Dear all,
I have been following this forum for quite some time now, appreciating the reviews and often scientific discussions. Many thanks to all the posters!
I wanted to ask for advice on how to best connect my active speakers. I recently bought a pair of beolab 20 speakers. Those are active floorstanders from B&O with optical toslink in, analogue RCA in and (proprietary?) “powerlink” input that looks like an ethernet RJ45. If I understood it correctly, they use a digital DSP crossover that goes into a DAC+AMP per channel.
I have most of my music on a NAS as CD quality FLACs and would like to connect my TV or Playstation and perhaps have some easy wireless replay capability like Airplay or Bluetooth. So I thought about getting a digital streamer and connect it via optical to the speakers.
I did not find a lot of streamers that have all the required connections for the setup (optical out, ~2 digital in, ethernet). After some research I am looking at the Cambridge 851N, CXN (v2) or Marantz NA 11S1, ND8006. And thanks to this forum also the Paradigm PW Link.
But before I spend the money I wanted to ask for advice whether I am spending it at the right place...
Cheers
I have been following this forum for quite some time now, appreciating the reviews and often scientific discussions. Many thanks to all the posters!
I wanted to ask for advice on how to best connect my active speakers. I recently bought a pair of beolab 20 speakers. Those are active floorstanders from B&O with optical toslink in, analogue RCA in and (proprietary?) “powerlink” input that looks like an ethernet RJ45. If I understood it correctly, they use a digital DSP crossover that goes into a DAC+AMP per channel.
I have most of my music on a NAS as CD quality FLACs and would like to connect my TV or Playstation and perhaps have some easy wireless replay capability like Airplay or Bluetooth. So I thought about getting a digital streamer and connect it via optical to the speakers.
I did not find a lot of streamers that have all the required connections for the setup (optical out, ~2 digital in, ethernet). After some research I am looking at the Cambridge 851N, CXN (v2) or Marantz NA 11S1, ND8006. And thanks to this forum also the Paradigm PW Link.
But before I spend the money I wanted to ask for advice whether I am spending it at the right place...
- Would a proper audio streamer like the Marantz or Cambridge have better sound quality through the optical out compared to a cheaper source (e.g. PS4, TV, low cost PC) also using optical? Or is optical out = optical out?
- Am I right to assume that even the best DAC will not improve my sound quality when using analogue out because the speakers will convert the analogue signal to digital and then use their own DAC that basically caps the quality?
- Might it still make sense to use the analogue out of a good streamer/DAC because thus I can use the volume control and perhaps some other things like upsampling or EQ? Or do I lose too much audio quality this way?
- And what do you think about the Paradigm PW Link? With its optical in and out + ethernet it offers the basics of what I need and I read that many consider the potential gain in sound quality through room correction to be much more significant than the discussion about optical vs analogue or streamer A vs streamer B. And its much cheaper then the others
- Any other idea/recommendations how to get the best sound out of my envisaged setup?
Cheers