Would a Beresford DAC be a good upgrade for my setup?

[steve_1979]

Hello all,

I am not an audiophile and am already pretty happy with the way my budget setup sounds as it stands. I also couldn't afford to spend much on any upgrades but at only £120 the Beresford TC-7510 DAC seems like it could be good value.

Would the Beresford DAC make a big difference to the sound quality when listening to music and would it be possible to listen to music in 2.1 stereo with the subwoofer taking care of the bass if I used this DAC?

Thanks in advance, Steve

 

[scene]

I think with your set up, with the PC as the source, any DAC could make a difference - especially if you could use a USB or an spdif (optical) cable to connect from the PC to the DAC. You say your PC has "5.1" - is this from the motherboard or from a soundcard, if so which?

Point to note (as I found out, literally the other day) the TC-7510 has been replaced by the TC-7520, which has a USB port replacing one of the Optical ones. The price is now £129.99.

As your speakers will still be attached to your amp, there should be no change to the configuration.

 

[steve_1979]

When listening to music I use a good quality S/PDIF optical cable and let the DAC in the Yamaha receiver do the sound processing.

When playing games I use the motherboards onboard audio to do the sound processing and just use the Yamaha receiver as a simple analog amplifier. I use three separate 3.5mm jack to phono cables to get 5.1 sound when playing games. Unfortunatly my PC cannot output 5.1 sound via an optical or USB cable so I would need to buy a sound card if I wanted to do that.

I'm not too worried about the sound quality when playing games though, I'm more interested in getting better sound when listening to music.

 

[scene]

steve_1979:
When listening to music I use a good quality S/PDIF optical cable and let the DAC in the Yamaha receiver do the sound processing.

When playing games I use the motherboards onboard audio to do the sound processing and just use the Yamaha receiver as a simple analog amplifier. I use three separate 3.5mm jack to phono cables to get 5.1 sound when playing games. Unfortunatly my PC cannot output 5.1 sound via an optical or USB cable so I would need to buy a sound card if I wanted to do that.

I'm not too worried about the sound quality when playing games though, I'm more interested in getting better sound when listening to music.

In which case, given that the Yammy has a Burr-Brown DAC, if you run the amp in Pure Direct mode, I suspect that the limiting factor for stereo sound will be your speakers and if you want to improve the musicality of your system, I would look to spend money here first. Compact speakers designed primarily for AV sound will struggle to give you the musicality of larger speakers designed for stereo reproduction. If you don't believe me - read the WHFS&V review...

 

[steve_1979]

scene:I suspect that the limiting factor for stereo sound will be your speakers and if you want to improve the musicality of your system, I would look to spend money here first.

Yes. That's exactly what I thought too.

I don't really want to replace just the 2 front stereo speakers because it would effect the perfect intigration I currently get by using 5 identical surround speakers. I've already swapped the 1000Ci center speaker for an extra 1010i speaker (I now have five 1010i speakers) because the 1000Ci didn't intergrate perfectly with the surrounds. The 1000Ci center speaker sounds fantastic with movie dialogue but not so good for the sound effects you get in computer games.

Still, I'm pretty happy with it the way it sounds already. Listening to music using just the 1010i speakers sounds a bit flat and guttless but when you listen to music with the sub in 2.1 stereo they actually sound pretty good.

Thanks for the fast replies.

 

[scene]

steve_1979:
scene:I suspect that the limiting factor for stereo sound will be your speakers and if you want to improve the musicality of your system, I would look to spend money here first.

Yes. That's exactly what I thought too.

I don't really want to replace just the 2 front stereo speakers because it would effect the perfect intigration I currently get by using 5 identical surround speakers. I've already swapped the 1000Ci center speaker for an extra 1010i speaker (I now have five 1010i speakers) because the 1000Ci didn't intergrate perfectly with the surrounds. The 1000Ci center speaker sounds fantastic with movie dialogue but not so good for the sound effects you get in computer games.

Still, I'm pretty happy with it the way it sounds already. Listening to music using just the 1010i speakers sounds a bit flat and guttless but when you listen to music with the sub in 2.1 stereo they actually sound pretty good.

Yes, you need be careful of selective upgrades of part of a 5.1 setup. I did the same to my KEF 2005.2 set up. Because I thought the centre was a bit indistinct, got a MA RS-LCR - and so it began...

Now look at my setup

Thanks for the fast replies.

My pleasure - hope I've helped