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Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

RE: Any comments on DAC directly to Power amp with no preamp

I run a Mytek Stereo192-DSD directly to my powered Focal monitors, using balanced XLR connections with the monitor sensitivity set at +4 dBu. The Mytek has the extra IV resistors jumpered to lower the output by -6 dB. It is set to have volume trim of -14 dB and I use the digital volume control option in the Mytek rather than the analog, because it avoids a bunch of op-amps and sounds cleaner. With typical audiophile recordings the volume control is set at about -15 dB of digital attenuation for normal listening, turned up to -6 dB for large scale music such as Mahler symphonies. Although this system is capable of undistorted peaks to 115 dB at my near field listening position I don't hear any noise as a result of running the DAC directly into the amplifiers of the speakers. Note that the digital volume control in the Mytek works at the 32 bit level, so it is not losing any resolution, just that the residual converter noise fed to the speakers is at a higher level than it would be with a passive volume control or low noise preamp.

When playing "loudness wars" recordings, the volume control has to be turned down to about -25 dB to -30 dB, but these recordings are, by their nature, junk and hence there can be no concern about "sound quality" when playing them. (Sound quality is further improved by hitting the power switch.)

My speakers have another setting, -10 dBv. With this selected, and especially without the -6 dB output reduction from the Mytek jumpers I would have had to use substantially more digital volume control and would probably have found the results unsatisfactory. I do not use digital volume control in the computer, but I could because the computer sends 32 bits to the DAC. However, this would be a bad idea, because the computer might blast out "You have mail!" at full volume in case of a software glitch. With the volume controled by the DAC the risk of blowing things up doesn't exist. (Actually, my system will play cleanly with the volume turned all the way up, but at my usual listening position it will take only a few seconds before my ears start ringing, hence I don't do this.)




Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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