OzzieAudiophile
03-24-2012, 12:02 PM
Hello, the following upgrades have taken over 6 years to complete, but worth the wait.
To cut a long story short, I upgraded my speakers to Dynaudio Contour 1.8 Mark II's. They are very nice speakers, and with much help from qualified Cedia professionals, they admitted that the imaging can be vastly improved if I could get an amplifer, powerful enough to feed my speakers. The speakers are 250W.
My Yamaha receiver (did me many years of awesome service), provided way below this.
Granted that my options were somewhat limited, but after 5 years of auditioning over 12 brands, I found Xindaks that really helped my speakers sing (so to speak), and 400W per channel. They run very hot, and a Class-A amplifer.
I thought the next upgrade was a better source, because most of my music collection were on CDs. I was impressed to find that the Cambridge Audio 840C doubles up as a DAC from 16bit/44.1ktz to 24bit/384ktz. That simply meant utilizing both optical inputs, one for my PS3 (for movies, games and SACDs), and as of today, one for my Sonos system. Weeks before getting the Sonos, I upgraded most of my cables, a huge, expensive, but overdue series of upgrades. Was worth it as each cable upgrade, I cound hear a 10-15% improvement of the music/sound.
My receiver packed up, I could no longer adjust my volume settings, and considering what it would cost to get it repaired, along with the remote not working, I decided to cut my losses and look for a pre amp.
Xindak didn't quite provide enough source options. I did heavily consider, why not complete the system by finding a pre amp which could also take balance inputs, and have balanced outputs for the power amp. Then I cound make my system fully balanced.
Most of the brands of pre amps I took a look at either had not enough inputs in the back, or do not offer a balanced in & out.
Cambridge Audio 840C not only met both conditions, but the remote with the CD player, was compatible. In addition to that, other features are possible by having the two.
Overall the entire combination of components took me much closer to a fantastic listening experience of my beloved music collection. However I will still seek more improvements.
Question, was it really worth the extra money to get the entire system "fully-balanced" ? Considering that it costs just as much money for me to get unbalanced cables, the price difference between the power an pre amps balance and unbalanced was not too much difference. Yes it sounds like the fully-balanced option heavily influenced my decision with the components, but to be honest it would of been about 10% of my overall decision process.
The Xindak power amps 400wpc feeding 250w fronts was a no brainer, they just happened to have balanced-in options.
The 840C pretty much had most of the same features as the 740C with exception of balanced options. The price difference was not much between the two.
Am I cutting out enough inteference by using all high end xlr cables ? Maybe the answer is more no than yes for now. I have longer cables to allow me to shift the components further away from each other when I move house. That can't be a bad thing.
Make no mistake that there are outstanding unbalanced cables from many brands that do the job one needs.
To me the fully-balance concept is not simply a marketing ploy, otherwise many other features would also be ploys too.
I hope this post provided some food for throught. Sometimes it does pay off, to be patient.
:15::15::15::15:
To cut a long story short, I upgraded my speakers to Dynaudio Contour 1.8 Mark II's. They are very nice speakers, and with much help from qualified Cedia professionals, they admitted that the imaging can be vastly improved if I could get an amplifer, powerful enough to feed my speakers. The speakers are 250W.
My Yamaha receiver (did me many years of awesome service), provided way below this.
Granted that my options were somewhat limited, but after 5 years of auditioning over 12 brands, I found Xindaks that really helped my speakers sing (so to speak), and 400W per channel. They run very hot, and a Class-A amplifer.
I thought the next upgrade was a better source, because most of my music collection were on CDs. I was impressed to find that the Cambridge Audio 840C doubles up as a DAC from 16bit/44.1ktz to 24bit/384ktz. That simply meant utilizing both optical inputs, one for my PS3 (for movies, games and SACDs), and as of today, one for my Sonos system. Weeks before getting the Sonos, I upgraded most of my cables, a huge, expensive, but overdue series of upgrades. Was worth it as each cable upgrade, I cound hear a 10-15% improvement of the music/sound.
My receiver packed up, I could no longer adjust my volume settings, and considering what it would cost to get it repaired, along with the remote not working, I decided to cut my losses and look for a pre amp.
Xindak didn't quite provide enough source options. I did heavily consider, why not complete the system by finding a pre amp which could also take balance inputs, and have balanced outputs for the power amp. Then I cound make my system fully balanced.
Most of the brands of pre amps I took a look at either had not enough inputs in the back, or do not offer a balanced in & out.
Cambridge Audio 840C not only met both conditions, but the remote with the CD player, was compatible. In addition to that, other features are possible by having the two.
Overall the entire combination of components took me much closer to a fantastic listening experience of my beloved music collection. However I will still seek more improvements.
Question, was it really worth the extra money to get the entire system "fully-balanced" ? Considering that it costs just as much money for me to get unbalanced cables, the price difference between the power an pre amps balance and unbalanced was not too much difference. Yes it sounds like the fully-balanced option heavily influenced my decision with the components, but to be honest it would of been about 10% of my overall decision process.
The Xindak power amps 400wpc feeding 250w fronts was a no brainer, they just happened to have balanced-in options.
The 840C pretty much had most of the same features as the 740C with exception of balanced options. The price difference was not much between the two.
Am I cutting out enough inteference by using all high end xlr cables ? Maybe the answer is more no than yes for now. I have longer cables to allow me to shift the components further away from each other when I move house. That can't be a bad thing.
Make no mistake that there are outstanding unbalanced cables from many brands that do the job one needs.
To me the fully-balance concept is not simply a marketing ploy, otherwise many other features would also be ploys too.
I hope this post provided some food for throught. Sometimes it does pay off, to be patient.
:15::15::15::15: