Ah I see. Yes audio dealers can be tricky.

For me, I have T Ones for 2 channel and T Ref for my HT (a much bigger room). It would be fun to swap them or try them A/B in the same environment but that's a lot of heavy lifting!

When I think about upgrading my other T ones to T refs, I listen to them and think how great they sound and put off the decision to another day

WayneWilmeth wrote: Whoa, Charlie, you lost me at your TV is your music source????????

Is this just for playing TV shows or are you somehow talking about music in a VERY foreign way to me???????

It's not that foreign, Wayne. I use the TV (Samsung Smart TV) for everything streaming, which includes Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime. So I sometimes stream music from YouTube, and I did have a subscription to Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall. All that came through the TV, then optical out. I'm a 2 channel guy, remember? Finally, when I watch movies on Blu-Ray or 4k UHD I have another player that goes to the TV HDMI, but I take the same optical out of the TV for sound.

For my really high quality, I use my SSD that goes USB to my Oppo player, then to my DAC.

Charlie

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for the detailed information about re-clocking and jitter. I do not stream music from any online source - all of my music is stored as lossless 44 khz FLAC files (plus a a few MP3 and Hi-Res FLAC flies) on an external HD connected to my music laptop via a very short USB cable.

My music handling software (MusicBee) up-converts all signals to 192 khz (via selected option). My output signal path is from my dedicated music laptop to my Cambridge DAC via a USB cable less than three feet in length.

My Cambridge DAC handles the incoming 192 khz signal and shows that the signal is 192 khz via front panel indication. From the DAC, I send a 2-channel audio signal to my Cambridge 851A Stereo Amp to drive the Triton Ones.

I also send a digital PCM stereo signal from the DAC to the Cambridge CXR 120 Amp for distribution to my other two Triton speaker pairs. This signal is passed through the DAC without alteration, so I presume it is heading into the Cambridge 120 at 192 khz.

In any event, based upon my understanding of your explanation, I may be already getting many of the signal improvement benefits you described.

My sound seems clear to me.

Best,

Art

Thanks to explain Charlie, perhaps it is a WAY WAY WAY different world over there with signals passing through your TV than it is over here.
Because it sounded like you were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear there for a while.
BUT you did said you had another way to go for Hi Quality or Hi Res music.

Whatever works for you guys, happy listening,
God Bless,
Wayne

ArthurDaniels wrote:
My music handling software (MusicBee) up-converts all signals to 192 khz (via selected option). My output signal path is from my dedicated music laptop to my Cambridge DAC via a USB cable less than three feet in length.

My sound seems clear to me.

And so mine did to me. Only now it's better. There's another interesting aspect to this. Because of the interrupt problems, for a long time I've listened to my TV audio via my Oppo. So that's the sound I've been used to. The Oppo was -- I think -- reclocking on input, then processing, then sending out the digital signal via coax to my DAC.

Yet I heard a big change when I reclocked on the optical side. That tells me that I heard a difference between that and what the Oppo had been doing. So now I suspect the Oppo signal path.

If I had to point to a possible weakness in your signal path, it's the link between your laptop and your DAC, for two reasons. One, the card in your laptop may not produce the highest quality output, and two, the USB cable might degrade further, even if three feet. This last seems less likely to me than the first.

Anyway, an interesting experiment for sure.

Charlie

charliehatch wrote:
And so mine did to me. Only now it's better. There's another interesting aspect to this. Because of the interrupt problems, for a long time I've listened to my TV audio via my Oppo. So that's the sound I've been used to. The Oppo was -- I think -- reclocking on input, then processing, then sending out the digital signal via coax to my DAC.

Yet I heard a big change when I reclocked on the optical side. That tells me that I heard a difference between that and what the Oppo had been doing. So now I suspect the Oppo signal path.....

Charlie

Hi Charlie -

You can of course simply call Oppo and ask, but I'm almost certain the re-clocking in the Oppo is only applicable if you are using the HDMI outputs or analog outputs, and are not applicable to the SPDIF digital outputs.
oppodigital.com/blu-ray-udp-205/blu-ray-udp-205-Features.aspx

As to your samsung smart tv and dac not "getting along", I have a similar but manageable scenario. If I go optical digital out of the "smart box", I've found that to get a precision lock on the signal I sometimes have to toggle the input selector on the DAC to another input and then again select the optical as input. This is only the case from the smart box. My DAC has two clock's (VCO / VCXO) and it displays which one is in use (auto selected by the input signal). This is how I know that re-selecting the input results in the better clock VCXO being used.

When possible avoid optical and use coax. And, within the realm of coax, a BNC connection is preferable over RCA, but unfortunately the Oppo only has RCA.

EDIT:

And by the way, there are different kinds of optical cable. Plastic and glass. Plastic is common and what I use. Glass, however, is *far* better.