Are you living in a modern digital world and do you rip all of your music to digital formats, or do you nerd out on a stack of vinyl like someone in the '70s and pay ridiculous amounts of money for kryptonite-coated cartridges for your belt-drive turntable? Do you use a $3000 two-hundred core PeeCee for your FPS games, and upgrade your hardware weekly to pwn other Steam players? Are you a latte-sipping, black-turtleneck, pretentious Mac user that believes that Steve Jobs invented the smartphone, and created all that is good and perfect in the world of tech? Are you a neckbeard Linux user that intends to take over the world with moon orbiting brain lasers and an army of gorgeous fem-bots (all running Linux)? Do you geek on ARM chips or Wintel? Tablets and phones? Is your Blu-ray collection larger than your cat collection? Do you collect antique VHS and other archaic electronics from Goodwill? Will you keep your CRT until someone tried to pull it from your cold, dead hands, or do you believe the marketing that actually tells you that LCD has finally become superior to 100-year-old video tech?
Who cares? It's all fun and we can talk about all of it. Exceptions include any discussions of cold loads, Survivor, rubbing down games with acne cream, noodles, AV MULTI-OUT, and Mogwai. We already have threads for that.
Continuing from our PC games thread, I decided to make a thread on the topic of generic hardware / video / audio, etc. AV, computers, whatever. We can all geek out. http://www.gaijinworks.com/interact/...ll=1#post94696
Fabrizo, LoP and I were talking DACs and amps. I decided to go for a budget upgrade to replace some dated surround speakers. When I got married I gave away all of my high end audio gear because someone thought that "wood grain and large speakers don't look good in the living room". Yeah. Never do that. So now I'm trying to improve the listening situation on a budget and will do more when the game room is complete.
My goal is pretty simple. I want good full-range audio reproduction for less than a few hundred bucks. I want it to fit on a desk and have very few cords. It needs to be able to replicate 24 bit audio at 96 kHz or higher with minimal distortion (frequency isn't as important as bitrate). It can't be some stupid Logitech or Klipsch set, and must be wired rather than Bluetooth. Feel free to debate their pros and cons. They serve a purpose for simple and loud audio.
My audio collection is almost 100% lossless. I rip all of my CDs and buy 24 bit tracks when available, but bare minimum is never lossy and never lower than 16/44.1. MP3s are only acceptable on the go.
It's no Schitt Ragnarok, and the combo certainly isn't a piece of Schitt but also doesn't cost as much.
Spoiler:
Budget combo Fiio E10K and Dayton DTA-120. The E10K is popular as a sub-$100 DAC and the DTA-120 is a Tripath amp that is popular in the sub-$100 amp space. You can read all of the pros and cons on these products all over the web. I've disabled the integrated audio on my new machine and have the DAC running 24-bit / 96 kHz with a fallback to 44.1 kHz for most "CD quality" recordings. My only complaint about the E10k is that it cannot support 88.2 kHz due to the slightly dated USB chip that it uses, but the other components do seem deliver.
There will be more to come on this topic. I have a set of bookshelf speakers installed and a separate powered sub on the way. Will post more details after the sub gets installed. It sounds good but I can't get the low end response without an sub and probably crossover. Most subs have crossovers or LPFs but it depends upon configuration and application.
What about you guys? What sorts of AV or computer hardware are you running, and why? There were some discussions about gaming rigs, audio hardware, etc. Would be fun to discuss
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Originally Posted by banditwolf
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