As some of you may remember I'm running a modified SB3 I2S output into my own DAC, I've been wanting to hear what this would sound like direct into the power amp, bypassing the preamp and an extra set of interconnects. Unfortunately I haven't been able to do that since the preamp has an EQ for the speakers (everything is DIY except the turntable). Well yesterday I modified the power amp and put the EQ circuit on the frontend of the amp so I could give the direct connect a try.
WOW, major leage good sound here! The preamp is definately degrading the sound some (not a huge a mount, but its definately obvious). Now to the real meat of the issue, how does the SB3 volume control effect the sound? After getting the power amp sensitivity adjusted so 40 doesn't blow me into the neighbors yard I could do some tests. It turns out there is a slight degradation when not full volume, but its not nearly as big a degradation as controling the volume with the preamp. (BTW this is a very good preamp with switched fixed resistor volume control) The upshot is that even when using the SB3 volume control it sounds significantly better than using the preamp for volume control. As long as the volume is kept in the upper range (I'm using 25 - 40) the degradation from the digital volume control is not that much. If you are using the volume control in the 10 range or so it starts getting worse, at that point you may or may not get better results from a REALLY good preamp. So I'm converting over to the dark side and going with digital volume control for now! Until I can make a REALLY good analog volume control built in to the power amp (probably relay switched fixed resistor networks) its probably going to stay that way. BTW with the direct connection the difference between the SB3 analog out and the external DAC is quite obvious. Its interesting that the difference in sound between the modified one with the very low jitter clock and the external DAC is less than the difference between the stock SB3 and the modified one. Thus this seems to point to the clock modifications to an SB3 being more important than the analog mods. I could hear these differences before, but with the direct connect its much more obvious. John S. -- JohnSwenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27051 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
