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Cusat50 for me? |
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Fidel IT
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Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Location: Belgium Status: Offline Points: 13 |
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Topic: Cusat50 for me?Posted: 21 Dec 2009 at 10:52pm |
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Hi all,
I am looking for a way to further enhance my setup and am considering the cusat50 interconnect. The only problem is I don't really know what to expect. I know that my current interconnect is the weakest link in my system. At the moment I'm using a profigold cable like the one shown here: http://www.profigold.be/en/products/?page_id=149 It's supposed to be a decent cable.
It is a lot cheaper than the cusat50 though. And by a lot I mean 1/7th of the price.
I am quite happy with the sound I have right now, though the annoying thing is that I have a lot of cell phone interference through my headphones when one is nearby. Is this something the cusat50 would get rid of due to its better shielding?
Also, what can one expect soundwise from a better interconnect cable? I'm not ready to spent that amount of money on a cable if sound doesn't improve. I can always leave my cell phone in another room
I know I sound sceptical, It's just that I don't have the possibility to test this cable. As I'm very happy with my solo, the cusat50 is the only interconnect I would consider.
Thanks to all who can shed some light on the above questions.
Fidel
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Fidel IT
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Posted: 28 Dec 2009 at 11:01pm |
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Seeing as there isn't much response to my questions above, I have decided to just go for it and put an order in. Will let you all know how this story ends.
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tg [RIP]
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Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Location: Sydney Status: Offline Points: 1866 |
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Posted: 28 Dec 2009 at 11:25pm |
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Fidel, busy time of year for many. I do not have personal experience of either the CuSat or the mobile phone interference in respect of which you enquire. Certainly the CuSat has received good report from a number of users whose discrimination I respect. My only experience of mobile phone interference has been with cheap PC sound cards or more particularly onboard sound chips picking up the signal and mixing it into the sound output quite obviously. You can hear when they "check in" and hear an incoming call before the phone rings from the incoming signal. I do not know if this is the type of interference to which you refer, particularly I do not think you have mentioned your source. My better quality, semi-pro Terratec and M-Audio Firewire units do not suffer this problem and neither does the rest of my higher fi gear, either speaker based or headphone rigs. I do use all shielded cables. Perhaps this will help some though I am sure your experience will be more valuable. Look forward to your findings. ciao, T. |
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Fidel IT
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Joined: 03 Dec 2009 Location: Belgium Status: Offline Points: 13 |
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Posted: 29 Dec 2009 at 12:08am |
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Hey Tg,
To answer your question with regards to my source. It is a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic. My PC aswell as my CD player are connected to it. Both using high quality cables. CD player is using a high quality oehlbach optical cable into the dac, and my pc is a Xfi Elite Pro playing flac files through foobar with the wasapi plugin. This card is connected using a Supra high quality coaxial cable.
To be honest the cheapest and I guess lowest quality cable in my system are the profigold rca's between my dacmagic and my graham slee solo srgII. From there it goes into my HD650 headphone. I am very curious what the cusat50 will do to the cell phone issue and to the sound of my setup in general.
I will let you know.
regards
Fidel
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tg [RIP]
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Joined: 19 Jan 2008 Location: Sydney Status: Offline Points: 1866 |
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Posted: 29 Dec 2009 at 8:59pm |
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Fidel, one thing does occur to me from your description above that I would suggest to possibly address your issue. That is to use the optical cable from the PC and the Coaxial from the CDP. This will cost nothing to try and provides complete circuit isolation from the PC. One other cheap tweak, only applicable if you are using the SMPS with your Solo, if you have the PSU1 ignore this one. Connect an earth wire from the grounding post on the Solo to the PC case, a single strand of CAT 6 or similar, clamp it down on the PC under one of the case screws at the back. The ground wire is only applicable if you are using the SMPS, it drains the residual current from the case to earth, I found it to improve the NOVO noticeably. Caveat, Graham may have now addressed this issue. If connecting it to the PC case whilst using the optical cable to isolate seems counter intuitive, take note that connection to the PC case is merely a convenience, any piece of equipment with a mains earth connected to the case will do. (eg amplifier etc). The object of the optical cable is to remove the possibility of parasitic waveforms travelling into the DAC and potentially corrupting the analogue signal. It is conceded that Coax is generally the superior connection and also that Optical receiver chips often have a 96KHz limitation and cannot be used with higher resolution data. Perhaps these two things are worth a try. ciao, TG |
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Fidel IT
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Posted: 30 Dec 2009 at 6:56pm |
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TG,
Thanks for the advice.
I do not have the option to switch the cables as my cd player only has an optical out and no coaxial. The cell phone noise also occurs when playing cd's with the pc turned off, so I guess changing the cable around is not going to work in this scenario as I'm using the optical out from my cd player.
I use the solo with the PSU1 so that's not it either. I think it has to be either the Profigold interconnect or the stock HD650 headphone cable that is picking up the noise.
regards
Fidel IT
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Fidel IT
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Posted: 30 Dec 2009 at 9:25pm |
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Ok, I plugged the PSU1 into a wall socket instead of the extension block I was using. The cell phone pickup signal is now gone, and for some reason the sound quality of my solo improved by quite a bit???
Don't know what to account for this change... Was it the fact that I never unplugged the solo from the socket since I first bought it and that it needed a little reset when plugging it into the wall... or would the extension block be a limiting factor?
Anyone any insights on this one?
Fidel IT
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