Help / Advise Please - iPod as a source

[macnugget]

My son asked me to get him a hi fi system for his new house and he uses ipod as a source primarily. How do I get the best sound out of it without spending too much money?

I already have a pre / power combo, Ohm sepakers and a Monica 2 dac that I was going to give him anyway. What device do I need to hook up the ipod into the dac or amp? Bearing in mind I did try a 3.5mm jack to phono adapter a few years ago and it sounded awful.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Stephen

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Onkyo nds1?
Wadia 170 thingy?
Would go into dac

[colinB]

Instead of going for a expensive dock why dont you buy airport express and input the DAC using toslink. Im sure he would chuffed.

[dave2010]

Instead of going for a expensive dock why dont you buy airport express and input the DAC using toslink. Im sure he would chuffed.interesting -
http://www.apple.com/uk/airportexpress/specs.html

Do I take it that the audio jack on this also supports Toslink, like some of the iMacs? Seems quite expensive as a Wi-Fi bridge though. Presumably requires some configuration, so not necessarily orders of magnitude easier than some other wireless kit. Looks neat and simple though.

[webby]

I did try a 3.5mm jack to phono adapter a few years ago and it sounded awful.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Stephen
Awful? Really?


Really!?

[Dingdong]

Does your son have his music as mp3's or lossless? If it's mp3's I'm not sure if anything will make them sound good.

[macnugget]

Yes, his music are mainly mp3's.



Does your son have his music as mp3's or lossless? If it's mp3's I'm not sure if anything will make them sound good.

[Dingdong]

One of those docks mentioned with a digital out to go into the dac would be a start.
I'd recommend encouraging him to use lossless files if he can as he'll struggle to get a decent sound from mp3's. It'd be like trying to polish a turd.:)

[dave2010]

I shall ignore the faecal reference, though some people may have some slight success with Brasso!

Re mp3s - if they are done at a high enough bit rate (say above 192 kbps VBR - 250 kbps and above would probably be better) then they don't always sound terrible. I agree that lossless encoding is the way to go - if there's enough space. Some people just don't know how to do the settings on iPods and mp3 players to minimise the damage that lossy codecs do - the default settings are often far too low. It is worth spending a few minutes playing around with this, or even RTFM, in order to get settings that will work. Of course, if the files are downloaded from a music store with only one choice of format and encoding rate, then there's not a lot which can be done. Some are OK(ish), others not.

[DSJR]

I agree with above post from Dave (Hi Dave :))

MP3's don't "have" to sound terrible imo, but just regard them as good AM style radio, which can be impressive if the tuner does justice to it, if you see what I mean.

With any luck, larger cheaper storage and faster streaming speeds should remove the need for MP3 style compression in the future, but I did read somewhere that some (most?) pop material is supplied from the start in 350kbs or so, but cannot substantiate it).

[Mark Grant]

How about a Cambridge Audio iD100

http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=605&Title=iD100+Digital+Dock+for+iPad+%26+iPhone

http://www.richersounds.com/product/ipods-docks-accessories/cambridge-audio/id100/camb-id100-blk

I have made AES/EBU digital XLR cables for customers with these, the customers say they are good.

Look at all the digital outputs for your iPod , iPhone or iPad :)

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx234/server9/forum-pictures/id100-rear-with-nos.jpg

-

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx234/server9/forum-pictures/id100-New-Front-image.jpg

[macnugget]

This looks good!

[colinB]

Crossed my mind to. Cambridge audio make great products for a reasonable price .

[sburrell]

The Pure i-20 is well reviewed (What Hi-Fi? 4/5, and Hi-Fi Choice 5/5), and half the price.

http://www.richersounds.com/product/ipods-docks-accessories/pure/i-20/pure-i20

[dave2010]

How does this Pure compare with the Onkyo Nds1 (not too much more expensive) or the Wadia 170i or 171i (considerably more) digital docks? Under £80 seems reasonable if the quality is good, and hopefully it's significantly better than an analogue cable to phonograph plugs.

Is the current price an offer/reduction, or has it always been sold round this price point?

[sburrell]

Hey Dave.
I just got the Pure through the post today. I'll give it a listen and post my thoughts. The only thing i can compare it to is my pimped Beresford DAC, though.
Oh, and yes, its RRP is around £75, undiscounted.

[macnugget]

I would be very interested to read your review on the Pure.


Hey Dave.
I just got the Pure through the post today. I'll give it a listen and post my thoughts. The only thing i can compare it to is my pimped Beresford DAC, though.
Oh, and yes, its RRP is around £75, undiscounted.

[sburrell]

Hey,

just a quick line to say that, as a provider of an optical output to your iOS-device, this is FAB! I just listened to my Buddy Holly album stored as ALAC files on my iPod Classic, and I had no complaints at all! Sounded smashing. If all you're looking for is an optical out (or co-ax for that matter, but I haven't tested it) for your iOS device, I recommend this unreservedly.

By the way, I say iOS device (instead of iPhone etc.) because this accepts anything from a 2nd Gen iPod nano to an iPhone 4. I dare say it should work with an iPad also, because the dock connection isn't recessed, and there're no boundaries to the side, but I can't confirm this.

I'll try to test out the built-in DAC tomorrow, and post a comparison between it and the Beresford.

[macnugget]

This sounds very promising indeed!

[sburrell]

Hi,

Finally got round to connecting the Pure i-20 directly to my amp, using an MG LV61S Canare stereo cable.

Impressions are that the soundstage is lacking, as is dynamism (though I improved this by plugging the Pure directly into a wall socket instead of my Tacima conditioner), but there's plenty of detail and good timing. Voices sound natural and bass is tight, whilst the high-end could be given about more room to breathe though it certainly didn't sound suffocated or boxy.

I wouldn't be disappointed to use this if my Beresford went tits up and I had to save for repairs or replacement.

Hope this helps :)

[macnugget]

Hi Simon

Thanks for your update! So are you saying the phono output doesnt sound too good? Is is significantly better via the optical out? And what is it like with coax out?

Cheers

Stephen

[sburrell]

Hi Stephen,

The bottom line is that I am not really qualified to say yay or nay as to the quality of the output of the Pure. I aspire to high-fidelity, but I've never actually owned a truly high-end setup - the closest I've been to such a thing is the odd session in Russ Andrews, Edinburgh (now gone) and hearing Ali Tait's setup.

I re-read your OP, and best I can say is that the optical output is excellent, and paired with my Beresford and an iPod Classic (containing ALAC files) this is a lovely source that I'm happy with. I also think the dock and iPod would scale well with any DAC you would pair with it.

The built-in DAC is not as good as the Beresford, but it has its good points, and on the whole is acceptable for me.

As for the co-ax—I've never tried it, and seeing as I don't have a dedicated co-ax cable, I won't even attempt a comparison. There is one thing though—the manual for the dock for some reason has the word, "recommended," appended to its entry in the table of dock outputs. It doesn't go into any detail as to why it's "recommended," so your guess is as good as mine.

I hope this has helped :)

[allsorts]

Hi Stephen
If the Pure's dac is not as good as caiman - what would be best connection? going via caiman using optical or coax and then to amp or directly via analogue rca to amp? I have connected my ipod touch headphone output, using a belkin Y rca cable to my amp and sound is just ok. Am looking for better result.

[Mark Grant]

As for the co-ax—I've never tried it, and seeing as I don't have a dedicated co-ax cable

A single cable from the Canare LV61S stereo pair that you have will be perfect for a digital coax, If I supplied it, its 75 ohm cable with Canare RCAP-C4A 75 ohm RCA connectors.

Worth a try so you can send digital from the Dock to the Beresford DAC.

[sburrell]

Aha, OK, I'll give that a shot! First I have to pick up some 1/4'' female mono jack to RCA male adapters, so that I can use your G1000HD through in the front room. Your LV61S is actually the only decent RCA audio cable I own, so using one length for the co-ax would leave nothing to connect the DAC to the amp :eyebrows:

I'll report back shortly.

[allsorts]

On p4 of Pure i-20 user guide it states "i-20 produces hifi quality audio from high bitrate tracks on your ipod... by extracting the raw digital audio and processing it on the dock itself, using Pure...digital end to end technology for its digital output and a superior 24/192 dac for its analogue output". Given that the sound has been processed through one dac already (could that be 2 dacs including the one onboard the ipod?) is the sound going to be improved by then running it into a Caiman via coax or would it be cleaner to run rca cables direct to the amp?

[sburrell]

Allsorts: I had a similar thought to you before I bought this, but then I realised I'd forgotten what a DAC does: digital to analogue. You can only perform this once.
As far as I'm concerned, you get PCM output from the iPod or iPhone, then it gets converted into optical data for the TOSlink or left as is for the co-ax.
In short: the only processing that should occur between song and external DAC is from the song's native format (AAC, ALAC etc.) to PCM, then to optical if necessary. That's it :)

[sburrell]

I swapped in a Mark Grant G1000HD stereo cable between the DAC and amp (with the help of some gold-plated 1/4'' female to RCA male adapters), and connected the Pure over co-ax vis-a-vis Mark's suggestion above. As far as I can tell, there's no audible difference between the optical and the co-ax.

I'm now [B]very[\B] happy with my ALAC/iPod/Pure/optical/7510 source combo, and will be re-writing my sig shortly to reflect this. :)

Hope I've been of some help. :)

[allsorts]

Much appreciated simon. I received my pure i-20 hooked it up to the caiman via coax and was disappointed with sound. It was a bit lifeless and recessed. With my bantam gold on almost to max i couldn't get a decent amount of volume out of the speakers, so i implemented its gain mode and that helped a little. After remembering that i had read in the user guide some ipods have their volume automatically cut out by the dock I found the remote, turned off the gain on the bantam, increased the ipod output volume to max and got a much improved sound. I then tried it with some belkin silver rca cables in lieu of the coax and to my ears this was a better result. I will keep testing back and forth but am very happy with it. My power meter is reading 4-7 watts when only the pure and bantam are used so my summer system is now ready to go. It will also benefit me because I am on a nett solar electricity feed in tariff so the less i use during the day, the more electricity i export and get a premium (3 times the usual rate) return on every kwh produced. Finding out about the pure has solved a issue for me of trying to reduce my power usage and retain an acceptable sound quality. Thanks.

[sburrell]

4-7 watts? Craziness! You could power your hifi just by farting in its general direction every now and then :lol:

[allsorts]

yeah i know. The pure puts out 3.7 watts and the bantam gold specs state 2x25w per channel RMS. it comes with a 15v 3 amp cord and runs at 90% efficiency. I'm not sure if i need to check the total output with another measuring device? Anyway its putting out a great sound, will keep me cooler on hot days, reducing my carbon footprint, saving me money in the long run and i'm enjoying the music which is what its all about in the end. Now I just have to keep my daughter from putting her ipod in it. Even the Pure can't improve the sound of low quality mp3 recorded pop songs.