HELP Digital bad, vinyl good???


OK, boys and girls, I need your help. Besides the obvious philosophical implications, can anyone tell me why two CDPs (Exemplar 3910 and CAL CL-10) using two diff i/cs, and two diff inputs, are highly distorted and my vinyl rig sounds great? VAC Ren Mk2 pre. Doesn't the phono stage feed into the line stage and then to the output? HELP. No XMAS tunes on vinyl.
128x128swampwalker
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I have to admit I did the very same thing. Was I happy when I figured it out...
I have no idea. Called VAC this am and they had a couple of troubleshooting ideas, including the balanced/se output switch being in the wrong position. When I rolled the rack to see the switch, I found the S-BAM dangling w/o a pc. If Sean or any or Bobby or any of our tech heads are hanging out and have any ideas, I would be happy to listen...Meanwhile I am one happy camper; the VAC tech said next step was a trip to FL. And many thanks for Brent at VAC who spent about 15 minutes w/me on the phono trying to trouble shoot.
The BAM module is basically an active equalizer with a high pass filter built into it. This reduces driver excursion below port resonance, lowers distortion, reduces power consumption and increases power handling.

Evidently, either your phono system isn't capable of very deep bass and / or the records that you were playing didn't have a lot of deep bass on them. Obviously, the CD's did, which is what caused the distortion that you heard. This is one of the drawbacks of using a vented design without some form of active equalization and / or a steep high pass filter. Now you've actually heard the distortion that i've mentioned many times before when discussing vented designs and the woofer(s) becoming "unloaded". Not pretty, is it?

Glad that you were able to figure things out without any real down-time or great expenditure on your part. Sometimes, as is the case here, the simple stuff is the easiest stuff to overlook. Sean
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