I'm gettin' there

steveinaz

Love those RTA 11L's I bet those pups have some punch.

EndersShadow

jflail2 wrote: »

That's a beautiful set up man. Congrats! That looks a lot like my component rack. Is that a Bell-o? And a nice set of cans can keep you happy at the desk, if you're not able to sit back in comfort on a nice recliner.

You mean like the Beyerdynamic DT-770 32 ohm's I carry with me in this spiffy hardcover case ....

Here's one thing though.... I dont have a headphone jack (and the one on the computer DOESNT count) right now. The Sunfire and DacMagic dont have em

I need to buy this baby (pic below) though so I can piggyback it off my amp, but it hasnt been an issue yet...

steveinaz wrote: »

Love those RTA 11L's I bet those pups have some punch.

They are the TL's Steve so even better . I honestly enjoy the SL3000's in them. I may one day replace them with the RDO's just to hear them, but yes they put out some umph.

I need to put them back on the Meniscus Audio Spikes I had at one point. I am also debating doing like you did IIRC and place 2 pieces of thick tile underneath them and if that sounds good, looking at having Ryan West make me some nice spiked wooden plinth's for them to sit on top of.

EndersShadow

Bumping my old thread (rather than starting a new one) to show some new gear..... Like many of us things change....

I'm buying a used Salamander Archetype 5.0 rack this weekend... so the gear will be the same (at least for a week ) but the rack is not staying...



Top to bottom:

-Parasound HCA-1200ii
-Cambridge Audio Azur DacMagic (the original)
-B&K Reference 50 pre-amp
-Silverstone GD08b HTPC case w Q9650 CPU, X38 motherboard, 4 gigs DDR2 Corsair RAM
-APC H15
-Furman PL Plus Series II

Here is how it is all connected:

HTPC -> Black Cat Veloce 1.5m Coaxial/BNC cable -> Cambridge Audio DacMagic -> Signal Cable Analog 2 Balanced XLR -> B&K Reference 50 -> Douglas Connection 1m w Furez locking RCAs -> Parasound HCA-1200ii -> Douglas Connection 4m 9 gauge speaker cables w copper bananas & spades -> Polk RTA 11TL speakers & Elemental A2-300 sub (connected with 5m Audioquest Sidewinder RCA)

And yes I know my setup is still NOT ideal. I've been working and hashing out some ideas with Ryan on a new cool desk for my setup. Additionally I am looking at eventually buying some studio monitors & isomike isolation stands for them for nearfield listening, but I gotta admit I love the vintage Polks too much to ever let em go!

mrbiron

Well....here we are a year later and there is still not $hit on your walls. You disappoint me!!

Boy, i bet the guy that sold you that DacMagic is happy to see the lights still operate. I bet he'll sleep like a baby tonight knowing this.

I jest as usual...

EndersShadow

mrbiron wrote: »

I bet he'll sleep like a baby tonight knowing this.

I jest as usual...

We all know the undead don't sleep....

Punk

tonyb

Not bad for a zombie system, looking good there Dan. If Dan wanted sh$t on his walls, he'd buy a Monkey.

tonyb

Paintballs ??

Nah, chicken livers is where it's at.

EndersShadow

tonyb wrote: »

Not bad for a zombie system, looking good there Dan. If Dan wanted sh$t on his walls, he'd buy a Monkey.

Hehehe.. actually its because the room is going to be the last one done like I figured....

We got other stuff to take care of that's more pressing.

I'd be ok if I could just sell the crap there is in the room (not in the pictures) that we dont need to clear out the space....

I am hoping next weekend to finish the room treatments and get those 4 panels hung.. but I make no promises lol....

mrbiron

tonyb wrote: »

Not bad for a zombie system, looking good there Dan. If Dan wanted sh$t on his walls, he'd buy a Monkey.

It's so easy, a human can do it. Dan, nothing says "this is my place" until you cover the walls with your own excrement.

EndersShadow

mrbiron wrote: »

tonyb wrote: »

Not bad for a zombie system, looking good there Dan. If Dan wanted sh$t on his walls, he'd buy a Monkey.

It's so easy, a human can do it. Dan, nothing says "this is my place" until you cover the walls with your own excrement.

LOL... yeah yeah, I've got some pictures hung, you just cant see em......

TNHNDYMAN

^ and once you have, you CAN NOT unsee them......

tophatjohnny

Looks great brother, you been busy!!! lol

vc69

-

11tsteve wrote: »

I guess I don't know... I haven't gotten that far in my exploration. Sometimes I miss out on a lot of little details because I get excited by the bigger picture.


yes it does... Gizmo?

jRemote. Works great on apple devices. No idea of android apps.

mrbiron

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

^ and once you have, you CAN NOT unsee them......

Does he have a self portrait like Vigo the Carpathian? Will one become possessed once gazing into his beautiful ojos?!? Sounds like his narcissism has gone full Kardasian.

EndersShadow

Ok, so I got the new rack yesterday and got it installed.

It was quite easy... but it normally is when you use child labor

https://youtu.be/ryIc-TPVTeg

Here are some in progress shots:

Partially assembled



The cables from the old setup:





Starting to figure out what goes where:



Got it where I want, time to start wiring things...





Its final home:





And then the funny stuff....

I've been dealing with some sort of hum from my system since I put the B&K in. I attributed it to the processor whine I read about as it only really came on when the B&K was in sleep mode and the amp was still on.

I didn't notice it (I thought) when music was playing.

So after installing everything back in the noise got NOTICEABLE worse. I switched from XLR to RCA from the DacMagic and it got a "bit" better. Then I tried Coaxial direct into the B&K and it got even better. But its still there. Its noticeable when you hit those quiet peaks in songs or when one fades out and another back in.

I'd love some help diagnosing it better. Here is what I am wondering:

1. I have the B&K tied into the APC and the Parasound into the Furman. Could that be it? Both those units are plugged into the same outlet on the wall, but maybe thats what it is?
2. I've factory reset the B&K and basically have it setup to use "Stereo" with NO EQ, just have set crossovers thats it. Any suggestions from the folks with the Reference 50 much appreciated ( @mantis )

So for now I removed the DacMagic and am just trying a more pure signal path.

Here is what we have:

HTPC -> Black Cat Veloce Coaxial cable -> B&K Reference 50 -> Douglass Connection RCA -> Parasound HCA-1200ii -> Douglass Connection speaker cables (banana's on amp end, spades on speaker)



And to the way it looks now all said and done. (PS @mrbiron I told you I had something on the walls heheh).... The 3 pictures on the left were purchased by my wife from a friend. I still plan to get my wall treatments up and may use canvas w/ posters printed on them. Thinking something FireFly, Master Chief, and then maybe the famous hair blowing back in chair picture & Star Wars.....




And to appease the masses here are the internals of the computer (since I promised them of my old system, these will have to do).

mantis

I'm wondering about this noise your getting. I like the idea of removing the DAC and getting a clean signal path. Usually when you get noise , you get interference somewhere.
I'd start by using only one surge protector. Try the APC by itself. You can also found everything to the APC VIA the ground post on the back. You might just have some weird Polarity thing going on. Use some solid core 14 gauge wire or some speaker wire just to try it out. Your house ground might be at fault as well. I'd inspect it outside and see if it's damaged or heavily corroded. Home depot carries ground spikes, Grounding wire and copper Clamps. You can if you feel comfortable cleaning it up yourself or have an electrician freshin it up. This usually makes a huge difference everywhere around the house.
Also what else is on that circuit? Any motors will cause noise.
The B&K could also be faulty or have a bad internal ground from shipping or something. Buying used gear can cause issues.
On the safe side I have a B&K preamp in the basement not being used so if you need it or want to test with it , PM me and we can work out some details to make that happen for yeah.
Let me know.

EndersShadow

mantis wrote: »

I'm wondering about this noise your getting. I like the idea of removing the DAC and getting a clean signal path. Usually when you get noise , you get interference somewhere.

Yeah for now I removed it. I was hoping to use it but so far given I'm listening to mostly FLAC thats only 16/44.1 max, its not gonna hurt to try without it (though I may miss the upsampling feature).

mantis wrote: »

I'd start by using only one surge protector. Try the APC by itself. You can also found everything to the APC VIA the ground post on the back. You might just have some weird Polarity thing going on. Use some solid core 14 gauge wire or some speaker wire just to try it out. Your house ground might be at fault as well. I'd inspect it outside and see if it's damaged or heavily corroded. Home depot carries ground spikes, Grounding wire and copper Clamps. You can if you feel comfortable cleaning it up yourself or have an electrician freshin it up. This usually makes a huge difference everywhere around the house.

Also what else is on that circuit? Any motors will cause noise.

I did try the Parasound on the APC with everything else and I still got some noise. The reason I have the Furman in place is that I didnt want to be current limited by the APC and the Furman doesnt current limit, but it DOES provide surge protection which is all I really want for my amp anyway.

I will probably try grounding the Parasound to the APC for giggle to see what happens.

I have a ceiling fan in that room but the noise wasnt there with my other pre-amp which is a curious fact.

And their are no rooms upstairs without a ceiling fan or tied into a circuit with one. I can try running an extension cord from my dining room up the stairs to the office to see if that fixes things.....

mantis wrote: »

The B&K could also be faulty or have a bad internal ground from shipping or something. Buying used gear can cause issues.

On the safe side I have a B&K preamp in the basement not being used so if you need it or want to test with it , PM me and we can work out some details to make that happen for yeah. Let me know.

Both true. I will have to look deeper into your suggestions and a couple others I have gotten.

I also have another pre-amp I will probably try here shortly just to see if that clears up the noise, although I know for a fact that whatever the noise is the B&K seems to be making it worse since the second it gets turned off (with the amp and computer still on) the noise is gone from the system.

voltz

Nice, She did a really nice job on it. I hope that was a fisheye lens or do you live in a round house!

EndersShadow

OK so here is what I did.

Put the Parasound onto the APC H15 and disconnected the Furman & both the 2 prong cables.

Turn on the B&K and Furman – still slight buzz. Same volume regardless of actual volume on pre-amp.

For giggles I switched the fan in the room on and changed the speed, the speakers popped each time.

Connected speaker wire from the APC Ground to the B&K and the Parasound chassis – still humming

Run extension cord from the dining room to the APC. The dining room doesn’t have anything else on the circuit but a regular light. No fans or anything else. Still humming.

So next I did the following:

I plugged the APC back into the wall. I plugged the Furman back into the wall and the Parasound into the Furman. I pulled out the DacMagic. I pulled out my Pass Pre-amp. I connected the coaxial to the DacMagic, then the DacMagic to the Pass via XLR. The Pass I connected to the Parasound via RCA. The Pass was connected to the Furman, everything back to the way it was before the B&K.
No noise. Dead quiet.

I pulled the DacMagic into the XLR of the B&K and then Parasound – hiss. I connected the DacMagic via RCA to the B&K – still noise

I even went and tried the USB input on the chance the computer was passing noise into the system - still noise.

Any other suggestions on what to do?

tonyb

De-oxit baby....clean up all connections and pop the top and do some house cleaning. Judging by what you tried so far, it may need some servicing.

I've never heard any B&k product produce what you are describing btw. Is this a low level hum or a hiss ? Have you tried a different power cord or IC's to the B&K ?

EndersShadow

tonyb wrote: »

De-oxit baby....clean up all connections and pop the top and do some house cleaning. Judging by what you tried so far, it may need some servicing.

I've never heard any B&k product produce what you are describing btw. Is this a low level hum or a hiss ? Have you tried a different power cord or IC's to the B&K ?

I think thats where we are at, but I dont know just how much servicing can be done on this and what I'm going to sink into it. I've already got the service manual for it but there are obviously going to be some parts that are hard or impossible to find.

I tried it with just a generic 3 prong powercord and then with a PS Audio Cord both with and without the removable ground pin. Still there.

I've got a video of the noise coming from the system thats been uploading for about 10 hours at this point that should help.

Its a low level hiss thats there 24/7. My next step is to totally isolate the computer from the mix and use my phone through a 3.5mm to RCA connection on the odd chance the computer is the culprit...

That said the DIY Preamp from Rich exhibits NONE of these same issues when connected to the exact same chain. Even when I added back in items that seemed to make the hum worse when connected to the B&K still no noise at all.

tonyb

Then that leaves the obvious question.....can you get your money back ?

Maybe as a last resort, take it over to a buddy's house and hook it up to his system. If the same hiss is there, that puppy needs some servicing then or try and get your coin back.