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Stereolink rules

I purchased a stereolink 1200 granite a couple of weeks ago and I've noticed no more background noise, more overall dynamics and a better presence than the Soundblaster Live Value card I was using beforehand for the longest time. This is a worthy investment and you can also use your cd-rw drive to play cd's back through the 1200 and they sound as good as any good hi-fi cd player I've heard to date. I was skeptical upon purchasing and after listening now for many hours I can say it is a "audiophile" peice of gear that any true 2 channel audiophile that listens to mp3's must have in his/her collection.

Only wished the constructions of the unit was made of metal and not plastic! The supplied cables are great and they also include ferrite chokes aroudn the cables to lessen any rfi.

Absolutely no problems with the USB and running many programs while using the unit, it does not hiccup or skipp.
asi_tek
pe3046
120 posts
 
Since I have gotten a new amp and no buyers on my denon integrated, I will use my Denon PMA-700v 100w integrated into b&w v202 bookshelf speakers on 30" stands. In my home theatre I have run the digital out directly into my audio alchemy dti then into my denon 2801. Did not sound too bad once I ran the pc from the same ground as the stereo. If I do sell the denon I was looking into the acoustic energy aego 2 or the diva's or just my sennheisers

Patrick
yada
158 posts
 
I don't make my computers, but this is what I have had done.

If you have a little more money to spend, try the Digital Audio Labs with aes/ebu or cheaper spdif. It outputs at 44.1 24/96 and not the dvd output (of 44.7?), like a lot of the soundblaster products. I have tried the 2 most expensive ones available eighteen months ago on my main system and they sounded very bad compared to the CDP.

I use the soundblaster cards in the office now, hooked into bose multimedias. They are definitely ok at that level.

To answer Sean's question. I use the Nodost moonglow spdif now, to a Lexicon mc-1b for the upsampling, to a pair of Martin Logan clsIIz and the sound is "very amazingly good". I also had the computer damped for noise around the disks and dynamat on the Qwin500 case and added software for the fans etc. Very quiet computer set on some aurios and using a pyton V2.

I would have to ask my computer helper if you wanted more info about the computer than that. I listen through winamp to great effect and have over 1000 favorite songs all in .wav format on a disk. They are from 40-90 meg a song.
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
The Stereolink does work very nice. I have been using mine for over a year now. I have it hooked into my Sunfire Preamp and use it with my mp3 tunes. I download lots of music I have never heard of and then if I like it I buy the CD.
kaxixi
1 posts
 
I agree. Ever since I bought the stereolink, my CD player has been collecting dust. I used iTunes to compress my CD collection into AAC files that would fit on my laptop's hard-drive. At some point I did A-B tests on AAC files to compare them with uncpressed AIFF files, and, since I couldn't tell the difference on most tracks, I figured they were good enough for now.

powerbook->stereolink->Two bridged Rotel 970bx's->NHT superzeros and passive sub.
edesilva
768 posts
 
I gave away my stereolink and picked up a sub-$100 Edirol UA-1D, a USB dongle with a coax s/pdif output. Sound is much better than with the stereolink. I keep thinking about some of the higher end digital output cards, but this works well, its bullet proof with my XP system, and sounds good.

In answer to Sean, I run the digital output into the stereo in my study, which is a Theta Pro Basic IIIA DAC, an ARC LS16 mk II pre, a pair of ARC D240 mk IIs bridged to mono, and a pair of ProAc RS2s. I just added a VPI Scout/JMW-9 with a Grado cart/phono stage, and seem to be spending more time playing with that, however. :)
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