Please recommend a good standalone SPDIF 2 audio converter ?

[monsterbeetle]

Hi there!

I just bought one of these dirt cheap "all formats" media players, which can decode PCM, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, FLAC, etc...

It has shitty converters which make everything sound like my grandma's gramophone,

Fortunately it has an spdif out, so I'm in the market for a decent D/A converter, could you point me out to a good quality standalone spdif 2 audio converter ?

Google did not give me the answers I was looking for, the only things I've found so far :

- discontinued ROLAND DA400,
- an apogee mini box, 1500$, too expensive
- Hi quality multichannels ADDA converters, overkilling and too expensive
- Behringer multichannels ADDA converters, so so ...

any welcome !

cheers

[BertKoor]

Sure it's the converters, and not your MP3 earbuds that make it sound that way? Can you play a simple sine sweep through it, and sample that with your PC? That should confirm weather the converters are really that bad or not. My $30 DVD player and portable dirt-cheap MP3 player both perform rather good.

If it's really that bad I think you should return it and get something different. A seperate converter is too expensive. Maybe a home theatre system is the solution...

Anyway, what's the output format? Coaxial or optical toslink? Need it to be portable?

[monsterbeetle]

Hi BertKoor, thanks for tossing an eye on the subject,

The media player is connected to a HiFi integrated amplifier, which feeds a somehow good pair of monitoring speakers.

The sound is really bad in comparison to the sound I get from a Philips HiFi CD player, when playing a same CD (uncompressed data) : a stereo image that closely boils down to mono, and overall muddy sound.

The spdif output is both coax/TOSlink.

So you think there is no decent converter that does not bang to much $$ ?

[BertKoor]

Is there a setup menu? From your description it sounds like there's a stereo enhancement feature switched on that spoils it totally.

Can you tell us the make/model? Maybe there's a manual online somewhere we can have a look at.

Edit: maybe you can find a MidiMan Flying Cow or M-Audio SuperDAC on eBay...

[DuX]

That's what I wanted to suggest M-Audio Flying Cow is the cheapest OK AD/DA around, but it seems like it's not being produced anymore.

[monsterbeetle]

The player in question is a peeKTON 6006 MKII (paid 47 €), the amplifier is a ROTEL RA02, speakers are Tiangle Titus. With this audio chain, poor quality sources are hard to suffer...

Flying cow type of stuff is exactly what I'm after ! Thanks for the tip, I'll go take a look on ebay !

[monsterbeetle]

no trace of these babies on ebay.... I can't resolve myself to buying an 8 channel AD/DA behringer rack

[DuX]

How about this page: http://www.makingwavesaudio.com/prodidi ... tegoryID=3

or try googling M-audio superdac or flying cow .

There's a nice cheap DA from ART it seems... but if you have money to spare and would like a mastering grade DA converters there are always Benchmark or Mytec for cca 700$ each, Mytec being a tad more expensive. Those two are among the cheapest very HQ converters I know, also for some 500$ you can get RME ADI-2 which is also a HQ converter. You could definitely try finding any of those for much cheaper on E-Bay, too.

Cheers!

[BertKoor]

The player in question is a peeKTON 6006 MKII (paid 47 €)

Toutes les hits du Google ont en Français
Overall it seems to get rather good reviews of what I understand:

les impressions sont très bonnes. Image et son excellent!

So what I suggest you do, is put a sine wave from 20Hz to 20kHz at a steady -6dB on a CD, and record it's output with a good soundcard, and verify it's performance. Also the testsuite of RightMark Audio Analyser can be used.