Beresford Bushmaster DAC Reviews

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Originally Posted by audionewbi

I dont know if the hiss is normal or not but it is present in my unit out of the headphone out.

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My Shure IEM manual tells me to expect hiss on most equipment because of their sensitivity.

I guess a case of not being able to design a headamp for every single type of headphone..

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Originally Posted by StanleyB

Do you hear the hiss when the music is playing and/or when there is no music playing but with the volume control turned to max?

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The hiss is present when there is no music is playing. The volume control position adjusement does not seem to make any difference when there is no music playing, however while music is playing the hiss becomes louder as the volume is not is turned more towards 12 oclock.

Update:
Discovered something interesting! The hiss seems to only be coming from the left channel, the hiss on the right channel is almost non-existence while there is no music playback!

Update 2:
I hear no music, the unit seems to have died on me! Tried the different coaxial connection, non seem to pick up the digital signal coming out of the SB touch. I thought maybe there is something wrong with touch, so I hooked up the touch back to the good old caiman and yea I think there is something wrong with the BM.

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Originally Posted by MartinT

Interesting, Neal. I presume that 1m lengths give bad reflections at that impedance? Is there a shorter length than 1m that works?

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Well its to do with non ideal cable termination and reflections for the wave length of the signal...1.5m came up as the minimum length somewhere I read...longer maybe better in multiples of 1.5m but for practical considerations 1.5 is OK.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by audionewbi

The hiss is present when there is no music is playing. The volume control position adjusement does not seem to make any difference when there is no music playing, however while music is playing the hiss becomes louder as the volume is not is turned more towards 12 oclock.

Update:
Discovered something interesting! The hiss seems to only be coming from the left channel, the hiss on the right channel is almost non-existence while there is no music playback!

Update 2:
I hear no music, the unit seems to have died on me! Tried the different coaxial connection, non seem to pick up the digital signal coming out of the SB touch. I thought maybe there is something wrong with touch, so I hooked up the touch back to the good old caiman and yea I think there is something wrong with the BM.

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Switch it off and on again

I've got a naim cd5i at the moment, I love the fact that dance music and any beats sound really snappy on it but of course I barely use the thing these days and listen to more music on my squeezebox in the kitchen. I'm thinking about getting another squeezebox for the lounge and some sort of dac. Do you guys think that the squeezebox beresford combo will sound as a good as the naim? Difficult question I know... Also I do have a htpc in the lounge with an optical out so is there even a reason for me to buy a squeezebox touch?

The old Caiman was probably as good as a CD5i, so the Bushmaster should eat it alive I reckon :)

Interesting thanks for your response. I might try one out then. Is it essential that I drive it with a squeezebox or would the optical out of a standard pc motherboard do? Actually I use the htpc for 5.1 output so I'm probably best of getting a squeezebox.

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Originally Posted by gilesw

Interesting thanks for your response. I might try one out then. Is it essential that I drive it with a squeezebox or would the optical out of a standard pc motherboard do? Actually I use the htpc for 5.1 output so I'm probably best of getting a squeezebox.

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You should be able to drive a Caiman or a BM directly from any optical or coax digital source. You don't need to buy yet another squeezebox to act as an interface. There may be some merits in using a touch, but it's not the only way to get the job done. I am thinking of using a Mac mini to drive my DAC instead of or as well as a squeezebox. That way I can also watch video on the TV via the HDMI interface.

Well to explain I have an old Denon 5.1 amp which doesn't have a hdmi in so my htpc has optical out to the amp and hdmi straight to my projector. My htpc is also my filestore box so it has all my flacs on it. So are you saying it's better for me to directly play them from that machine? If that is the case then I need to get a separate soundcard with optical out. to feed the dac and run some separate player on the htpc rather than just xbmc which can use the old onboard optical out.

It certainly looks like xmbc can be configured to use 2 separate soundcards for playing music or movies:-

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86038

Question is what soundcard do I buy for linux then with the best optical out I can find..

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Originally Posted by Rare Bird

I don't want to come across thread crapping but i hate digital, i used to use it becuase most my music cost mega bucks to buy on viny, now it's being re issued at the rates of knots i'm no longer intrested. good riddence now i say..amazing that 30 years i have wasted when i could have just stuck with vinyl in the first place, but you live & learn i say.

[/U]

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What is it about digital that you hate? I bet what you're hearing is an amp not able to take uhf very well (many outputs of players and DAC's have spurious hash coming out and many amps just don't like it), and the speakers may not take to the increased high frequency impact of master recordings or their digital clones over the more restrained tones of a good record player.

Tone controls? Nah, just get a proper Klark Teknik parametric eq and do it properly :) Most of the analogue stuff you listen to will have been through a few of these already, so another one won't make any difference :)