Hello,
I'm quite new here but I've been in the audiophile world for quite some years.... with headphones. Just to make it clear I have a Schiit Bifrost, Schiit magni (bought yearsss ago; didn't know they weren't that great :/) and HD 600 currently and some other things.
I tested lots of things and .... Stax headphones are the single best thing my ears where ever able to hear (I had a SR-507 with a modded SRM-232 IIRC).
Now that I have a real livingroom and a TV I want to upgrade my stereo setup to a surround setup (5.1). And I have some questions.
I was planning on following the "hard" way i.e. not using a standard home theater AVR... because they simply just don't seem to be good.
So the plan currently kind of looks like that :
- Something akin to the Okto DAC8PRO that just seem to be "the best" dac even in stereo WHILE being 8 channels
- 3 Audiophonics power amp based on Hypex modules, I don't know if I want the NC122MP or the NC252MP variant yet (100€ price difference). I will not use one channel of the last amp ... but whatever I guess
- Elac DBR-62
- Didn't look at subs yet
- Do room correction
So now I have questions and quite a bit of them !
First about room correction :
But how will I change the volume in this case? Apparently doing it in windows is bad because it lower the resolution; okay. And apparently I can change it with the DDRC-88D... well, if I have one ! And isn't it still "digital volume control" that will still lower the resolution ?
Third about the output voltage of DACs :
Now about the speakers :
Sorry for such a long post, and thanks in advance for those that will read and answers my questions.
I'm quite new here but I've been in the audiophile world for quite some years.... with headphones. Just to make it clear I have a Schiit Bifrost, Schiit magni (bought yearsss ago; didn't know they weren't that great :/) and HD 600 currently and some other things.
I tested lots of things and .... Stax headphones are the single best thing my ears where ever able to hear (I had a SR-507 with a modded SRM-232 IIRC).
Now that I have a real livingroom and a TV I want to upgrade my stereo setup to a surround setup (5.1). And I have some questions.
I was planning on following the "hard" way i.e. not using a standard home theater AVR... because they simply just don't seem to be good.
So the plan currently kind of looks like that :
- Something akin to the Okto DAC8PRO that just seem to be "the best" dac even in stereo WHILE being 8 channels
- 3 Audiophonics power amp based on Hypex modules, I don't know if I want the NC122MP or the NC252MP variant yet (100€ price difference). I will not use one channel of the last amp ... but whatever I guess
- Elac DBR-62
- Didn't look at subs yet
- Do room correction
So now I have questions and quite a bit of them !
First about room correction :
- I know I need a microphone such as the MiniDSP Umikk-1 because we have the data from this specific mic to correct accordingly.
However I do possess a MiniDSP Ears bought some years ago to have some fun measuring headphones with REW.... Can I use it for room correction or do I need to buy the Umik-1 (or any other one that is higher end) ?
- What is the advantage of using hardware dirac room correction with for example a MiniDSP Udio-8 + DDRC-88D BESIDES the fact that it has bass management and a whole lot of other features like being able to do PEQ per channel, crossover or whatsoever, I guess none ? Well we do "automatically" pay for the dirac license when buying that, so that does attenuate the price. (then the question is "dirac or rew" I guess, though I can find the answer somewhere around this forum)
- Purely as a stereo point of view will I be able to hear the difference with .. let's say a schiit modius or a topping D30 Pro ? I've looked at the graphs and while it does perform better I just don't know how to transform those small differences to "I can hear the diff and this I wouldn't be able to tell" for example.
Because 1200€ is quite expensive in the end. And for example 3 schiit modius is "only" 600€ I believe. Even moreso if I take ... topping E30 for example.
- If I buy 3 normal stereo DACs I will be able to slowly upgrade from 2.0 to 4.0 then 5.1 and ... well it's nice to be able to. (I don't plan on building the surround setup tomorrow, I need to save up for it).
But how will I change the volume in this case? Apparently doing it in windows is bad because it lower the resolution; okay. And apparently I can change it with the DDRC-88D... well, if I have one ! And isn't it still "digital volume control" that will still lower the resolution ?
Third about the output voltage of DACs :
- Knowing that I won't have a pre-amp on my amps, should I care about the voltage output of the DACs ? I know that we can tell Okto what max voltage we want for the output of the dac8pro, so what should I choose ? And if I go the multi-stereo DAC route, should I care about the output voltage when choosing them ?
- When changing the volume with the volume control of .. let's say the dac8pro it will change (lower) the voltage of the output right ?
Now about the speakers :
- The "central" version of the DBR-62 (DCR-52) doesn't seem to be really like.. okay why not. Should I just buy another pair of DBR-62 and put one sideway for the central channel ? Would it be useful to use the last DBR-62 also for the central channel ? Duplicating signal between the two central speakers ? Since I'll have a spare speaker and channel on the last amp.
- Are they really that great or should I take something a bit higher end you think ? I want the best quality/price while not neglecting quality at all. Just like a RTX 3080 is the "go to" for high end GPU while the RTX 3090 is the "endgame" but is kind of a stupid buy.
Sorry for such a long post, and thanks in advance for those that will read and answers my questions.