New Home System for Computer Work Area

[brombo]

I have installed a new audio system for my test bed computer so I can listen to music while programming and writing. The system except for the home assembled computer is almost all Emotiva. It consists of

Emotiva T2+ speakers
Emotiva BasX A2 stereo amp
Passive volume control using Alps dual pot
Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac
Home assembled computer (Ubuntu 20.04) using Kodi for music server

My question is has anyone tried the Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac and if so what do they think about it. To me it sounds quite good and it is under $100.

[tomp]

Here is what I listen to for background music when working on my laptop. I come out of the laptop via USB to a Khadas Tone Board DAC and then to a Kinter 15W/channel class D amp to a pair of Infinity Primus 150 speakers.

Attachments

[mix4fix]

Here is what I listen to for background music when working on my laptop. I come out of the laptop via USB to a Khadas Tone Board DAC and then to a Kinter 15W/channel class D amp to a pair of Infinity Primus 150 speakers.

I have a similar version of that amplifier. Never really used it. How bad are they?

[tomp]

Not bad at all. Certainly will not replace my main system but for the intended purpose quite good.

[brombo]

Did you ever measure the DC offset on the tripath amplifier?

[tomp]

Just measured it. 69mv in left channel, 21mv in right channel. No problem.

[mix4fix]

Just measured it. 69mv in left channel, 21mv in right channel. No problem.

Wouldn't that cause problems?

[tomp]

That represents less than one milliwatt dissipation on each channel and the amount of offset from the cone is probably extremely small. So no problem.

[mix4fix]

Computer Audio 1.jpg

I have installed a new audio system for my test bed computer so I can listen to music while programming and writing. The system except for the home assembled computer is almost all Emotiva. It consists of

Emotiva T2+ speakers
Emotiva BasX A2 stereo amp
Passive volume control using Alps dual pot
Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac
Home assembled computer (Ubuntu 20.04) using Kodi for music server

My question is has anyone tried the Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac and if so what do they think about it. To me it sounds quite good and it is under $100.

Can you show how Kodi operates as a music server?

[brombo]

I am not quite sure what you mean. All my audio and video files are on my main computer (I have about 44TB capacity, I haven't checked how much I am using). I access them via an SMB network (note that all the machines run Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04). The main reason I use kodi is that I watch cable TV on a HDHomerun Prime device and kodi has a very nice addon for program selection and recording -

https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHo ... B004HKIB6E

As much live TV as I am currently watching (about the only thing I watch live these days is PBS) I am thinking about doing away with live TV altogether. One other aspect of Kodi (undocumented and only works in linux) is that if I have makemkv installed I can play commercial blu ray disks from Kodi. I can also play CD's directly on Kodi.

I am using Ruby Rip to rip my CD's. I don't download media info for Kodi I only look directly at the file folders with Kodi to select what I want to watch or listen to (If you let it Kodi will download media meta-data).

The audio from Kodi sounds fine to me but I have never claimed to have golden ears.

Also since I posted the picture I am using an Emotiva BasX PT1 preamp. It is all analog except for the DAC on the digital inputs (Spdif, TOSlink, WiFi). For my compute audio I use the optical (TOSlink) input. For my turntable it has a phono (MM/MC) input.