Or, to put it another way; if you have really good speakers and amp, a dedicated DAC will really shine.$250 on a DAC gives you a small improvement in listening.
Going from a $300 speaker to a $550 one can make a huge difference.
Or, to put it another way; if you have really good speakers and amp, a dedicated DAC will really shine.$250 on a DAC gives you a small improvement in listening.
Going from a $300 speaker to a $550 one can make a huge difference.
Or, to put it another way; if you have really good speakers and amp, a dedicated DAC will really shine.
Sorry, I know that's outrageous, so I apologize profusely, but yeah, I'm not fully rational when it comes to equipment... again, my apologies.
Mark.g4, you are of course 100% right. The DAC was a kind of security blanket in my mind, that allowed me to think "hey, I can pick ANY speaker and don't have to worry about connectivity, cables, wires, adapters etc. because it'll all be taken care of by the DAC". Expensive security blanket that gave me permission to consider any speaker at all, without worrying about how I'll hook it up to the mini.
The thing to keep in mind, is that with a total budget of about $600-$700, there is no way I'm going to get hifi results. I just want to listen to music and not be absolutely thrown by some horrible effects - here's where I'm coming from: I have a pretty decent hifi system assembled over the years, and I have music that I've lovingly collected for years, and a lot of it I've listened to literally hundreds if not thousands of times. I am extremely habituated to high end reproduction of this music. To now hear it b@stardized in some cheap tinny speakers would be crime and my ears would bleed. All I'm asking from this set up is for my ears not to bleed listening to music I know intimately reproduced from a high end system.
I think that the user you’re quoting was implying that the Mac mini DAC is probably sufficient for most music listening. And, let’s be honest, it probably is. I would think that most DACs are pretty reasonable these days (well, other than the DACs in very cheap or particularly old devices).How can you say that? You need a dac to convert the digital file into an analog signal. Either you use the one inside the Mac mini, or you use an external one, but there is a dac somewhere in the chain.
To me, an external one makes a huge difference. A Topping for example (never heard them to be honest) or something else, like a Chord Mojo2, or even a dongle, I am very happy with a Cayin RU6, it’s for headphones but I think you could send the output into amplified speakers.
What I use regularly would be out of scope here, I cannot recommend it.
As for the connection, usb is perfectly fine, especially for this setup, it is enough To send high res, bit perfect data to the dac, which will do its job, sending the analog signal to the amplifier inside the active speakers.
For them, I read good things about Kef, but they could be out of budget.
By the way, I use Roon as audio software, it’s amazing, I can only recommend it.
I know how painful it is to design a system like this on tight budget and lots of constraints… good luck and enkoy!
Hope this helps a bit.
Guys, I love this community for all the knowledge, passion and helpfulness. I thank each and every one of you, and I assure you that I carefully read everything you guys post - right now I'm still going one by one through the list Mark.g4 gave - it's a long list! - so it will take me some time to digest it all.
At the same time, you can see why I said I'm overwhelmend! I am a music lover who is passionate about music (hey, my library is 2TB of files at the moment), however I'm really not much of a tech person - hence why I come here and ask silly questions. But you can imagine how confused I am - a non-techie - when smart technologically savvy folks like you have different opinions... gives a guy like me whiplash, 😅
Even when I think I understand something, I'm thrown for a loop: generdude mentions the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, judging by the price I think it's the 4th Gen. Now I've of course seen it out there, but I always associated it more with music production, whereas the Topping E50 (I'll link as Pag46 hasn't heard of them) is more of a DAC pure play (with preamp functions, filters etc.). The reason I picked the E50 is because it uses the ES9068AS chip with some outstanding specs. But now that generdude mentions Focusrite, I am thrown for a loop, it's a different device, but I have not explored in depth f.ex. what chip it uses and what the tech parameters are - perhaps I'm missing something. Very confusing. Meanwhile Pag46 has thrown out a whole another bunch of interfaces I'll have to hunt down the specs for.
Meanwhile Allen_Wentz makes a very strong case for HomePods. My office is 11' x 13' with 9' ceiling. Unfortunately I can't hang the the HomePods on the wall, as I can't hammer anything into the wall. I certainly strongly appreciate Allen's argument that given my budget limitations and listening environment high end equipment is going to be unattainable and if attained will be wasted. I mean, I'm not going to bring over my giant Martin Logans and stick 'em in here. A good argument can be made that any high end system is going to be wasted on this space anyway. So I hear what Allen is saying, only I have zero experience with HomePod, and just looking at them, it's very hard to believe that they can put out anything at all (again, I'm NOT going to be blasting music at high volume!), because especially in a furnished pretty acustically "dead" room, you need some power to make the soundwaves propagate and I can't see how HomePods can overcome this deadish room. But I also take Allen's post seriously - what now, I'm in a pickle.
In all this confusion, I almost feel like throwing up my hands and just getting the standard Yamaha hs5 pair and calling it a day. But I know I shouldn't just give up, so I'll struggle on. Thank you every one again, and I'll keep reading your discussion, as it's very informative either way!
Well no, of course not. But that’s down to the culture of hi-fi audiophiles as much as anything.Don’t buy HomePods. Literally nowhere outside of this Apple-centric bubble will you find those POS recommended by either studio people or hifi people.