sure what you had in mind). A DIY DAC? A commercial product?

Current out DACs really want to see as close to a dead short on the output as you can get, sub 1 ohm. A resistor large enough to get the required output voltage isn't going to be close to that Most opamps can't get that low even with feedback and rise as freq. goes up because of feedback/group bandwidth. The THS403x was going to be my next choice for opamp to try, but I built a discrete current steering I/V which I love. No more opamps for me.

I don't think Krell uses passive. Pedja seems to think they have used AD844s in the past with discrete buffers. This could be all discrete I/V and buffer. I take it the PCM1704 is an I-out DAC? Discrete would make the most sense if so...

Might be kinda hard to deal with a mini in class... On a related note, I will probably need to add another drive to my G5 PowerMac... any recommendations? I know I've seen posts where you and Grawk and ?? have been discussing drives (RAID, etc.), so that's why I asked. It has an 80Gb stock... maybe add something 250G or maybe larger?

I've decided to go an entirely different route... how about a Macbook, perhaps a refurb from, oh, lets say... the Apple store?

Noise. You don't want to put digital electronics (like a DAC) on an analog amp's PSU(s). The B22 will be running on +/-30Vdc... the DAC is going to need +/-15V probably, as well as +5Vdc I would guess. You could do it, but IMHO it's a bad idea. The Pedja Rogic DAC I'm building uses 7 or 8 PSUs in it (transformer has that many sets of windings). A bit overkill, but they are there for that reason... noise.

I didn't bother with Applecare on my home machine... this I might however.

Any time there is SPDIF, there is jitter, and usually lots of it. Whether you can hear it or not is debatable, so we won't go there. Hook it up and see how close to matching the CDP->amp you get. As for building a DAC into a B22, I personally wouldn't simply for flexibility reasons. You are going to want to have separate PSUs for the DAC anyhow, so the only cost you are realy saving would be the case. The times I have seen peeps do integrated stuff like this, they have always wound up ripping it apart. Case in point: Strohmie's CDP / Dynahi.

Thanks. The Apple Store refurbs the way to go for this? I bought my PowerMac G5 desktop there and have never had a bit of trouble with it...

Sorry if this has already been posted... My oldest son is starting college next fall and we need to get him a laptop, preferably a Mac. I don't need a $2K PowerBook Pro or whatever, just something decent. I'm not opposed to used also, although it would need to be something reliable. Thanks for any suggestions, Chris

Speaking of toast, I had used this years ago and always liked it. Would it be worth buying Toast8 off of ePay for ~$20 or so? I realize 9 is the current version, but usually latest isn't always worth paying for...

I don't so a moot point... maybe it would be a good time to buy one

Some interesting follow-up discussing Machina Dynamica and Geoff Kait http://www.diyhifi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1529&start=30 peufeu pretty much nails it: The marvilous thing about this guy is that each of his "products" pushes new "limits" and creates a new "paradigm" in the ways of fucking with what remains of the buyer's mind.

The m4a is lossless (I configured it in Max). The aif files are larger. Both CDs work in the player and I've listened to most of the aif one. I'll have to compare them and see if I hear any differences. Pretty good NIN. My favorite is still the And All That Could Have Been DVD, middle tracks. I suppose a computer and preferably an external DAC is the choice if you want to use the high rez files? How exactly is that done? Will they work over SPDIF or does it have to be a different connection? Sorry for the noob questions...

Enjoy your leave!

The Apple lossless files came over as .m4a... is this alac? That is what screws me up the most is figuring out what is what in the file formats... Initially, I burned a disc converting the flac to aiff (.aif), linear pcb big endian 16 bit... it works, but now I grabbed the apple lossless version from bittorent and am burning it directly (.m4a which is MPEG4?). We'll see. One of these days