[Ted Goldie]

I am thinking of getting a Cambridge DAC for my setup. I have a Darkvoice 332 amp and a Cambridge 640V2 CD player. As I understand having a DAC would probably not help that part of the setup. The Darkvoice 332 amp only has an RCA input and output so the DAC would have to connect by RCA cables. But I am thinking of getting a Waidia 170i so my Ipod can also be played with true digital output. So the Waidia would connect to the DAC the CD player could also connect to the DAC and the DAC would connect the the Darkvoice 332 by RCA cables. Now if the DAC connects by RCA cable does it still do its job? If not I would just stay with my current setup of ipod line out to the amp. I would like to improve my ipod setup but I am not sure about the RCA cables into the headphone amp.

 

[PrTv]

Quote:

Would a DAC help a Darkvoice 332 amp?

Why wouldn't it?

What DAC does is converting digital-to-analog and feeding that analog signal to your amp. Now, without a dedicated DAC, your Cambridge 640V2 does that job, but with the DAC, your 640V2 will merely act as a transport, reading data in digital and pass it on to the DAC to decode. Digital connection (being SP/DIF, Toslink or AES/EBU) will need in this situation to transfer the digital signal from your CDP to the DAC.

And of course, after the digital signal has been decoded and processed, you still need some RCA cables to transfer analog signal from the DAC to your amp.

Quote:

Now if the DAC connects by RCA cable does it still do its job?

Do you mean the input or output of the DAC?

I take that you refer to the "RCA" loosely as the analog connection.

You need to feed digital signal into the DAC for it to work, so it'll simply not work if you plan to use analog signal.

I myself have the DV332, and have just added a DAC (my one is Audio-GD DAC 19MkIII). My CDP is Rotel RCD-06, and the improvement is huge! Everything is way better.

But I suggest you to do some search to ensure that the D/A converter in the DAC you're about to buy performs better than that already in your 640V2.

 

[Ted Goldie]

Thanks that answers my questions. I plan on keeping everything going into the DAC digital but I was not sure if the amp needed a digital input. I will do some more research to find out more about the D/A converter in the DAC.

 

[PrTv]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ted Goldie /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks that answers my questions. I plan on keeping everything going into the DAC digital but I was not sure if the amp needed a digital input. I will do some more research to find out more about the D/A converter in the DAC.

No, your DV332 doesn't need digital input for the DAC to function.

In fact, using the digital input (provided the amp has that feature) might defeat the purpose of using DAC altogether, as no matter how good your DAC is, the signal will be decoded and processed again by the D/A unit in the amp.

Think of it as upgrading a Cd Player, like replacing your current Azur 640CV2 with 840C. The music will sound better, and part of this is because of the fact that D/A unit in the 840C is better than that in 640C.

Since the amp has only 1 input, if you also want to use it with analog sources e.g. iPod, CDP, etc., you may consider getting a DAC with pre-amp function, like DAC1 PRE, which can accept analog signal and acts like a source selector for the amp.

 

[Ted Goldie]

Thanks again. By using the Waidia 170i I thought the signal bypassed the internal ipod DAC and then this could be put into the DACmagic and then into the Darkvoice. Is this not correct? I also do not want to be pugging and unplugging when switching between the CD and the ipod. The DACmagic looks like it has enough imputs so you would not have to switch all the time. But I am not sure on that.