Banzai, Sean, Interesting discussion! Thank you! My experience is that I normally use SB as traditional source (vol=40) into an integrated amp with volume control. Amp's volume control further enhances apparent S/N by attenuating the noise with the signal and I never noticed the noise before.
I am now sampling a set of full gain monoblocks, and like you, and like many people on this audiophile forum, I run the analog outs directly into the amps, because preamps that I can afford always screw with the signal. My speakers can take 1812 Overture's cannon shots at full SB volume with the NuForce amps, it is loud, yes, but I smile quite a bit, though I do stand about 20 feet back. Anyway, with the more powerful amps amplifying the noise component at full gain, and the software volume control only attenuating the music, the S/N is low enough to hear the noise playing in the quiet passages of music, or just steadily whining in the background like an old TV when there is no music playing at all. Squeezebox has been designed to be a high-end component, and when John Atkinson proclaims it officially ordained into the high end in July Stereophile, Sean and everyone at Slim will be glad it is used as a combination source/preamp and such performance available for $300 garners them a class A gear designation. Adding a Preamp that is in the same price class as the SB just ruins the sound. I have yet to hear a complaint that the SB attenuation failed causing speaker damage like I have recently read about T-amp and other high end low price wannabes. Has SB ever returned under warrantee for such a repair to the volume control circuitry, and does it even have a separate failure mode when music would continue to play at runaway volume level? I though volume is written into the digital word, is it possible to somehow skip that step and still hear music or any signal that would put a dangerous voltage to the analog outputs? I am glad to hear that changing the display brightness will help, that is an excellent tip! I think I would be pretty ticked if I sent SB in and lost a week of listening time and the replacement came back with the same flaw. I have always thought it would really be cool if the SQB had a RCA composite video output for viewing the display on a TV just for the weak vision crowd like me, and now maybe adding defeatable plasma display to composite video would solve this whine too. Great responses, guys Thanks so much! Rich -- richidoo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ richidoo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3097 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=24445 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
