BF2S Forums The 'What Did You Buy Today' thread

i’m happy with my XR. really good phone.

i’m not big into influencing or whatever the fuck so having the latest and greatest camera tech has never mattered to me. ‘innovations’ like wireless earphones and wireless charging mostly seem like cack. i still use wired earphones (because i’m not a fucking idiot) and i still plug my phone into a USB2.0 port at the end of each day to charge it.

i don’t need little gay earbuds hanging out my ears all the time and i definitely don’t need a £130 leather wireless charging coaster.

i actually don’t think i’ve ever had the latest iphone. which is just as well because i normally break them when drunk, normally within 12 months.

uziq wrote:

i don’t need little gay earbuds hanging out my ears all the time and i definitely don’t need a £130 leather wireless charging coaster..

Leather and leopardskin are two things you just can't go wrong with though

ohhh my sweet ears.

it’s doing very nice AD and DA conversion between my vinyl turntables, as well as my sampler/any other instruments, and my monitor speakers. in addition it’s providing a very nice DAC for my computer audio, as well as superb headphone amplification. it’s a portable all-in-one basically.

what it’s doing to justify its high cost really is much more complicated than that but it’s over my head. i don’t understand the shannon-nyquist theorem and i couldn’t talk to you even about floating points. suffice to say it’s a very powerful audio brain that is made with extremely high spec german precision. i can produce music on my PC and throw all sorts of high-power sound processing at it and it will return the audio effectively in real time, i.e. with very minimum processing latency. i can also record in any number of things to my computer/digital format and be sure that it’s being captured in the most pristine audio: clear, roomy, vibrant, dynamic, etc.

for e.g. i could plug an electric guitar into it directly, load up 13 software plugins that emulate between them a vintage guitar amp, 4 effects pedals composed of hideously complex algorithms for simulating room reverbs and echos, a compressor, etc, and play guitar in real-time, without a lag between my fretting and the speaker output, and really no discernible difference from the (all analogue) real thing.

tl;dr: sounds really really good and can record/produce audio real good.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 10:39:26)

even most computer DACs will be that size, let alone decent hi-fi receivers/amplifiers.

my dj mixer is huge. you can see it underneath all my shit in the top picture. 32 x 35 cm. that's just another amplifier at the end of the day.

i am warming to the '1970s nasa console' aesthetic. i quite like the form factor as a little desktop console. i can picture myself taking this thing with me when i travel and just running it off the bus power of my macbook. that's the most impressive thing, to me. it posts insane audio stats with a huge noise floor and excellent SNR ... off a USB2.0 bus. not even USB 3.0. the upgraded headphone op-amps are the same as in their industry-standard £1600 DAC. it's made my HD-600 cans sound like an entirely different beast.

when i plugged it in, it installed some random 160kb ASIO driver and it was ready to go. that's it. their fearsome best-in-industry drivers, which post ridiculous low round-trip latencies, are a couple hundred kb. it reminds me of the design philosophy behind like zowie mice, just plug-n-play and no bullshit. rock solid and stable.

i've done a shitload of research into DACs over the last year, so if anyone fancies upgrading the shine on their PC audio, let me know.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 14:32:13)

you need an amplifier if you have passive bookshelf speakers. look into DAC/amp combos, in that case.

my device could not power your speakers, nor could their equivalent in the 1990s. it's simply a different device.

what would the two inputs be? 2 digital inputs? 2 computers? do you need wireless/bluetooth? etc. these are all common features for a DAC, but not as common for a hi-fi amplifier. do you also want to plug headphones into it? because that will involve a headphone output/headphone amplifier, too.

the good news is basic amplifiers for low/mid-range speakers are pretty cheap. the DAC digital-computer audio bit gets a bit more expensive.

SMSL or JDS labs make decent gear for an affordable price.
e.g. https://jdslabs.com/shop/?category=featured

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-18 09:55:38)

you want to drive audio from a keyboard 3.5 mm jack? finray how much power do you think a keyboard is putting out?

a DAC typically takes audio from your PC via usb/firewire/optical, not its onboard outputs. they are very low power and typically won't drive much more than a pair of satellite speakers or gamer headphones. that's why you necessarily have the huge hi-fi amplifier.

it might just be worth pooling your money into a nice DAC and then routing your current amplifier output into it. does your hi-fi amp have more than one output? does it have red/white RCA outputs? 1/4" inch instrument outputs? it would be less hassle. or getting active speakers.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-18 09:59:07)

haha. thanks for the illustration. i am indeed confused.

the 'box that will do everything' you need is a DAC/amplifier combo. that's because your speakers are passive (i.e. that coaxial cable you use to power them), and most digital-PC audio DACs do not power passive speakers. you need the hi-fi element for that, to significantly step-up the amplification of the low-power signal that comes from your (i presume) 3.5mm pc outputs.

you could just get a nice stereo receiver, i.e. a nice amplifier for your speakers, and plug your computers 3.5mm output into them. but this will still be a crappy, noisy, unbalanced PC output. not ideal. that's why you need the DAC part too. this would plug into your PC via usb/firewire and convert/upsample that signal into something much better than your motherboard's onboard audio sound.

at this point for a happy result with those speakers, you're looking at a decent whack of money for a 'box to do everything'. it might be worth asking just why you have those passive bookshelf speakers, and is it worth sinking a couple hundred into a box to do everything if the speakers aren't worth a couple hundred in themselves. you could buy some active speakers and a DAC instead and cut out the need for the hi-fi amplifier to drive (bad) bookshelf speakers. if you had some really nice klipsch audio passive speakers or something, i would see the point. they have a very desirable sound. if they are hand-me-downs with nothing particularly special about them, i would probably consider that a lost cause and just buy new speakers (harmon kardon are a 'nice' brand when they come bundled with pc world desktops, but they're not really anything in terms of audio).

there are some very nice boxes that will do everything, 'integrated digital amplifiers' is what you should be searching for. many people with games consoles rather than PCs find they want to do the same thing as you. the bad news is you are looking for a 3-in-1 device: a DAC, an amplifier, and a headphone amplifier. you're looking at £400-500 to get into decent territory.

e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/NAD-3020-Digit … B00F0OMUGS
cambridge audio and marantz will offer nice solutions like this, too.

or, as i said above, if your current amplifier has inputs, you could buy a DAC that will route into your existing amplifier. i don't know how good your amp is and if it's worth sticking with it/investing in a DAC for it. same situ as with your speakers, above: are they worth this hybrid set-up or would it be better to start over? you could get a decent DAC for £200-300, say, and route its unbalanced RCA (red/white) outputs into your amp -- assuming it has them. many amplifier receivers will be multi-channel; hi-fis often consist of turntables, cds, tape decks, etc, after all. you would notice an improvement in sound quality but, again, it's subject to how good your amp/speakers are. a DAC alone will not miraculously transform what you hear.

i've recommended these before as simple, good standalone DACs:
https://www.schiit.com/products/

or for a desktop DAC that could possibly route into your existing hi-fi amp:
https://jdslabs.com/product/element-ii/

Right that's cleared a lot up, haha thanks.

Yeah, most of this stuff is hand-me-downs. The speakers are Mission 751s. My headphones are DT 990 Pros (250 ohm).

Sticker on the back of the speaker says they're a 2-way reflex onclusure type, with 25-75w/Ch recommended amplifier output power. Nominal impedance of 6 ohms. I have literally no idea if any of that is relevant or what it means.

After reading all that, I think I want a USB DAC like you said, just to get the sound processing (?) out of the PC. I'm quite happy with the quality of these speakers, and my amp does have RCA inputs. I would have liked to free up the desk space with something more modern and much smaller, but that might be a ways off at the moment then.

As lovely as these headphones are, they're no replacement for having speakers. I listen to music while cleaning the flat or cooking etc obviously not in my PC room, so I crank it up a bit and let it roam through the flat.

Last edited by Finray (2020-10-18 13:43:55)

Not if you shot the person multiple times after the threat was neutralized.

Buy the Halloween prop. Build out a collection. You could even find a nice crafter on etsy to make you a display case for it.

hope you've got a duster or a very tolerant mum for all that kitsch gathering dead skin.

I pay rent to my parents. They are getting older so it is good to have someone young around to do stuff for them too. Your mom and brother live/lived with you. I am sure you understand, Ken. Housing is too expensive in my area anyway. The only thing that would get my to move out is if I was in a relationship with someone.