# Getting back to 2-channel...



## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine introduced me to his two channel audio system. At the time, I was just getting into home theater audio so I had just invested in a system for this purpose, but hadn't given much thought to the audiophiles chasing that special sound out of just two speakers (or 2.1).

Here was the gear involved:

Soundwave (later Vero Research) Grand Soliloquy tower speakers
Marantz CD-53 CD player
Audible Illusions Modulus 3 tube stereo pre-amp
McCormack DNA 0.5 amp

When I came to visit him in Atlanta, we used to listen to the setup for hours. It had originally belonged to a friend of his and he had acquired it from him. All of the gear had been purchased in the 1994 time frame.

Since then, we've both gotten married and had families. For my friend, he didn't have enough room in his house for the two channel setup, so I took possession of the amp and pre-amp to which one day I would come with a large vehicle to bring back the massive speakers. After six years, I finally got ahold of them last week. But after so long in storage, would they even play?

Turns out that after all that time, they played rather nicely. It's been a very long time since all of this gear was in one place again, and it sounded just like our bachelor days. There was one new wrinkle in all of this though: high definition music.

Back a decade ago, there wasn't much HD music and it was pretty much all SACD or DVD-Audio. My friend didn't have a universal player so we spent all of our time listening to Redbook music. When got the pre-amp and amp from him, I hooked it up to an Oppo 970H universal player I'd had in my home theater rack years ago with the purpose now to use it strictly for music. Originally the only speakers I had to use in this application were AV123 ELT towers. There were (and still are) nice speakers, but hardly two channel material and they never could go low enough to make bass heavy music really groove.

The Grand Soliloquys have large enough drivers to handle the low stuff without a subwoofer in all but the most demanding low frequency music (like pipe organs). Combined with the HD music showed what kind of detail and clarity they have with the right source material. And that source material is my small library of SACDs and DVD-As that had been gathering dust in recent years. Regardless, I now have a new respect for two channel.

So what's next? I think I can do a few nominal upgrades. First, the McCormack amp is great, but I think I can do a little better. I have another amp of the same vintage, a Parasound HCA-2200 MkI. At over twice the power of the McCormack (220 wpc vs 100 wpc @ 8 ohms) and designed by John Curl, the Parasound has been a great amp for me and up until recently, was driving the front speakers in my home theater room. But in recent months, the right channel had been showing problems and finally I put it in the shop for repairs last week. Hopefully by next week I'll have it back and then I hope it'll be a sonic upgrade for the Grand Soliloquys. I cannot return to the Parasound to its original application since I have a new receiver there with no pre-outs.

The next upgrade after that might be a good DAC. I've auditioned a DAC or two ages ago, but considering how much Redbook music (Apple Lossless) I have now that is on my iTunes server, I'm thinking I can unlock some of the potential there. Right now, I have an Apple Airport Express (3rd gen) that is supplying music to this rig. And I'm dealing with the consumer grade DAC in that device. Still, ALAC allows for 24bit/192khz source material just like FLAC and AIFF which does play through, so I have a taste of what I can do with the few HD source files I have.

The big question now is what to look for in a DAC? My budget isn't infinite. Spending $2K on a DAC is not in the cards. I've seen some interesting stuff in the $700 and under range. Does anyone have a favorite?


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I am using the OPPO BDP-105 Universal Player with the analog outputs... either CD, SACD or in most cases my 64GB USB flash drive plugged into the 105... with music extracted from the original source directly to the USB drive using dBPoweramp. The 105 has a very nice DAC.

We have used it for our speaker evaluations and it has performed flawlessly... great sound. I consider our evaluations to be on the fairly critical side of listening. I have a hard time believing it could be improved on, but I am certainly no DAC expert... so I will defer thoughts to those who may be.


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## Wardsweb (Apr 2, 2010)

I run the Music Fidelity M1DAC and am very happy with it. I have two friends with the Music Hall 25.3 dac and they speak highly of it.


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## fmw (Aug 11, 2013)

I hate to tell you but if you had done as many bias controlled listening tests as I have on DACs you would conclude, as I do, that they don't have anything to do with the sound of your system. The DAC in one hi fi component does the same job as the one in any other. Truly, buying an outboard DAC is a waste of money if you expect to get an audible sound improvement. Worry about speakers, subwoofers and room acoustics. Those are the areas that will improve your sound.


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## Wardsweb (Apr 2, 2010)

fmw said:


> I hate to tell you but if you had done as many bias controlled listening tests as I have on DACs you would conclude, as I do, that they don't have anything to do with the sound of your system. The DAC in one hi fi component does the same job as the one in any other. Truly, buying an outboard DAC is a waste of money if you expect to get an audible sound improvement. Worry about speakers, subwoofers and room acoustics. Those are the areas that will improve your sound.


Not to get into a debate here, but I must disagree. I will simply say for me, in my system, there is a very audible difference.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

Sonnie said:


> I am using the OPPO BDP-105 Universal Player with the analog outputs... either CD, SACD or in most cases my 64GB USB flash drive plugged into the 105... with music extracted from the original source directly to the USB drive using dBPoweramp. The 105 has a very nice DAC.
> 
> We have used it for our speaker evaluations and it has performed flawlessly... great sound. I consider our evaluations to be on the fairly critical side of listening. I have a hard time believing it could be improved on, but I am certainly no DAC expert... so I will defer thoughts to those who may be.


Sonnie,

I had never thought of that. I knew that Oppo sold the 105 as an audiophile universal player but I didn't know that it could serve double duty as a USB/optical/coax DAC. And the Sabre DACs are no slouch. I had always thought that I couldn't cost justify replacing my old Oppo 970H with the 105...considering the feature set, now I'm not sure about that. $1200 is a lot but not out of the question.

One thing I noticed over on Oppo's website is that they are preparing a "Headphone amp" for sale next year. That product is really more of a 105 without the Disc player and related video circuitry. Everything else is there (Sabre Driven DAC, etc).

Decisions, decisions....


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I really like the 105 because it truly serves as a "universal" player. I mostly use it for Blu-ray or my USB driver, but occasionally toss a CD in there if I haven't had time to add it to my USB drive... or if it is something that I don't have on my USB drive.


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## ajinfla (May 10, 2009)

fmw said:


> I hate to tell you but if you had done as many bias controlled listening tests as I have on DACs you would conclude, as I do, that they don't have anything to do with the sound of your system. The DAC in one hi fi component does the same job as the one in any other. Truly, buying an outboard DAC is a waste of money if you expect to get an audible sound improvement. *Worry about speakers*, subwoofers and room acoustics. Those are the areas that will improve your sound.


Yes!

While I largely agree with those sentiments, they need caveats. I personally have/owned/used everything from $7k DACs, to the one included in my $100 Sony Blu-ray player. Same for cables ($2k-$2), amps, etc.
I don't hear much differences either in the soundfield (pardon the pun), as one has to rely on in any controlled (blind) test. But I also don't listen blind, at home, during casual listening (strictly for enjoyment). I suspect, neither will the OP (Sevenfeet).
As such, all his perceptions...and beliefs, expectation, etc, etc. come into play. If the result of that, is, he simply prefers to have a $700 DAC, so that his system "sounds" better to him, well...
Whether that is money wasted, is entirely up to him.
I know that from a soundfield perspective, there is most likely no audible perceivable difference whatsoever, but that sure doesn't prevent me from using/enjoying $7k DACs, even if I'm perfectly content with the $100 one also. I make no claims that one is objectively "better" than the other.

cheers


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## ajinfla (May 10, 2009)

Sonnie said:


> I really like the 105 because it truly serves as a "universal" player. I mostly use it for Blu-ray or my USB driver, but occasionally toss a CD in there if I haven't had time to add it to my USB drive... or if it is something that I don't have on my USB drive.


I use my Sony (can't recall model, BDP-S570?) similarly. Have a 1TB usb drive hooked to it. Can use as blu-ray, sacd, cd, or whole dang collection source, all from the fingertips.
Onboard Wolfson DAC "sounds" just fine...to me.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

In thinking about Oppo, I was thinking that a $1200 purchase of the BDP-105 would be a big waste to have all that high end video circuitry and not actually use it. I began to think about the prospects of using an HDBaseT repeater over Cat5e/6 to get the HDMI signal back to my home theater room to drive the display there (it wouldn't be hard to do). The main problem with that strategy is that by the time you've invested in that kind of a system, you're likely halfway to just buying a dedicated BDP-103 for the home theater room.

One other alternative is a future product Oppo posted on their website 6 weeks ago. The HA-1 is billed as a "headphone amp" but it's really a BDP-105 without the disc and associated video circuitry. They could probably then make the onboard amp a little beefier (one of the few complaints about the 105) and if you read between the lines, it looks like they are trying to add either Airplay or Chromecast as a feature, and I'm betting its Airplay considering the market for such devices. All other features like the Sabre DACs and digital/USB inputs carry over from the 105.

Considering that I still have a working 970H, that might be a more cost effective alternative. No word on pricing yet...but it does sound interesting.


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## english210 (Sep 5, 2013)

ajinfla said:


> I use my Sony (can't recall model, BDP-S570?) similarly. Have a 1TB usb drive hooked to it. Can use as blu-ray, sacd, cd, or whole dang collection source, all from the fingertips.
> Onboard Wolfson DAC "sounds" just fine...to me.


at the risk of hi-hijacking (sorry), is that basically all you need for a HTPC?


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## ajinfla (May 10, 2009)

english210 said:


> at the risk of hi-hijacking (sorry), is that basically all you need for a HTPC?


Not how I use it, but suppose so, yes. I believe the usb should handle just about any movie format outside of blu-ray.

cheers


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

OK, I think I've decided on the Oppo BDP-105 (barring anything better comes out before I figure out how to pay for this purchase). Seems like it has the best compatibility and flexibility for the money. Thanks Sonnie.


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## HughACA (Aug 25, 2010)

Is that Ric? 


Sevenfeet said:


> OK, I think I've decided on the Oppo BDP-105 (barring anything better comes out before I figure out how to pay for this purchase). Seems like it has the best compatibility and flexibility for the money. Thanks Sonnie.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

HughACA said:


> Is that Ric?


Who else?  Good memory.

PM me when you have a chance...I'd love to catch up.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

An update...I was hoping that my Parasound HCA-2200 gen1 amp would come back from repair to kick my 2 channel rig to a next level. But the local repair shop tells me that my unit is so old (the amp is probably 20 years old) that the wires are brittle and that they have not been able to get it to not fault if driven with any significant power. Originally the right side channel was doing this...they fixed that only to have the left side do the same thing. Bottom line is that my lower powered (but still nice) McCormick DNA 0.5 is going to be my amp unless I get lucky from the repair shop.

For a long term solution, I may have to drop by Emotiva's offices (local to me in Nashville) and audition a replacement 2 channel amp....when I have budget.


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## Savjac (Apr 17, 2008)

I have been to the Emo site many times and they are the nicest folks
I like my Emo gear and frankly it just seems to work all the time. Recommended.


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## HughACA (Aug 25, 2010)

Will do. 


Sevenfeet said:


> Who else?  Good memory.
> 
> PM me when you have a chance...I'd love to catch up.


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