The Categories of Audio Equipment

Home Audio equipment refers to devices that reproduce sound or music in our home. Regarding the complexity to set it up and the sound quality reproduction one can produce, there are three categories of  audio equipment listed as follow:

1. Consumer Home Audio
Mostly the audio equipment on this category falls into fancy audio equipment and people can have them for low price in any electronic store.  The purpose is for everyday use that doesn't need any serious listening. Such example are mini compo, home theater in the box, active multi media speaker etc. They are simple to set up and don't need critical adjustment (almost plug and play). The sound reproduction is low to medium sound quality.

2. Hifi Home Audio
This is the category which people are getting more serious about the choice of their audio equipment. The hifi audio system often using separate equipment such as  CD/DVD/Blu Ray/Network Player, Stereo/Surround Sound Speaker or Sub Woofer, Stereo Integrated/Pre Power Amplifier/Surround Sound Receiver, etc. The price is getting (much) higher than consumer home audio and the system is no longer plug and play. They definitely need critical setup and adjustment. The result is medium to high quality sound reproduction.

3. Highend Home Audio
For sure this category simply falls into the most exotic, price is no object, state of the art quality audio equipment. People are very meticulous to set it up, by matching between one into another component,  then tweaking and fine tuning it continuously. Sometimes it took a long times and effort in doing the procedure. The result is best sound quality reproduction among others categories. 

Asawendo, June 2016

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High Quality Digital to Analog Converter (DAC)

Digital to Analog Converter, also known as DAC is the heart and soul of any exquisite digital music player such as Compact Disc (CD) Player, Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) Player, Blu Ray Disc (BD) Player and the Digital Audio Player (DAP).

There are some manufacturer which consistently makes excellent DAC Chip. From the legendary great sound of Texas Instrument BurrBrown 1704U-K, the grand images of Asahi Kasei Microdevices AK 4497EQ, the smoothness of Wolfson WM8741, the sweet sound Cirrus Logic 4398,  the lush sound of Analog Devices 1955, and the ultra detail  of 32 Bit ESS Sabre Reference 9018.

ESS Sabre in Sennheiser Orpheus

The implementation of high quality DAC Chip in any highend digital player is very important. Beside DAC chip we  need to pay attention to build better power supply and better analog preamp stage.

Lampizator Design

So we can summary in order to make decent DAC we need:

1. High quality DAC Chip 

(they must have high signal to noise ratio, very low jitter and accurate clock)

2. High quality Power Supply 

(they must have reliability and stability to power)

3. High quality Analog Preamp Output 

(they must have good design and good implementation) 

Audio GD DAC

Theta DAC

Many highend manufacturer (in alphabetical order) such as Apogee, Antelope, Audio GD, DCS, Esoteric, Gryphon, Lampizator, Linn, McIntosh, Naim, Meridien, Synaestec, Theta, Wadia, etc have their own proprietary design for their line up.  Some are using specific DAC chip, the others using specific tubes or specific transistor for analog preamp section. The sound quality result from the great DAC sometimes gave us goosebumps about the feeling of being right there at the concert!

 

Asawendo 

May, 2016 All rights reserved