Amp/DAC for bookshelf speakers, replacing receiver

J

jamsomito

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 29, 2010
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I got a soundbar for my TV setup, so I moved my 2 front speakers and receiver to my PC. It's great, but for my setup, I had to put the receiver underneath my laptop and docking station. My laptop nearly overheats just watching youtube now, so I think I need to get something else. It's just too big with too much heat output.

I currently have my desktop and laptop each plugged into different inputs, and I occasionally use the headphone out on the receiver as well. So I'm looking for something with 2 inputs, headphone out, and enough power for a couple bookshelf speakers. I may connect a powered sub as well, but I can always daisy chain the sub between the amp and speakers to pick up the lows if needed (pref low power RCA input though). The inputs I'm currently using are just analog.

I could reasonably spend $100, stretch to $200. Is this possible for something decent with these inputs / outputs? What would you recommend? If I need to spend more, what would you recommend and how much would it cost?

Just starting to get ideas. Appreciate any advice. Thanks.
 
Either get active monitors (best option anyway) or find a small d-class amplifier that doesn't produce heat.
 
This has everything except headphone out:

"SMSL Q5 PRO Stereo Amplifier USB Optical Coaxial DAC with Subwoofer Output 2x40W" from www.parts-express.com!

I use it for my TV. It replaced a sound bar and does great powering a pair of bookshelves. Comes with a nice remote, too.

This has everything except subwoofer out:

"Topping TP41 TA2021 T-Amp + Headphone Amplifier Mini Amp 25WPC" from www.parts-express.com!

And, this TEAC has everything:

"TEAC AI-101DA High Resolution Stereo Bluetooth Amplifier with USB DAC 2 x 26W" from www.parts-express.com!

Massdrop has it for $100 cheaper, BTW.
 
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Teac Teac Teac! Their little systems are wonderful, their DAC filters are great, and I believe those little fellows are based on the IceAmp design (the 301 is, this is probably something similar). I'd stay away from the Topping amps as the SMSL is the same cost range and runs 6 ohm and 8 ohm speakers better (the SMSL 50 vs a Tamp I got from Parts Express a few years back, can't remember the naming convention but they're both rated the same and the SMSL outperforms it in clarity by a mile)
 
Thanks, everyone. I did some searches and just wasn't coming up with anything - they were either all for headphones, or big receivers. That Teac looks like exactly what I'm looking for. Problem is, it's receiver price for a small package. Hmm...
 
Yeah, the Teac is sweet. Almost bought it, but I'd never use the headphone function. So, it was easy to go with the SMSL which is an outstanding little amp with a ton of features packed in for just $115.
 
jamsomito said:
How do you guys feel about buying used from Amazon when it's fulfilled directly from Amazon? Looks like a 30-day return window. They have this amp with the speakers (which I don't need) for $212. The amp alone is going for $300 currently, but has sales down to about $250.

Amazon.com: Teac HR-S101-BB High-Resolution Micro System: Electronics
Click to expand...

I have bought Amazon Warehouse products from Amazon (they are listed as 'used') and out of like 7 or 8 things I've returned 2, and the returns were no hassle at all, just like a 'new' product. The things I kept were fine, too, clearly stuff that was open box. If you have any issues I bet its easier to go through Amazon than it is through eBay, but check out the reseller rating before purchasing to save any headaches.

ETA - Oh, its the warehouse deals that's the seller, I'd say go for it - those speakers aren't half bad, especially in essence for free!
 
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Well, reseller is Amazon Warehouse Deals. 3,000,000 ratings in the last 12mo with 83% positive. If I can return easy through them I'll give it a shot.
 
jamsomito said:
Well, reseller is Amazon Warehouse Deals. 3,000,000 ratings in the last 12mo with 83% positive. If I can return easy through them I'll give it a shot.
Click to expand...

Yeah, trust it's shipping times and return ability like normal Amazon, but its all a question as to what happened to it beforehand to fall into the 'amazon warehouse deals' logic - things that said 'box damaged, never opened like new' have had a missing screw, but then things like this saying 'very good' have been in perfect shape, its a toss up but its worth saving money if you're a prime customer to find out.
 
I do like saving money. Just placed the order. I'll let you know how it went and maybe make a video review if I feel up to it. Thanks for the help.
 
Got the box today. It was NIB.

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Initial impressions are great build quality, intuitive to setup and use (except for maybe the remote since there's no digital display on the unit - e.g. loudness / setting modes).

I'm not an audiophile by any means, though I can tell when audio quality is crap. I'm just using the line input (3.5mm) for now, my main PC is borked. When that's fixed, I'll try the USB connection to see if there are any differences. My initial impressions were that the sound was different than my receiver, but I couldn't figure out why. After listening to it for a while, it seems the lows and highs are more pronounced. I was worried it was just applying an EQ or something, but as I listen more, all the mids are still there. It sounds great and I'm really enjoying it. That, and the old printer-sized receiver is no longer baking my laptop or taking up space on my desk. Pretty happy so far.

I didn't listen to the speakers yet, but they look well built. They are tiny though haha. Eventually I'll hook them up and give them a listen, but maybe after a few other projects are wrapped up.
 
Speaker size for comparison. The big ones are what I consider regular bookshelf size. They're Polk Audio RT35i.

MxrRwxzl.jpg
 
My TEAC UD-501 has all kinds of hidden features in the menus, I'd make sure to go through and make sure something like bass extension or compression isn't on ("HR Loudness" is labeled on the website write up). Since its a TEAC product I'm sure they'll give you a way to turn it off if it exists.

Interested in the max volume you can get out of those Polks, give us some impressions of your real world use once you get some time invested in listening and enjoy!
 
Thanks, I'll look into the menus when I have more time. Just got this set up on my lunch break today. As for loudness, the dial goes from infinity (-70db) to 0 (reference?). I've got it on -58 right now. It's a nice quiet listening level for doing work. I can turn it up to about -20 before I'm uncomfortable with the volume. Any higher would be good if my windows were open for listening while playing catch in the front yard. To me it's really loud.

I'll do a more in-depth write-up. If I have time I might do it in the next couple weeks, but I'm getting ready for an international trip right now so it might need to wait till July when I'm back.

Any specific questions in the meantime feel free to ask away and I'll do my best to answer them. Thanks again for all the help.
 
Question for you all: In the setup instructions here, on the last page, it says to set the windows default bit/sample rate to 24/44100. Why 44.1 kHz? Why not 192?
 
jamsomito said:
Question for you all: In the setup instructions here, on the last page, it says to set the windows default bit/sample rate to 24/44100. Why 44.1 kHz? Why not 192?
Click to expand...

Probably because it causes the least problems; most playback software if used in ASIO or WASAPI will auto change the sample/bit rate, so they probably chose the setting that would create the least amount of problems in DirectSound mode which most Windows applications will request.

So youd be safe to change it in most cases but I bet some apps may not play nice.
 
I think I'm getting some delay over USB as opposed to line in. Does the DAC delay audio by ~50ms or so?
 
jamsomito said:
I think I'm getting some delay over USB as opposed to line in. Does the DAC delay audio by ~50ms or so?
Click to expand...

It could, especially if its doing any kind of upsampling or DSP. 50ms seems sorta high from quality hardware like TEAC, though ... What software are you using to send audio to the TEAC, just windows or a specific player?
 
jamsomito said:
Just windows. When I watch videos, the audio is noticeably behind the video.
Click to expand...

Totally bizarre, I don't see anyone talking about latency issues in the few reviews I've seen. Do you have "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device", "give exclusive mode applications priority" checked, and disable audio enhancements on if that is an option?

If your PC has an optical out (either TOSLINK or SPDIF) try that - a standard RCA cable can be used for SPDIF Coax if you don't have one, they're almost all 75ohm+.
 
I've always used digital (optical/coaxial) when running my PC audio through a receiver or integrated amp. Never had that audio lag with any video. Your mobo should have at least 1 digital out to run to your Teac.
 
I've got optical out, but not a long enough cable. Might be a little bit before I can test that.

I honestly haven't had a ton of time to play with it yet. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll let you know if I get it figured out.
 
Did a little digging and found this in the manual:

This unit connects using high-speed asynchro-
nous mode.
Transmittable PCM sampling frequencies are
44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz
and 192 kHz.
When properly connected, you will be able to
select “Speakers TEAC AI-101 Audio” as an audio
output from the computer OS.
In asynchronous mode, the audio data sent
from the computer is processed using this unit's
clock, allowing data transmission jitter to be
reduced.

Ill bet this asynchronous, jitter-reducing feature is what's causing my latency. It also appears there are no menus or user controlled functions besides power saving, upconvert, and loudness (bass boost). So, when using via USB as a standalone sound card, it will always have this delay.

Ill give the optical cable a try. My understanding is it won't have the full quality available via USB, but I'm not too worried about it as my untrained ears won't know the difference. Question on this though - will using optical from my mobo then be utilizing my onboard sound for processing before sending to the DAC/amp? Does this mean my little Teac unit actually has 3 functions (processing/sound card, amp, DAC)? Just not really sure how this all works or what the limitations and implications are exactly.
 
jamsomito said:
Ill give the optical cable a try. My understanding is it won't have the full quality available via USB, but I'm not too worried about it as my untrained ears won't know the difference. Question on this though - will using optical from my mobo then be utilizing my onboard sound for processing before sending to the DAC/amp? Does this mean my little Teac unit actually has 3 functions (processing/sound card, amp, DAC)? Just not really sure how this all works or what the limitations and implications are exactly.
Click to expand...

So using Optical (or Coax/SPDIF), you are still sending a digital signal to the DAC/AMP, and that is where the D/A conversion happens, so the sound quality should be very close to the same; yes, the DAC will be slaving off of your computer's digital audio clock chip, but if it solves your latency problem its worth it - we are talking piconanoultra seconds of jitter, highly doubtful its audible in the best of circumstances, especially not a problem as a desktop playback system.

Recording with bad jitter/clocking is a problem, as once that jitter is there it can never be removed, but can be multiplied as it travels through recording and playback chains, but that's a different story altogether...
 
jamsomito said:
Got the box today. It was NIB.

NDYkohDl.jpg


xM3eIypl.jpg


tNCMQpVl.jpg


xd1WyAll.jpg


MEEesZPl.jpg


4x4BMtil.jpg


IRbcR6Cl.jpg


n80m5Trl.jpg


rCryAsdl.jpg


rgHmjAol.jpg


CFx7qpUl.jpg


IWiPWful.jpg


Initial impressions are great build quality, intuitive to setup and use (except for maybe the remote since there's no digital display on the unit - e.g. loudness / setting modes).

I'm not an audiophile by any means, though I can tell when audio quality is crap. I'm just using the line input (3.5mm) for now, my main PC is borked. When that's fixed, I'll try the USB connection to see if there are any differences. My initial impressions were that the sound was different than my receiver, but I couldn't figure out why. After listening to it for a while, it seems the lows and highs are more pronounced. I was worried it was just applying an EQ or something, but as I listen more, all the mids are still there. It sounds great and I'm really enjoying it. That, and the old printer-sized receiver is no longer baking my laptop or taking up space on my desk. Pretty happy so far.

I didn't listen to the speakers yet, but they look well built. They are tiny though haha. Eventually I'll hook them up and give them a listen, but maybe after a few other projects are wrapped up.
Click to expand...

I'm actually kind of impressed. And glad to see Teac back in the game. I've kinda missed that company from the old days.

Oh, and you will most definitely hear the difference when you go away from the 3.5 to USB/DAC. Right now your shiny new DAC is in there is without a job.
 
Yeah, thanks. It sounds great over USB, if it wasn't for that delay... Got that monoprice optical cable on it's way, should be able to try that early next week.
 
USB is also giving me some connectivity issues during games. It'll be nice to try the optical connection, I'll bet all these issue go away.

What's nice is I can still keep USB connected and only switch to it when I want high quality music or something, and use optical as default.
 
Ok, got the optical cable all hooked up and working. Took a while... my motherboard has both coax and optical digital audio out, and it called them both "digital out," and only one showed up (coax) before I updated the drivers. Ugh. And I had to disable dolby digital and DTS out. Anyway, it's working now.

Still sounds great. Delay seems to be improved. Now that I'm looking for it, it's almost like my brain is dissociating the video from the audio and I can't tell anymore. Like I got used to the delay or something. It's weird. Maybe I can tell you better in a couple days of use, but it does seem to be better.

Now to try some games. It'll be nice to not have it disconnect every 30 mins or so and play high-volume chatter and intermittent noise at me.
 
The delay that can be caused by optical/USB DAC audio is something I hadn't considered...
 
TechLarry said:
The delay that can be caused by optical/USB DAC audio is something I hadn't considered...
Click to expand...

Since I use my DACs on my hackintosh the most for audio engineering stuff, I'm used to setting a high buffer for all my software plugins and the like - when not doing that, Apple's "CoreAudio" audio drivers have handled my multiple DACs at multiple resolutions without any audible delay.

I don't have a huge background in how all the different driver types in Windows work (WASAPI/ ASIO/ Directsound), but I don't think any of them should be adding a noticeable latency - ASIO can be set to as low as 12ms in my ASIO window.

OOH - one thing to try, see if there is an ASIO buffer window with the drivers you installed, mine is in C:\Program Files\TEAC\AudioUsbDriver\TeacAsioCP.exe <--- This is a x64 bit install, may be in (Program File x86) but you prolly know this ...
 
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