I've a LG G3 77 earcing out to denon avc x6700h avr which feeda a set of monitor audio bronze 5's , c150 for the center, 500 for the mains, 50s on rears and c165 overheads, need to get a pair of w50s but still shopping for a decent price for them.
finished my lcr build while i am very happy with em, the black part was meant to be a piano black high gloss finish, the cursed neighbors cat screwed me over as every time i sprayed the fecking ginger freak got its furs stock all over them and its owner would give me a earful as the fecking thing now has black bold patches all over!!! i got tired of sanding and spraying managed to get one day when it didnt get near it some cable ties and having my motorbike on idle kept the damn thing away
Need some advice/pointers, 'cos search engines are flippin' useless these days. I have a pair of these sat on my desk - Presonus Eris 5 studio monitors: I need to use the balanced XLR or TRRS connection on these speakers, I get too much electrical noise on unbalanced outputs (don't ask... I've been trying to track down the source for years, and at this point I'm just going to put it down to shoddy wiring). I had an audio interface (Vocaster One) which handled the speakers just fine, but that had to work pretty hard to drive my 250 ohm Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro's. In any case, I no longer have that audio interface. I need some kind of USB DAC that'll act as both a headphone amp and balanced speaker output. These are powered monitors, so they don't really need any kind of amplification, but obviously my headphones will. It has to be a digital or balanced signal into this "device"; if unbalanced connections are introduced anywhere in the chain, I will get electrical noise. The only thing I know that will do this job is an audio interface, but I don't want to go down that road again - I don't need that kind of setup. A monitor controller would work, but that still takes me back into the realms of "studio gear" and I still need something that has a USB DAC. I also do not want to spend an absolute fortune, and all my searching for "non studio" kit so far is turning up devices that are £400+, £500+, etc. So. Anyone have any pointers, before I resign myself to going back to audio interfaces?
I don't know how much less you want to spend but, the Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M, has a 6.35mm headphone output and a pair of balanced XLR outputs at the rear. Best price I can see is £334.02. https://www.pricerunner.com/pl/1318...200M-Compare-Prices?price=PRICE_WITH_SHIPPING
dac with trrs connections and use a trrs to xlr split cable, will be a nice and cheap way to go about it
Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I’d want, but ideally I don’t want to spend more than ~£200. And I think I’m not going to find what I’m looking for at that price… But that’s not enough pins, is it? Doesn’t a balanced signal need 3 pins per channel? You might be able to get away with a common ground, but that still takes it to 5 pins (L+, L-, R+, R-, GND). Unless I’m mistaken, of course.
Arise, slumbering thread, for I seek guidance and wisdom from the audio sages… I'm trying to find an audio “system” that supports AirPlay, specifically AirPlay 2.0 as that’s apparently the variant that supports multi-speaker groups, but can be used on a DIY “smart speaker” or “endpoint”. I should clarify what I mean by “audio system”. I guess I’m really looking for a software system, whether it’s x86, ARM, or some kind of microcontroller. I want to be able to “roll my own” speaker systems - or rather, speaker controllers, I guess - but still be able to integrate with AirPlay for ease of use with Apple devices. From what I can see, Roon seems to be a promising option, even if I dislike the subscription pricing model. But it only seems to support Tidal and Qobuz streaming services, and I can’t find much information about using it as an AirPlay “endpoint”. I’ve also seen Lyrion Music Server, but as far as I can see, there isn’t any official AirPlay support and the third-party plugins are broken. I do have a growing “offline” music library, but I use Apple Music and my other half uses Spotify; I like the “discoverability” features of streaming platforms, so don’t think I can abandon them entirely, and I’ve been nagging my OH to move to Apple Music for over a year, so she’s not about to abandon streaming any time soon. Therefore any solution I go with needs to be able to support “get sound from app on $device out to $thing via the network”, and that really means AirPlay support. But I want it to work with a client device of my choosing, instead of needing to buy in to an “ecosystem”. I could probably do this easily if I just planted HomePod, Sonos, etc, speakers about the place. But that’s expensive, and doesn’t have a great track record for hardware support - Sonos in particular have been pretty poor with this. So… Any suggestions from the audio sages?
Have you encountered https://ropieee.org/about/ on your travels? I've used this with Roon before, but I'm pretty sure it can function as a standalone airplay endpoint too. Roon is a nice system and I used it for years (I also already used Tidal so that wasn't an impediment), and great for the discoverability side of things. But also I've not used it for years so not sure on the latest stuff... I moved away from it since there was a time when some smart-home integrations were locked to their Nucleus server (have now been removed though).
That looks very useful, and no, I had not encountered it, so thanks for the suggestion! Shame it needs such relatively heavyweight hardware as a Pi3 - official support for the Zero would be nice, but it’s not the end of the world. I shall do some digging
Truly impressed ... the first time I've heard ANY Raspberry Pi called "heavyweight hardware" even with the relatively qualifier !
Well… When I’ve just prototyped firmware to play FLAC, MP3, and WAV on an RP2350 Microcontroller… even a Pi Zero is enormous in terms of compute
I'd say worth a shot on a Zero - I ran it 7-8 years ago on whatever random Pi was hanging around the classifieds at the time, and paid no attention (nor was I really aware of) any minimum requirements. The only performance caveat I recall in using it (with Roon) was that lots and lots of DSP may cause performance issues.
... but can it play crysis ? (I'll let myself out, just pass me my coat) ... I'm gonna be gobsmacked if you come back with "yeah, 60 FPS too"
... On topic .. Used my bonus from work (plus a bit) to get, brand new, and I always seem to by used ... A Quad 33 integrated amp and some Wharfedale Super Lintons, Quite a difference in sound from the old set up, but possibly a little too much for me little house. Been impressed by everything on it so far, except, Placebo's Unplugged album, Meds just sounded more full of emotion through the old Linn Keilidhs.
And now for something slightly different... A little bit of TLC for the truck. A painstakingly crafted enclosure (not by me, thankfully, as it definitely put the pain in painstaking from the sounds of it) - behind the bench so I get to keep my cubbies under the bench (which the off the shelf solutions steal) Wavtech ThinPro 10 driver - being the best possible use of the very limited space - impressed with this skinny thing Mobridge Toslink Bridge to dispose of the factory amplifier without (hypothetically) losing any oem functionality Helix 206 DSP 6ch amp - currently serving the factory door/pillar speakers - its a massive improvement on the factory setup with those, but replacing them is still in scope of phase 2 Helix M One X to feed the sub. Some oddness with losing the audio from phone calls currently undergoing troubleshooting, but other than that, delighted so far.
