andyjayh
Established Member
Been thinking about adding a dedicated DAC to my system to run my Squeezebox Touch through but wanted to gain some views from more experienced people on here regarding the value or point of this step. With any luck someone has compared the Proceed to a dedicated DAC...
My current system sources are the Touch and a modified Teac VRDS10. I bought the AVP2 as I wanted a surround processor that dealt with 2 channel analogue sources well, it does this very well. The Teac sings very nicely even though the system is mainly a 5.1 system now. However I find myself using streaming music sources more than spinning discs now days. So I upgraded my old SB3 to a Touch and started to mod this for improved SQ and this is sounding pretty good Oh, my source media is all FLAC on a NAS and the Touch is Ethernet connected, wireless is off.
To date I'm using the Touch internal DAC and the AVP2 as an analogue Pre-amp. When I try the Touch as a digital source into the processor I seem to loose the smoothness and completeness of the sound, notes seem to start and stop sharply in comparison although it seems slightly more detailed or brighter in its presentation. Difficult to explain exactly but using the Touch DAC and the AVP2 as just a Pre sounds more "analogue" and smoother, a more pleasing sound. The AVP2 has received lots of praise in the past for its music portrayal from both analogue and digital sources so I am left wondering if the poorer performance is due to my source having a lower quality digital output and therefore presenting the processor with less detail to deal with, if that makes sense? I'm using a reasonable quality Coax digital lead not a Toslink.
I'm trying to rule out the source as being the issue when judging the performance of the internal DAC of the processor. If I improve the performance of the digital output of the source, will that bring the overall SQ up to match or exceed the Touch DAC perfomance? I need to try a comparison between the CDP as a digital source and the Touch as analogue and see what that highlights just haven't had quite time in the house to do this yet.
Ultimately what I'm trying to understand is whether the DAC in the processor is as good as a dedicated DAC like a Benchmark DAC1/similar, or has technology advances in this area left the old Proceed behind? Anyone done any comparisons in this area? Can an old processor DAC be as good as the latest offerings from Rega, WFS, Benchmark etc? Don't want to spend money on another component only to find I had something pretty good in my current system.
Any views or advice appreciated.
My current system sources are the Touch and a modified Teac VRDS10. I bought the AVP2 as I wanted a surround processor that dealt with 2 channel analogue sources well, it does this very well. The Teac sings very nicely even though the system is mainly a 5.1 system now. However I find myself using streaming music sources more than spinning discs now days. So I upgraded my old SB3 to a Touch and started to mod this for improved SQ and this is sounding pretty good Oh, my source media is all FLAC on a NAS and the Touch is Ethernet connected, wireless is off.
To date I'm using the Touch internal DAC and the AVP2 as an analogue Pre-amp. When I try the Touch as a digital source into the processor I seem to loose the smoothness and completeness of the sound, notes seem to start and stop sharply in comparison although it seems slightly more detailed or brighter in its presentation. Difficult to explain exactly but using the Touch DAC and the AVP2 as just a Pre sounds more "analogue" and smoother, a more pleasing sound. The AVP2 has received lots of praise in the past for its music portrayal from both analogue and digital sources so I am left wondering if the poorer performance is due to my source having a lower quality digital output and therefore presenting the processor with less detail to deal with, if that makes sense? I'm using a reasonable quality Coax digital lead not a Toslink.
I'm trying to rule out the source as being the issue when judging the performance of the internal DAC of the processor. If I improve the performance of the digital output of the source, will that bring the overall SQ up to match or exceed the Touch DAC perfomance? I need to try a comparison between the CDP as a digital source and the Touch as analogue and see what that highlights just haven't had quite time in the house to do this yet.
Ultimately what I'm trying to understand is whether the DAC in the processor is as good as a dedicated DAC like a Benchmark DAC1/similar, or has technology advances in this area left the old Proceed behind? Anyone done any comparisons in this area? Can an old processor DAC be as good as the latest offerings from Rega, WFS, Benchmark etc? Don't want to spend money on another component only to find I had something pretty good in my current system.
Any views or advice appreciated.
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