Hi-Fi-Insight News and Reviews (2)
Shuttle SN68SG2 Home Theatre System
March 13th, 2009
Having used a Shuttle SN41G2 based AMD 3ghz XP machine to watch DVDs and listen to mp3s with, the time had come to upgrade to something a little more powerful that was capable of Blue Ray HD playback. I have always been a big fan of the Shuttle bare-bone systems both in the work place and at home, as their compact size makes them ideal for media and basic computing and I had not intention of buying a stand alone player.
The Shuttle SN41G2 had been an excellent machine with nforce on-board sound and graphics but also a spare AGP and PCI slot if you wanted a different graphics or sound card option. Bit perfect audio output is a must for me, so a spare PCI slot is essential as I have not come across any on-board sound cards that are 100% capable of this, and my C-Media 8768 sound card offers 100% bit perfect SPDIF in and out at a fraction of the cost of audiophile solutions with Drogbert's Homebrew Drivers. The Shuttle SN68SG2 features a Realteak 888 HD chip which although will output a 44.1khz signal via SPDIF only does through a driver switch and not automatically, so I am not 100% convinced this is "bit" perfect, however it will output 24 bit audio as well for those people with high resolution FLAC files. [...]
Posted in Home Cinema | No Comments »
Cambridge Audio DAC Magic
February 15th, 2009
Following yesterday’s post about bit perfect audio, I thought I would post details of one the best sub £200 external DAC available in the UK. The Cambridge Audio DAC Magic was launched last summer and immediately established itself as one of the very best DACs available sonically and also compatibility wise at its price point. Cambridge Audio have manufactured several external DACs in the past, but this one is possibly one of its best.
The Cambridge Audio DAC Magic has no less than three digital inputs that can either be optical or co-axial and a USB in connector as well and for output either unbalanced RCA phono sockets can be used or left and right balanced XLR connectors. Power to the Cambridge Audio DAC Magic is provided by an external regulated power supply.
The Cambridge Audio DAC Magic borrows much of its technology from the Azur 740/840 CD players and up-samples all inputs to a 24bit/192khz sample using a choice of three sophisticated filters which is licensed from a Swiss software company called Anagram Technologies. The result is a very neutral portrayal of sound which far exceeds its sub £200 price. [...]
Posted in Tweaks | No Comments »
Bit Perfect Audio
February 14th, 2009In the last year or so, there has been a flood of standalone digital to audio converters (DACs) that are aimed at personal computer owners who want to improve the reproduction of their music collection stored on computer hard disks. Standalone DACs were all the rage in the mid nineties as they offered a reasonably priced upgrade to compact disk owners without having to replace the whole player providing it had a digital ouput socket which could then be fed to an external DAC.
The same situation now exists with PC’s as the majority of soundcards all provide digital outputs as analogue output. However the analogue output is usually of a poor standard due to widespread use of poor components such as cheap and nasty DACs, not to mention reliance on a PC’s power supply which is not designed for audio applications and is critical if any sort of true hi-fi reproduction is to be achieved.
Therefore it makes more sense to feed the digital output of a PC to a dedicated external audiophile DAC to achieve the best sound quality which leads us on to the topic of this post. One of the most least explained facts about digital audio and one that seems to escaped the various magazine reviews and manufacturers’ promotion material surrounding these new external DACs is question of bit perfect audio, that is that the digital output from the computer soundcard is the same as the digital output from the stored audio file. [...]
Posted in Tweaks | No Comments »
JBL Control One Speakers
February 13th, 2009
If you are looking for a high quality wall mountable bookshelf speaker at a knock down price, then the JBL Control One Speakers may be just what you are looking for. Available from Richer Sounds at a ludicrous £49.99 (half price) these tiny speakers are perfect for home cinema installations where they can discretely hide in room corners.
I had been looking for a replacement pair of rear home cinema speakers as I had recently moved house and the existing budget Eltax bookshelf speakers were slightly too big and deep for wall mounting, not to mention the fact that they were rear ported so an upgrade was required. A quick browse on Richer Sound's website gave me a shortlist of three, but the JBL Control One Speakers won the day thanks to their price, reviews, front bass reflex port and the fact they were already supplied with unobtrusive mounting brackets. [...]
Posted in Loudspeakers | No Comments »
Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B Plasma Screen
February 11th, 2009
The Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B Plasma Screen is the latest edition to their Viera range of televisions and represents one of the best quality screens you can find for around £2000 in the UK today. Panasonic have achieved a bit of coup this latest range of Viera plasma screens as they are the first ever to incorporate a built in Freesat tuner so watching high definition television on the Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B could not be easier especially if you have a Sky satellite dish already installed.
Given that Freesat broadcasts from the same satellite as Sky, no adjustment or re-alignment is required to an existing Sky dish and with FreeSat, you get the added bonus of being able to watch ITV HD which cannot be viewed through a Sky HD box. Unfortunately the Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ81B plasma screen we were watching was not rigged up with Freesat, so we had to make do with Sky HD and Blu-ray both of which were being fed via a triple screened Profigold PGV1002 HDMI cable. [...]
Posted in Home Cinema | No Comments »
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