ADVICEDBACKEEF
FR
familiar with many of the audiophile maga- zines, and I think yours is the most objective and informative of all of them. It makes me proud to know that such a great magazine comes from Canada.
Now on to the CEC DA53 converter. After reading your review in UHF No. 72, I purchased a DA53 and it is very good. As you noted in your review, it certainly adds punch to CDs. Like you, I was most interested in its versatility and particularly its ability to be used with an iPod.
The only problem is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to connect it to the iPod. I would still like to know how you guys connected an iPod to the DA 53.
John Lorito
OAKVILLE, ON
In fact, John, we jumped the gun on the question of connecting the iPod to a DAC. We had no difficulty connecting our computer to the DA53, and we made the assumption that, since the iPod can connect to a USB network, the two were made to go together. That doesn’t appear to be true.
14 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine
But we haven’t given up. We have talked with two accessory companies (one of them Griffin, which brings out clever iPod accessories almost daily) about making an adapter to get pure digital from the iPod. We know the signal’s in there, and it appears that there’s at least one device, Apple’s penny dreadful “iPod
If the Cambridge DiscMagic/DACMagic are a matching pair, why is the DAC input limited to coax BNC, when the transport has an XLR output?
Furthermore: this may be relevant (it’s from Audio Asylum):
Join the two “hot” wires from the AES plug side into the single “hot” on the RCA side. Keep ground on AES to ground on the RCA side. It works but is not ideal, as an AES cable needs to be 110 ohm impedance and an SPDIF (coax) is 75 ohms. Be aware that the SPDIF digital signal is a +0.5 v to
most DACs wont bother about this..
Does the above DIY make any sense, or is the transformer to match impedance absolutely necessary, if not advisable?
James Tay
TORONTO, ON
The Audio Asylum instructions you quote for matching a balanced output to an unbalanced input won’t work, James, and it’s obvious on the face of it. Mix together a positive voltage and a nega- tive voltage of the same value, and what do you get? Zilch. Whoever posted this hasn’t tried it, or else loves the sound of silence.
If you want to try a more rational method for adapting balanced to unbal- anced, these are the pin readouts: pin 1 is ground, pin 2 is “hot” or positive and pin 3 is negative (it’s the inverted version of the signal on pin 2). However there is absolutely no point in using the balanced input or output on one component unless the other component is also balanced. We should also add that a lot of “bal- anced” components are not balanced at all, because the goofs who designed them don’t understand what balancing is or what it’s for. And if “balancing” has been accomplished by adding an extra circuit, perhaps an op amp chip, you can guess what the result will be.
I have been reading your reviews on two integrated amplifiers, the Copland CTA- 405 and the Audiomat Opéra, and they both seem like they offer a lot of refinement for the money. Could you please guide me towards the best sounding of the two regardless of their price difference?
I also noted that in both your reviews on these amplifiers there was a moment where they seemed to sound more enjoyable than the reference system, and on that particular note it seems that the Copland definitely had the edge over the Opéra at sounding better than the reference system. Is it possible that the Copland 405 is better than the Opéra? Please help me buy either of these as to the best sounding amplifier of the two.
Laurent Shriqui
MONTRÉAL, QC
You aren’t the first to ask this, Lau- rent. We should explain that the two amplifiers were not reviewed on the same
