Going over to the Dark Side?
For those thinking of external drives, I just ran across this URL--haven't used it, but the theory sounds good and it may quiet down your environment: http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/smartdrive.html |
>Edsilva i recently purchased a U24 and plugged it into my stereo, right now im using its own little onboard DAC and the music is much qieter than from my cd player. it says in the instruction for the Waveterminal that the analog out is -10dB, any way to go around that? or it is supposed to be that way. one more thing - if you use a separate DAC, lets say some Theta, than the DACs output level determines the loudness, right? |
Anything single ended (RCA) is -10. Always been that way. Works fine over reasonable length cable runs such as you are likely to have in a home rig. Balanced outputs (XLRs) run at +4 - its the format that the pro's use for all low level work (mics etc) Among other things, it makes it easier to do those 100'+ runs. Had Waveterminal gone balanced they would not have been able to deliver the size package or the price point. That is what is so interesting about that product - it sounds so good and does so much for so little. It targets the low end/prosumer studio market - that's why it has the 1/4" phono jacks |
Ckorody is spot on as far as my understanding goes... And, to your last point, the bits going over spdif are just bits--the level is going to be determined by your DAC's output, regardless of the input. (Unless, of course, you have something fiddling with gain in the digital domain like kmixer--you don't want that). |
