Picking an amplifier
Must be the special colour dyes. I’d do it if it would replace a good pre/pro. The Sony’s acting terminal. I’m down to between the Anthem AVM 50v and Yamaha Aventage CX-A5000 Thoughts? Comments? Peanut shells from the gallery? Additions? |
I would go for the Yamaha in these two options. The Anthem runs only from a switching power supply. The Yamaha at least uses a linear power supply for analog sections (it still looks like a switching power supply for digital sections, which is very common). To this day, I have only found that Krell and Bryston use purely linear power supplies. Everyone else I have seen (even Classe Audio) used switching power supplies for digital. There could be others. Not sure if you've ready my switching power supply thread above, but it's food for thought. |
reading your post, I had to laugh at your 4x20AMPs supply. The house I'm in was designed to spec by the original owners. (wierd, wierd, wierd design choices) Whoever signed off (or actually did the work) on the electric didn't make enough runs to the circuit breaker box. The laser printer makes all the USP's yelp when it warms up. I won't go into what happens when the '50 powers up. We're moving soon - I'll sort out the next house. Not worth sorting this one out - they won't spot the idiotic electric in the inspections. I didn't buy the place, and wouldn't have for other reasons besides the electric. The Anthem 50 arrived yesterday. Fun stuff. Reading into the audio of the Z170-A motherboard reveals a few things. http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-A/E10611_Z170-A_UM_V2_WEB.pdf?_ga=2.132761034.53232... It is a 192/24 digital output. I'm going to hook up the analogue outs and compare it to the TOSLINK to see if I care about the acoustic difference. I came across a review (one of the NHT president's rebuttal to a 3rd party review) who pointed out that one's hearing often adapts to & accepts the acoustic signature if it's close enough to one's expectations. Essentially, blame your auditory & nervous system if they costs you six figure audiophile $$$. (You still hear dog whistles and you're 50 years old) So far the Jriver has made the most difference. AFAICT, the jacks take either this: https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=104&cp_id=10429&cs_id=1042902&p_id=7175&seq=1... or these: https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=104&cp_id=10429&cs_id=1042902&p_id=7174&seq=1... I think the computer connections swing both ways electrically and the MOBO & drivers sort out whatever you plug in. Conceivably one could go directly to amps & use the computer gains for volume. |
those 1/8" audio outputs are stereo line outputs and will need something like this: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=666 or this: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=5598 See page 1-22 of your MOBO manual. The lime/green jack outputs the left/right channels. This is likely going to be lower than SoundBlaster audio quality (which is fine if you are just running basic computer speakers or don't care about audio quality). I think that old Sony processor you have is still going to sound a whole lot better. |
