Problem with maplin dac... Need help

[Soopafly49]

Hey People

I bought a dac from maplin this week as a temporary thing till I uprgrade everthing properly. But I'm having problems getting the Dac to work.

Plugged it in wth the supplied cable to a phone charger adapter which maplins have said shoud work. I have connected my sony S370 via optical to the dac then line out from the dac to the phono sockets on the back of my amp.(Denon 2310) At first I was using an optical cable I got from the pound shop.( terrible I know) and was not getting any sound but my speaker cones were vibrating. So I thought get a different optical so bought another for around the 10 mark and then I got crackling and some faint existance of a beat. but the it was playing no matter what setting my amp was on phono/blue ray/ aux anything until I had to turn the amp of to stop it. I took it back to maplin who said they could not test it but offered me a new one but I said I would try it again so I wouldnt have to wait for another one. So then tried it hooked up to my sisters laptop via usb and again line in to the stereo( different stereo this time) and it seems to work ok.

Is the problem the optical cable? I bought a coax today which I will try later on tonight or am I doing something else wrong. Really dont want to damage my system the Denon has shorted out a couple of times today already. I have all the settings in the blu ray set to PCM so dont think its that but I'm no expert.

Any advice would be great

Thanks

 

[John Duncan]

I would not expect a cheap Maplins DAC to be better than the one in your Denon. Have you tried to plug the Sony into an optical in on that and get sound? If not, that suggests a setting problem on the Sony that we need to resolve. Either way, I'd take the DAC back...

 

[John Duncan]

Further, why are you not using HDMI from the Sony to the Denon?

 

[Soopafly49]

No I havent tried the optical straight to my Denon. Maybe I will try that later and get back to you. I was using the HDMI but thought I might get better sound using an external DAC. I do eventually want to get the M-Dac but just got this to see if it made any difference while I save for the M-Dac.

So you think I should take it back and then just hook up the blu via coazx or optical straight to the Denon. Will this be better than the HDMI?

 

[John Duncan]

No I don't think optical will be better than HDMI, I think they'll be the same. I think the limiting factor in your setup for *stereo* sound will be the amp itself, but I also think that's overstated a bit. Do you have a 5.1 (or greater) speaker setup, and your reason for getting a DAC is improved stereo sound?

If I had a bluray player and AV receiver (I plug mine into a stereo amp, fwiw) I would simply connect them via HDMI and let them get on with it - that will reduce the variables at play (iffy analogue outputs on budget bluray players, primarily) and leave you only with the quality of amplification to worry about (which in your case, is pretty good anyway).

 

[Soopafly49]

Currently have only the 2speakers although i started with the 5.1 but not using them at them moment due to downgraded room size and general aesthics. They are b & w 683.Yes i Got the dac to im prove stereo sound. But it seems im gonna have to spend a bit of money to get a decent upgrade.