This is my setup in which the look is, well functional, but it sounds brilliant and for me has many conveniences....
.....as I sit in the corner of the room, in my chair, laptop on its Ikea table, surfing the interweb, looking at mufti and posting drivel, I mean researching for and comment on the What Hifi forum. The actual setup is compact as you can see. It sits on two granite placemats to isolate it from vibrations when someone gets toys out the cupboard and we have a wooden floor.
It consists of a Dell Inspiron laptop which has a WD Mybook as a back up hard drive in the spare room. The laptop is linked to the DAC (a Firestone Fubar II which is the small grey box on the right) with a USB cable. The DAC has its own power supply (a Firestone Supplier which is the small red box on the amp). It connects to the DAC with a tiny little cable hidden from view. The DAC connects to the larger of the two amplifiers (the X-CANV8P) with the Firestone supplied phono cable, again hidden from view.
The amplifier on the left is the original X-CAN headphone amp I had. It has been modified by Rock Grotto with pretty much new everything fitted, from the headphone socket to the valves. I use it when I can't be bothered to fire up the laptop and I connect my ipod Classic to it with a GQ-24 cable. The headphones are AKG K702 and Grado SR80s. I also have Sennheiser mx500 and PX200s for out and about with the ipod Classic or nano.
I connected it all up this way as it keeps power and signal cables separate and out of sight. Also out of view, the amps and DAC connect to a Russ Andrews mains extension with a Silencer plugged into it and the laptop and lamp into another socket. This really works as when I power everything up there is no hiss through the headphones at all.
Eventual upgrades will be a portable headphone amp to get the best out of the Sennheisers and the X-CANV8P will go back to Musical Fidelity to be upgraded. MF have prevented any other company from modifiying it by glueing as well as soldering the components in!
.....as I sit in the corner of the room, in my chair, laptop on its Ikea table, surfing the interweb, looking at mufti and posting drivel, I mean researching for and comment on the What Hifi forum. The actual setup is compact as you can see. It sits on two granite placemats to isolate it from vibrations when someone gets toys out the cupboard and we have a wooden floor.
It consists of a Dell Inspiron laptop which has a WD Mybook as a back up hard drive in the spare room. The laptop is linked to the DAC (a Firestone Fubar II which is the small grey box on the right) with a USB cable. The DAC has its own power supply (a Firestone Supplier which is the small red box on the amp). It connects to the DAC with a tiny little cable hidden from view. The DAC connects to the larger of the two amplifiers (the X-CANV8P) with the Firestone supplied phono cable, again hidden from view.
The amplifier on the left is the original X-CAN headphone amp I had. It has been modified by Rock Grotto with pretty much new everything fitted, from the headphone socket to the valves. I use it when I can't be bothered to fire up the laptop and I connect my ipod Classic to it with a GQ-24 cable. The headphones are AKG K702 and Grado SR80s. I also have Sennheiser mx500 and PX200s for out and about with the ipod Classic or nano.
I connected it all up this way as it keeps power and signal cables separate and out of sight. Also out of view, the amps and DAC connect to a Russ Andrews mains extension with a Silencer plugged into it and the laptop and lamp into another socket. This really works as when I power everything up there is no hiss through the headphones at all.
Eventual upgrades will be a portable headphone amp to get the best out of the Sennheisers and the X-CANV8P will go back to Musical Fidelity to be upgraded. MF have prevented any other company from modifiying it by glueing as well as soldering the components in!