Source for Yamaha Vintage Setup

Parabellum27

Active Member
Hi there,

I would like to have a decent budget system for listening in the living room and I am thinking buying something like a Yamaha CA-610 II along the matching tuner CT-610 II as a starting point. Now with digital days and the absence of physical media, what source would you consider? I was thinking of a Cambridge Stream Magic 6 but it is still pricey. I would like to have the convenience to use my iPhone from a digital library.

Thanks,

Serge
 
I use a bunch of Apple Airport Expresses . Works seamlessly with your iPhone. Use that as a starting point then you can add a DAC in between the AE and your Yammy.

I use an Adcom GCD 75 that has only a Coaxial Digital input and use a converter to change the optical out of the AE to the coaxial input of the Adcom.

Sounds great to my ears.

Athanasios
 
I use a raspberry pi with a dac in my Yamaha desktop system, and a linux "black box" with a dedicated sound card in my main system. I stream music from my NAS/Phone/Spotify/etc and I perform digital room correction with brutefir.
 
I've just added an iFY iDSD - you could stream to it using the AEX and use your phone. I( think it was a huge improvement of the AEX. Not sure how or why a bit perfect reproduction changes so much between products, but it does.

Your iPhone will change the bitrate without telling you what its doing using a method that is not transparent to users. Its only an issue if you can hear the difference. If you can use your laptop you can avoid this.
 
AEXs are great and I'd recommend that route too - you can also install the free Apple "remote" app on your iPhone (one of the most polished pieces of software I've used) which lets you browse/play things to the AEX from any iTunes repository (eg. MacBook, iMac, etc). It means you can play music from your computer's collection even if you've only got your phone on-hand. The best part is it's all seamless and elegant to set up, and if you have various macs/collections, the iPhone app will let you access multiple computers too.

There's a free app (for OSX / MacOS) called XLD which will bulk-convert FLAC (or other lossless types - AIFF, WAV, etc) into ALAC (Apple Lossless) which will be useful if you have a lossless collection, and it's definitely the main way I'd be using the AEX personally - it will handle 16/44 i.e. regular CD quality.

The thing most people DON'T know however, is that the A1264 model has the best inbuilt DAC. It also has lower jitter on its optical output if you wish to use your own DAC. The A1392 (square AppleTV-esque shape) that Ken Rockwell raves about is not the one to get if you have a choice - I know this because I bought a few based on his raving, and later bought a few of the others to try, and have A/B'd them multiple times. I currently have 3 or 4 of each model. If you read between the lines on the test data carefully you can see it numerically, but the way he talks about them is misleading. I currently use the A1392s for less important locations (bedroom, printer wifi'ing) and use the A1264s if audio is a concern. Be careful choosing, as the older A1088 looks the same as the A1264, but the model number is on the label and most people put that in their ads thankfully.

My advice - grab a couple 1264s off the bay and try the inbuilt DAC first, feed it the best quality files you have, and you might be pleasantly surprised.
If you want you can add a different DAC later as Nashou66 explains.

Finally - just as a little sidenote - the 1264 has a handy option to set up a 5GHz-only 802.11n network, a feature the later 1392 doesn't have (mixed-mode only, which almost always defaults to 2.4GHz). This is pretty handy for any apartment dwellers / anyone where the 2.4GHz spectrum is polluted / busy, you can enjoy clearer reception and wifi performance (not necessarily audio, just in general).

Just thought I'd share everything I know in case it benefits someone in the future. You can get all models abundantly off the 'bay for ~30-50 bucks still.
 
Pioneer makes a streaming box with a color screen on the front panel that displays album art, and I'm assuming navigable menus. Looks like you can stream wirelessly from your iThing although I'd probably just go with an external hard drive into the USB. I've been thinking about buying one of these for a while but I keep thinking maybe the price will go down at some point.

https://jet.com/product/detail/508d...&clickid=28100974-1365-4534-96b0-732aa3d1ce1d
 
Back
Top Bottom