HELP!!!...What DAC for Samsung TV

[admin_exported]

I have recently bought myself a UE40ES8000, TV is great, loving the picture quality

However, sound on these things although passable for regular TV viewing is not up to scratch for Movies. In an attempt to beef up the sound, I have connected the telly to my NAIM Nait 5i through a neet DAC, but the sound is still not very powerful. To get anything meaningful out of it, I am cranking the volume up to halfway on the Amp

I was just wondering if getting a dedicated DAC would help beef up the sound, I was thinking of something like the Cambridge Audio DAC magic, but would this be overkill and more to the point would I be wasting my money. I am not overly concerned about the sound quality, I dont watch many movies, just need something to make the telly go loud more than anything else

Anyone have any suggetions?

 

[dragon76]

In your case any DAC will work fine. TVs are not that type of hi-fi transports that benefit from quality converters downstream. DacMagic will certainly be overkill unless you plan on using this for smth else or getting it used secondhand. Also, I don't believe DACs are made to make signal louder as they provide fixed level signal, and this sound level depends on the source material (in your case TV programs)

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the help dragon

I guess what your saying is attach the TV to an external amp to beef up the sound. The problem that I have with that is my NAIM amp doesnt accept optical connections, so i have to go through a DAC, which is a shame because I am always having to crank up the volume to get anything decent out of it

 

[bigboss]

Can't you use a 3.5mm-to-RCA interconnect?

 

[The_Lhc]

I guess what your saying is attach the TV to an external amp to beef up the sound. The problem that I have with that is my NAIM amp doesnt accept optical connections, so i have to go through a DAC, which is a shame because I am always having to crank up the volume to get anything decent out of it

That's got nothing to do with having a DAC connected, I'd be checking the TV audio output settings to see if the TV volume is affecting the level of the optical output or to check if you can set the TV to a fixed output.

Adding a different amp will probably find you having to crank the volume on than up to halfway as well.

 

[shooter]

+1

I posted on here regarding the low volume output from the Sky box and/or the TV, its around 10dbs quieter than the HI-Fi and quite easy to check against as my volume pot is in 2db increments.

 

[Big Chris]

I guess what your saying is attach the TV to an external amp to beef up the sound. The problem that I have with that is my NAIM amp doesnt accept optical connections, so i have to go through a DAC, which is a shame because I am always having to crank up the volume to get anything decent out of it

That's got nothing to do with having a DAC connected, I'd be checking the TV audio output settings to see if the TV volume is affecting the level of the optical output or to check if you can set the TV to a fixed output.

^^^^ What he said ^^^^

On my TV, I had to go into the set-up menu and turn TV speakers to off, then ramp up the TV's volume all the way to get anywhere near the same volume as other sources.

OK, it means you're gonna lose the volume functionality on the TV remote, but IMO it's better than accidentally forgetting you've ramped up the Naim's volume when watching TV, sticking a CD on and possibly damaging something.

 

[dragon76]

No, what I said was that you don't need any expensive DAC if you just want to listen to TV. Just get any relatively cheap DAC, like Arcam rLink, and it will serve your purpose. Something like rLink can further be used with success if you would want to add any other digital sources at later stage.