I recently decided to put together a stereo system in my bedroom starting with a raspberry pi 4 as a player feeding a system of long unused parts I had lying around. I ended up with the following initial setup.
Rpi4 -> HDMI OUT -> HDMI Audio Extractor to Toslink -> Marantz SR8000 -> Phasetec Teatro 10 Speakers.
Sadly over the years of sitting idle the Teatro's plate amplifiers for the woofer have moved from emitting a faint transformer buzz to a room filling transformer buzz. (Both speakers do it and a DC offset rejecting AC outlet did nothing to reduce it.)
This led me to consider upgrading the system and I found this site with all it's helpful technical data which is greatly appreciated. I happen to live in a large town that is close enough to a much larger town there is basically nothing in the way of AV dealers other than Best Buy and custom integrators with no actual retail locations which makes experiencing anything in person basically impossible. And yes I know from past experience even if I could there is limited value to in store testing. So it's great to see empirical measurements to help inform buying decisions.
The first thing I did was get new speakers. I wanted smaller this time as I'm disabled and have difficulty moving anything large or heavy these days so I decided to go the bookshelf route. I ended up with a pair of Revel M106s. Doing an A/B against the Teatros they're a clear step up in terms of clarity in the mids and highs. (Unfair to judge the low end as the Teatros are missing a large part of their low end w/ their woofer's disabled.)
Background complete, I move on to my question. I see there are DACs and amps that measure wonderfully these days and conveniently they come in small and light packages. My question is are these likely to provide any audible benefit over the SR8000 (which is serving as both DAC and amp) at low SPL?
To be clear when I say low SPL I'll give numbers from my old Radioshack SPL meter. As measured at my listening position I find 75 dBC SPL to be very loud. I more often listen in the low 50s dBC and frequently lower than that although 50 is as low as the meter goes.
At these SPLs is the improvement in noise floor and distortion likely audible?
Here's the listed audio specs from the SR8000 manual. How close it is to these specs in reality (either new or now) I have no idea.
AUDIO SECTION
Continuous Power Output
FRONT (20 Hz - 20 kHz) .............................................................................................................................. 8 ohms 100W / Ch
THD Front (20 Hz - 20 kHz) ..................................................................................................................................... 8 ohms 0.05 %
Input Sensitivity/Impedance
Linear ........................................................................................................................................................... 316 mV/ 47 Kohms
Signal to Noise Ratio
Linear .............................................................................................................................................................................. 105 dB
Rpi4 -> HDMI OUT -> HDMI Audio Extractor to Toslink -> Marantz SR8000 -> Phasetec Teatro 10 Speakers.
Sadly over the years of sitting idle the Teatro's plate amplifiers for the woofer have moved from emitting a faint transformer buzz to a room filling transformer buzz. (Both speakers do it and a DC offset rejecting AC outlet did nothing to reduce it.)
This led me to consider upgrading the system and I found this site with all it's helpful technical data which is greatly appreciated. I happen to live in a large town that is close enough to a much larger town there is basically nothing in the way of AV dealers other than Best Buy and custom integrators with no actual retail locations which makes experiencing anything in person basically impossible. And yes I know from past experience even if I could there is limited value to in store testing. So it's great to see empirical measurements to help inform buying decisions.
The first thing I did was get new speakers. I wanted smaller this time as I'm disabled and have difficulty moving anything large or heavy these days so I decided to go the bookshelf route. I ended up with a pair of Revel M106s. Doing an A/B against the Teatros they're a clear step up in terms of clarity in the mids and highs. (Unfair to judge the low end as the Teatros are missing a large part of their low end w/ their woofer's disabled.)
Background complete, I move on to my question. I see there are DACs and amps that measure wonderfully these days and conveniently they come in small and light packages. My question is are these likely to provide any audible benefit over the SR8000 (which is serving as both DAC and amp) at low SPL?
To be clear when I say low SPL I'll give numbers from my old Radioshack SPL meter. As measured at my listening position I find 75 dBC SPL to be very loud. I more often listen in the low 50s dBC and frequently lower than that although 50 is as low as the meter goes.
At these SPLs is the improvement in noise floor and distortion likely audible?
Here's the listed audio specs from the SR8000 manual. How close it is to these specs in reality (either new or now) I have no idea.
AUDIO SECTION
Continuous Power Output
FRONT (20 Hz - 20 kHz) .............................................................................................................................. 8 ohms 100W / Ch
THD Front (20 Hz - 20 kHz) ..................................................................................................................................... 8 ohms 0.05 %
Input Sensitivity/Impedance
Linear ........................................................................................................................................................... 316 mV/ 47 Kohms
Signal to Noise Ratio
Linear .............................................................................................................................................................................. 105 dB