[sxr71]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerG ok, now that I have had some time with the gear: hell yes, Big Joe sounds great with the K-1000. I can push it into clipping, but the K1000 was doing its own distortion by then. I also tried the Fubar-II with the supermini and Ety ER4S. Very nice combo. I will have more details on that in the near future. However, the Spitfire is in a whole different league than the Fu-2. It just plain trounced my Emu 1820m. The Spitfire + Big Joe + K-1000 has been a very nice surprise indeed. gerG

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you in the other thread yet, which I think has some really good info.

Back to this thread: From what you are saying it looks like I need to start saving up again! If the Fubar-II is reasonable I think I'll get it.

EDIT: It looks very reasonable, I don't think I even need to save up for it. Maybe the Spitfire is in my cards.

 

[luukas]

Augh, I simply must know more about the Spitfire's performance. Ian? gerG? Anyone?

There... I've said it. Please excuse my impatience.

 

[gerG]

Sorry luukas, I had a bit of a setback in my evaluation. I discovered that I was getting real crap out of the Emu card, both analog and digital outputs. The moral is test first, listen later.

I am back to listening, and I am still impressed by the Spitfire. I am going to try it in my main speaker system today.


gerG

 

[luukas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerG Sorry luukas, I had a bit of a setback in my evaluation. I discovered that I was getting real crap out of the Emu card, both analog and digital outputs. The moral is test first, listen later. I am back to listening, and I am still impressed by the Spitfire. I am going to try it in my main speaker system today. gerG

Hey now, you say that like you're somehow responsible for taking your time testing the Spitfire - and the rest of the Firestone products I'm sure. I'm the doofus here, rushing people and whatnot...

What sort of problems did you have with the 1820m?

 

[gerG]

luukas, you are not a doofus, only a curious head-fi addict. This may not be a good destinction

Honest, I am trying to listen as fast as I can. The biggest delays are all of the cable swapping and ground loop hunting. I hooked a lot of different gear together to try to get a broad perspective of the usefullness of these components.

As for the emu card, it bit me pretty badly. I was doing sine sweeps to match levels, when I discovered that the output, both digital and analog, was thus:

This revelation provoked much discussion of the state of reality with the gods (yelling and swearing). Fortunately Bacchus calmed me down, and I used the obvious workaround: always use a send directly to the physical output of interest. You see, I had trusted the output panel.

This is probably an issue with my PC, OS, operator, faulty card, etc. I really like the Emu cards. Patchmix is a very odd interface, but I am sure that it make sense to somebody. I have not run it past their tech support yet.

Back on topic, the disparity between the SF and the Emu is not as great as what I initially heard, but it is still there. I hope to post details this weekend. So far the Grace beats SF beats Emu. The Emu and Fu-2 are still wrestling, but I may call it a draw.

gerG

 

[Veniogenesis]

W00t. We bought the Fubar II for around $90 USD from the shop a few days ago. It should be here sometime next week.

Let's see how it improves against my AV-710 and my dad's stock EMU0404.

Cheers,
Venio

 

[lan]

I think it's hard to say which source is better. They all sound different and it depends on your priorities of what you are looking for and what trade offs you are willing to make.

I'm not a fan of 16bit USB DACs. It sacrifices the resolution. That said, I like the overture / microdac / m902 with their digital inputs opposed to their USB ones.

It's also not my preference to have a rather dark sound. I find the m902 is like this. These Firestone DACs are a little on the dark side but more importantly to me, they are not harsh on top.

One important thing though, I'm using the Supplier PSU which is better than the stock one. It gives the sound more depth and it sounds more powerful.

I'll be needing a little more listening time to describe the characteristics. The "quality" is ultimately judged by each person. I'm not easily impressed and these units don't make me go "wow" but they are very comfortable to listen to which I believe is important. I can't say the same about Benchmark DAC1 and Overture. More to come later.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lan I'm not easily impressed and these units don't make me go "wow" but they are very comfortable to listen to which I believe is important.

Sounds like my type of gear... the less impressive it is at first, the more I'm probably gonna like it long term.

 

[luukas]

Thanks for the update, Ian and gerG.

Dark sounding with a smooth upper range, eh? Seems to be something I might like. Ian, you mentioned you were using the supplier PSU - how expensive was it?

 

[nicknameless]

I thought the Big Joe was for speakers. I am going to get the Big Joe, and to fubar 2 for my new speaker set up. This just convinced me even more. I would go for the spitfire but my budget is $660 CAD with speakers. Also does anyone know where to buy the Fubar II and Big Joe for cheap? I am in Winnipeg and I was going to buy from the site but if there is any cheap places online or anywhere local it would be nice to know.

 

[luukas]

Sorry to bump this thread again, but I'd like to know a couple of things about Spitfire. Well, more like DAC's in general, I suppose.

1) Is there a noticeable delay if the DAC has to reclock the input signal? I'm really not much into DAC's yet, so my grasp of jitter etc. is limited.

2) Wth my current setup, I would need a ~6m/18ft cable between the DAC and soundcard. Does the Spitfire accept the optical signal type an X-Fi can feed? Of course, the lowest-end card doesn't have any kind of digital output on its own, so I'd have to get separate module for that. And really, the specs don't make much sense to me.

The Creative® Digital I/O Module adds optical and coaxial digital I/O to your Sound Blaster®.*
---
# Output: Optical and Coaxial (Soundcard output signal is fed simultaneously to both outputs)

My gut feeling says I would have to use a coaxial cable in this case, but I can't be sure without asking. So please, if someone can help me out here, I'd appreciate it.

 

[J@ck]

Hi luukas
1) It will depend on the design of the DAC, usually you won't "feel" the delay. But with some buffer design like the Chord DAC64, there is a 2~3 secs delay if you choose the mode.

2) In this case, I would suggest you take the COAX cable solution. A good 6 meter long optical cable is going to cost you.

 

[luukas]

Thank you for the quick response, J@ck.

 

[JiiEf]

I'm very interested in the Firestone stuff as well, but I have a question about the power supplies. Do they have the CE approval sign?

(Sorry, but I'm kind of obsessed with these things)

/JF

 

[J@ck]

Hi JiiEf
Yes, the Firestone Audio power supplies are CE approved.
Thank you.