Help with setup of my new system.

[sebbaan]

Hi.

I'm new to this and I am trying to figure out how I should connect all my equipment with each other.

I have:

1. Stationary computer with internal soundcard Asus Xonar D2X (SPDIF/coaxial in and out).

2. HK 3490 stereo receiver with internal DAC (TosLink and Coax in and of coarse a number of RCA in).

3. Cd-player NAD c516 bee (TosLink and Coax out as well as RCA).

4. Headphoneamp MF v90 HPA with internal DAC (USB and RCA in and RCA out).

5. Canton gle 490 speakers.

I want to connect these as follows:

Computer ---> Receiver via SPDIF/coaxial from soundcard to the receiver.

Computer ---> Headphone amp via USB.

Cd-player ---> Receiver via TosLink (because I want to take advantage of the internal DAC of the HK 3490 and to do this the signal has to be digital right?)

CD-player ---> Headphone amp via RCA.

The headphone amp has a switch to switch between audio sources (computer or CD-player).

Of course I also want my TV to be connected to the computer for video. Now I use HDMI to transfer both audio and video from computer to the TV and then TosLink from TV to receiver to transfer the audio. But with my new setup I guess I have to transfer vide from computer to TV via DVI because the audio goes directly from the soundcard to the receiver.

Pheew I think that was all. If someone would read, understand and answer me this I would be really grateful. Am I on the right track here or is there something that I have missed?

 

[matt49]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Can I ask how you control the streaming of music from your PC? I ask because it seems to me that when you change between streaming via SPDIF through the PC's soundcard to streaming via USB to the headphone amp, you'll have to change the sound settings in your PC. There's nothing wrong with that; it just seems unnecessarily fiddly.

An alternative would be to connect your PC to the HK via a USB/SPDIF converter and feed the MF HPA using the pre-outs from the HK. This would mean no fiddling with the sound settings in the PC, and you'd take the PC's soundcard out of the equation too.

You can either connect the CDP to the HK via optical or via RCA. Can I ask why you think the former will be better? Do you have some reason to think that the DAC in the HK will sound better than the DAC in the NAD?

Cheers,

Matt

 

[sebbaan]

This is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, keep em' coming 🙂!

Great point with the USB/SPDIF converter. I mainly just stream spotify when listening from the computer. When I want high quality sound I will use the CDP.

There is no reason in particular as to why I think the DAC in the HK would be better than the NAD. But that is easy to test I guess, just connect both and then switch between sources with the HK.