I bought a DAC that is only rated at 1.1 v output from the RCA instead of 2V output. Other than having to turn the volume up more on my integrated amp does the lower voltage affect the signal to noise ratio since I have to turn the amp up more?
Not nervelessly maybe your DAC has also very low noise so signal to noise stays the same.does the lower voltage affect the signal to noise ratio since I have to turn the amp up more?
Gotcha, well it appears to be a very silent USB DAC so turning the amp up where it is now doesn’t appear to change the background hiss compared to turning it down. There is a slight noticeable hiss that is normal when I put my ear right up to the speaker that doesn’t appear to change whether the volume is low or high on the amp. I know with a power amp typically most would have it about 3/4 volume or so and use the pre amp for the volume. I’m basically doing the same thing except the DAC volume control as the pre amp and the integrated amp as the power amp.Not nervelessly maybe your DAC has also very low noise so signal to noise stays the same.
I thought it was higher voltage to offset voltage drop at long distances, typical of professional audio.All else being equal, yes it diminishes SNR, and is the reason that pro audio line level runs so much higher voltage.
Hmm your probably right. I have a calibrated microphone though so couldn’t I measure the background noise/hiss with the volume on the amp at different settings? Is signal to noise ratio not the same thing?If it's boosting it that could cause clipping.
Honestly if it's not noisy and outputs enough volume it shouldn't be a problem. I use an rca wireless transmitter that only outputs 1.1v and haven't had any issues with that from an output perspective.
Amp is a marrantz pm6006 and I’m using a Xonar u7 USB sound card (CS4398 chip). I was using the integrated dac (Also CS4398) before but I found it was noisy at high volumes with nothing playing. Likely because dispite the EMI shielding its placement inside the chassis is right next to two huge silver power caps. The reason I switched to the xonar though is to separate the sub and mains so that I can apply an 80hz crossover with equalizer APO and manage the sub separately. The downside is I have to use my music app in windows to control the volume since I usually keep windows volume maxed. Also the reduced voltage output is another downside, it’s more than loud enough just hoping I didn’t sacrifice signal to noise ratio.I think that puts more variables, like your amp and especially your speaker sensitivity into play. What DAC is this anyway? We like to pontificate here, but realistically you're probably well within the full-transparency region of distortion with something modern.
Goodness, no. Do you have any idea how long a cable would have to be before a noteworthy level drop would occur?I thought it was higher voltage to offset voltage drop at long distances, typical of professional audio.
Sounds like SNR is rather better than before.
You may want to generate some rather low-level test tones (I'm thinking like -60 dBFS) and compare both setups that way.
Setting your main volume in the player app seems cumbersome when you've got both a soundcard and an integrated amp with volume dials on them, just saying. As long as you're steering clear of 0 dBFS to some degree, in-player volume control and Windows volume control should be pretty much equivalent.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...nding-the-windows-audio-quality-debate.19438/
(I tend to encourage the use of ReplayGain and similar if available. I tend to use a rather conservative pre-gain of -3.3 dB, and YouTube and other players are generally set to 50%.)
If you want to align full power output on the Marantz with full output on the U7, that should take about -14 dB... about 1 or 2 o'clock on the volume dial, depending on the pot. You should not generally need to go any higher than that. On paper (I did some calculations based on actual PM-6006 circuitry, with Source Direct assumed on) having a 1 Vrms source instead of a 2 Vrms one costs you about 3 dB of SNR simply due to the change in volume pot setting, although absolute noise level at this point still is fairly moderate due to the amplifier's moderate gain (about 200 µV out, or -83 dB ref. 2.83 V, or -87 dB ref. 5 W / 4 ohm).
Goodness, no. Do you have any idea how long a cable would have to be before a noteworthy level drop would occur?
Let's say we have an output impedance of ~0 and and input impedance of 10 kOhms. Let's also assume we are using twisted pair cable made from 28AWG (~0.08mm²) copper wiring. That has a resistance of 220 mOhm / m, and it would take a cable 9.4 km in length even for 3 dB of attenuation. At 150 pF/m, that's ~1.4 µF of cable capacitance, and if characteristic impedance is ~110 ohms that's ~17 mH of inductance (~2.1 kOhms by 20 kHz). Strictly speaking, the cable wouldn't even be correctly represented by a lumped element model any more, given that one only is sufficiently accurate for lengths less than about 1/10 the wavelength, which is ~14 km at 20 kHz in vacuum and rather smaller in materials. In any case, we are talking completely unrealistic dimensions.
Pro levels are higher in order to overcome the commonly higher noise of balanced input stages (at times exceeding -100 dBu), and for generally increased robustness.