HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

_D_S_J_R_ wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:03 am mechanically, the almost as massive Denon 1520 is a lovely thing to use.

Still supposed to be one of the best CDP's ever made.

_D_S_J_R_ wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2019 9:03 am ...
Our £500 - £600 favourites were the Alpha 8SE and original Rega Planet with Couple interconnect (bought as a set)...

I had an 8SE too, but I preferred the 9. I went through a few machines in fairly short order thanks to eBay.

The best player I ever had was an Arcam delta 170.3 transport and black box 3. That was a 1541, one of the last ones.
An absolute cracker imo.
I would love to have another. Both units were all power supply

An old thread, with a little update.
Reason being. Ive managed to buy myself another arcam delta 170.3 transport. Probably 15 years after the original one went to the great tandys in the sky.
I had 2 dacs gathering dust, a beresford tc7510 and a diy cs4397. I was given both a good number of years ago by some very generous friends.
Unfortunately, the diy dac has an issue where it drops out and makes a pulsing noise, and the beresford wall wart has given up the ghost.
I found this out after id bought it

So, ive bought a topping e30 to go with it when it arrives.
So, a modern dac and an old school transport.
Im quite excited to see what comes out of it

Nice one, Ant!

Im just testing the topping dac by connecting it to the also dusty squeezebox classic which ive also dug out. The transport isnt here yet.
Unsurprisingly, its much better straight out of the box than the internal dac in the squeezebox, which was never much cop anyway.
I shall leave it for abit playing london jazz radio
Ive set it to dac only mode and set it up so that is switches to standby with no signal, nice features to have.
Im even more intrigued to see what the delta can do with it now

I dug through boxes in the garage and found my old Rotel amp, and a Sony CDP S1.

I seem to remember The Doc liked these, but can’t remember why. I must plug it in and see how it sounds with NVA.

Vinyl-ant wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:12 pm Im just testing the topping dac by connecting it to the also dusty squeezebox classic which ive also dug out. The transport isnt here yet.
Unsurprisingly, its much better straight out of the box than the internal dac in the squeezebox, which was never much cop anyway.
I shall leave it for abit playing london jazz radio
Ive set it to dac only mode and set it up so that is switches to standby with no signal, nice features to have.
Im even more intrigued to see what the delta can do with it now

I am very pleased with my Topping E30 which is a steal at the price. I am using a power bank as the PS. The six filter settings make subtle differences. My preference is no.4.

Talking of Powerbanks, I've just ordered one of these https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YCMYMHQ/. You can't have too many power banks.

I don't know if it's any good, but at a stated 20000mAh and dual 5v/3A Fast Charging it's worth a chance for £14.34 today, normal price £17.00. If nothing else It'll give me a spare if I revert to a Tinker Board setup.

The topping was initially abit bass light, but after a couple of hours its started to fill out
The squeezebox on its own outputs gives me a dull headache after a while, it seems to have a high frequency hash over the music. All 3 sb classics ive had have done this, no such nasties with the topping dac on the end of it.
I have to say, the thing sounds remarkably grown up for a 100 quid budget bit of kit.

But, the caveat is, that i havent had a 'serious' digital bit of the system in at least 10 years. The last nice bit of digital i had was an inca design katana cd player that i bought myself as a treat out of my redundancy money 11 years ago, and then when i got made redundant again, it got sold. Since then, ive only had old philips cd players and the sb's.
So, it could be crap, but i just cant tell..........
Like it though