Hi again, I bought a Beresford DAC and have been smiling ever since. There's been a massive improvement already and the thing's not properly burnt in yet.
Thanks very much for putting me on to them, still think the sound could be better but isn't that always the case?
Still thinking of upgrading the interconnect and or buying some isolation products, do you think it will give any worthwhile improvement in sound given my current set up and what would you look for?
The TEAC is definitely going as soon as I can afford it, hopefully it'll pack up and I'll have to replace it

I'm glad you like the Beresford. It was reviewed on this site in a previous version but has since been improved. There are power supply tweaks that you can make but it's probably good as it is. I certainly liked what I heard.

A controversial choice given recent threads but I would probably go for a 1m length of Krystal Electra cable for your amp. Very interesting; might be a bigger change than the Beresford. Most importantly, he sells them sale or return so it can go back if it doesn't work for you.

The Electra is the point in the range where there's a big improvement. I've had other cheaper power cables from him that were only so-so.

I'm assuming a belief in the effectiveness of cables which of course, not everyone here has. This also assumes that you don't want a component change.

If you go the isolation route, concentrate on your CD drive.

I would love an equipment change especially the cd player but am stuck with what I have at the moment. Having said that I'm happy with my speakers.

Yes I believe in the effectiveness of cables up to a point, but couldn't afford the Krystal Elektra as much as I would like to buy it and try it out. What I may do is find a supplier of high quality cable and plugs and make my own.

I do like the look of their Ultima interconnects also....

I've currently got my cd player on sorbothane pads which makes it sound better and also reduces the noise from it's transformer, I was thinking of isolators for my amp and or the Beresford??

I'm aware that at the end of the day, my system will only be as good as the music source and there will come a point where no amount of tweaking of cables and components will make that cd player sound better than it does at the moment. hopefully I haven't got there yet!!

I'm still not at that point yet either!

there's some cheap stuff that you can do that sometimes makes a differennce; Asda or Matalan thick granite or marble chopping boards under each component only cost £10 each. I personally use the Matalan ones and then put Nordost Pulsar points underneath the granite but using them on their own should work too.

The Krystal interconnects are indeed supposed to be pretty good. Another good source of interconnects is Homegrown. Their cheapest kit is actually very good. Their more expensive ones are a bit brighter.

You say you've got transformer noise on the CD player? There are other ways to get rid of that. You can put an hearvy book on the top of the casework. You can also use a power conditioner. If you've got hum from a CD player, it's likely because you've got voltage from your mains supply that is at the high end of the specification or you have some sort of DC problem. This is something that should sort that out. CD players shouldn't really hum unless they're really very bad indeed. You need a male to female IEC cord to connect the appliance to the conditioner.

Incidentally, have you ever tried a Sonic Impact T amp? they cost roughly £25 from Ebay and if you have sensitive speakers, they can be as good as something costing £1000. There's a review here. The downside is that there is absolutely NO pride in ownership. You can even run them on batteries.

The hum from the cd player is actually on the thing itself, I can't hear it thru my speakers, if I could I would have thrown it (the cd player)away long ago. When everything is switched on but there's no music playing there are no hisses, hums or crackles thru' the speakers nor for that matter are there any stray noises when music is playing which must be a good thing.

The player justs sits there and makes a gentle humming noise which I'm assuming must be it's internal step down transformer. I tried the book trick but that made no difference at all, next it'll be the bits of granite from matalan.

I've never heard of a Sonic Impact T amp, might have to have a look at one of them. You mentioned them working well with sensitive speakers, is that the case with my speakers, that they're sensitive? and as regards pride in ownership, I don't care as long as it sounds good.

In the meantime I'll keep tweaking and saving up for a nice cd player.

I'll let you know how I get on

That was actually exactly what I meant. Physical vibration coming from the CD player's power supply as opposed to noise coming through the speakers. It's a very common problem.

The APC line conditioner in the link is basically a multi tapped transformer. It steps down your supply to 230v if it's too high and cuts most of the DC.

Obviously it's only worth it if you want to keep your CD player.

Your speakers are the floorstanders aren't they? Should be sensitive enough. A few years ago I had a pair of those T amps biamped in to my quite insensitive speakers fed from a £850 pre amp and a £1,100 CD player. Sounded good and not at all out of it's depth.

Sorry I'm being a bit dense here, but can't see a link to the apc line conditioner.

Yes my speakers are the floorstanders, I paid £480 for them I think 2 years ago, I read somewhere that one should (as a rule of thumb) spend at least as much on the cd player as the speakers, is that the generally accepted idea?

If so I wish I'd known that when I bought the TEAC but I bought what I thought was the best thing I could afford at the time.

What's happening to the CD player is that the transformer is probably buzzing because the electricity coming from the wall isn't to the specification that the designer expected. Most designers tend to expect voltages of 220 to 240 volts for European appliances but the legal spec here is 216.3 to 253 volts. If your supply runs to the high end of that scale, you can get buzzing transformers. The other thing that causes it is DC coming through your mains supply - more common than you think.

Less often, it can be because the fastenings on the transformer in your CD player have come loose but that would be low down on my list of expectations.

What the line conditioner does is step down the voltage and removes a good proportion of the DC. In all likelihood (80%-90% that I'm correct in my assumption I'd say) this will stop the buzzing in your CD player. It's not an audio product which is why it's cheap but it works well for this specific problem.

I use one of these meters to monitor my supply. I was surprised when I saw my supply hit 251 volts when I lived in Bethnal Green in London but it was totally legal.

It's a solution to use sparingly. I'd probably only connect problem source appliances to it. Not the amp because it would probably squash the dynamics a touch. It may not be relevant to you though if you're planning to change the CD player anyway.

I'd be a bit open minded about what proportion of the budget to spend there. My personal preference is to spend money on the speakers because there are absolutely no shortcuts to be had there. These days with T Amps and the Beresford, there are pocket money electronic devices that are pretty competitive.

You're right you know, I don't have the same type of meter you have but do have a fairly nifty multi-meter, I took the lid off my extension into which I plug my components and sure enough the voltage reading was 248v, admittedly this was with no appliances plugged in or running but even so I wouldn't expect much drop when the supply voltage was being used as none of my components will pull much current.

As I said I've no intention of keeping this player I've got any longer than is necessary so don't think I'll be investing in a conditioner at this stage, but thanks for the tip anyway

Apologies are in order also, after you mentiioned the T Amp I had a look on e bay and I seriously thought you were having a laugh, it looks like something you'd plug your ipod into whilst on holiday but lots of people seem to rave about them! One thing that puzzles me is how would I integrate one of these into my set up??? They don't even look like they'll accept the banana plugs on the end of my speaker cables and I'm at a total loss as to where one plugs the analogue inputs.

What I need to do now is find someone with a similar priced set up to mine so we can compare sound, but I suppose madness and frustration could be the result of that little experiment, the problem is most of my mates think I'm crazy and are happy with the system they got for £150(or less)from Argos/Curry's but that's their loss.

Anyway I'll stop waffling on now, thanks again for putting me onto the Beresford that really has kicked things into life, I'm off to listen to Miles Davis........

248v should be enough to start quite a lot of transformers humming. I thought so. It could easily get worse on a weekday. DC is probably the other issue.

T Amps are absolutely fascinating. Most of it is battery compartment. When you take out the electronics, it fits in the palm of your hand. Basically it's the future of solid state hifi.

You can get away with adapters for conventional cables. 2*RCA to 3.5mm jack plug adapter and these from Russ Andrews.

For the ones I have, I actually prefer using Cat5e network cable as the speaker cable. It's a bit smoother than posher silver coated cables. I can also get it in the spring clips. I actually prefer Cat5e to most speaker cable up to about £10 a meter. The best stuff is only about 50-60 pence a meter. If you still have a brightness problem, it's something you could try.

There are more expensive T Amps from other manufacturers that use exactly the same chips and have better socketry like the Trends Audio TA10.1 but they come in at about £90 which is a big jump in price for a very similar unit but it's better made and more reliable. Pro-Ject has an interesting one coming out soon for £150 but I don't know too much about it yet.

Some people have had reliability problems with the Sonic Impact T Amps but I think they tend to be the same ones who fit them out with 13.8v power supplies rather than the specified 12v ones or AA batteries.

All very interesting stuff thanks very much for the useful links, I see exactly how it all works now, RCA to jack adaptor on the end of interconnect and the Kimber ones on the banana plugs.

I'm more than a little dismayed to find that CAT5e network cable works as well as expensive speaker cable, I payed a hell of a lot more than 60p a metre for my Chord Carnival.

As regards a T amp I don't think I'll be getting one of them in the near future, my next purchase will be a nice cd player, do you know of anywhere other than e bay where one can find them second hand? After the cd player I may look at a power amp.

Thanks again for all your tips

The Cat5e I use is Maplin catalogue number VB20W. There are lots of different types. It doesn't work as well as some esoteric speaker cable but up to £10 it's competitive and is my personal preference for that sort of money. You can use it on it's own and just put plugs on it or plait it for something more esoteric. Here are some designs but, as I said, it's good with just plugs on the end. It's cheap because it's manufactured in much greater quantity than speaker wire.

The site I use most is Hififorsale in the freeads section. Ebay is actually good for CD players because there is so much more supply than demand. I'd suggest the Marantz CD63 as a good value unit. If you can find a TEAC VRDS unit, they're very good as drives and spares are still available. I used to use Loot but it's not very good any more. Gumtree looks intermittently interesting.

I might try some of the CAT5, it'll be interesting to compare it to the Carnival and seeing as I can make it myself for pocket money it'll be a nice little project.

What I'd like to find is a supplier of high end power cable, I was in maplin and they were charging something like £30 for a power cord, basically a flash kettle lead using shielded 3 core cable and a good quality 13a plug and IEC plug, it annoys me because the materials to make it would have cost about £5 and they're asking 30 quid, I could knock one of these expensive leads up in about half an hour.

Anyway, rant over, I'll carry on tweaking and playing, this is proving to be a lot of fun and I'm listening to stuff I haven't touched in years.

One more thing, the Beresford seems to sound better when it's placed on the shelf next to the cd player and not on top of it as I had it before, would you expect this or is it just a figment of my (aural) imagination

You may well be right. The CD player is vibrating. Components don't like that.

I think Cat5e will give you a smoother sound - if that's still what you're after. Part number VB20W from Maplin is the best I've found but unfortunately, it only seems to be available from the internet. If you're plaiting it, it's best not to go over 3 meters with it. The way that I used to use it myself was with three lengths either side, plaited then connected up at the end. Remember to continuity test it with with your multimeter to make sure that you've connected it right.

Mains cords are a bit of a funny one. Quite a few just haven't worked for me at all (The Ecosse ones for instance did nothing at all for me). The Krystal Stratos (Electra as it now is) made an huge difference. There's another thread elsewhere criticising them.

Slight problem there then, the way my living room is laid out is with the speakers at one end and the other components at the other end of the room.

Consequently it's a fair wair old way from my amp to the furthest speaker, probably in the region of 8 metres but I think I'll give the Cat5e a try anyway

My speakers are not bi-wireable and my plan was to use four equal lengths of Cat5e, 2 for each speaker and simply terminate all the conductors in each length of cable into a banana plug, colour code the ends with insulating tape, plug them in and see what happens

That sounds about right. If you don't like it, you've only wasted £16-ish in wire. The wires on the left and right channels both need to be the same length. It's actually £1 a metre for VB20W.

Cheaper banana plugs and spades are more for convenience and appearance than anything. If you're saving money, you could skimp there and just bare wire connect.

Again, when you've finished, make sure you test it with your meter to make sure you have no shorts, even if you're sure you got it right.

Sorry, don't think I made myself clear at first, my plan was to use 2 lengths of cat5e for each speaker giving 4 in total which would work out at 4x8 = 32, do you think that would be necessary or do you think 1 length for each speaker would do as well

As regards banana plugs I was thinking of using maplin's gold plated plugs I think they're about 6 quid for 4, somewhere in between their cheap rubbish and silly money.

Also I've found an electrical wholesaler who've quoted a price of £34.50 for a 305 metre reel of cat5e. Problem is what to do with the other 270 metres when I've made the speaker cables up, and at that price do I trust it to do the job??

You've got some compromises going on there. If you've got an 8 metre/32 foot run going on there, that's a large room. Any way of shortening that at all? running it under the carpet etc.?

You might be able to get away with one either side. You could start with one, see if you like it and then biwire.

If you want to go for a cheaper variant, you could try this which would cut your costs by 1/3. Basically, What I'm looking for is solid core UTP Cat5E cable with a PE dielectric. I think that you're more likely to to find this at your local Maplin as opposed to VB20W which I've never seen in one of the stores.

£35.50 isn't outrageous for something like that as long as it is to spec. Maplin probably slightly overcharge but they're reliable and they're in most large cities.

I've maybe over estimated at 8 metres but there'll be no way of shortening the route without moving house I'm afraid and I don't have a carpet in my living room, just a nice polished floor with a rug for the sound to 'stick' to.

I think I'll try the Cat5e purely for the sake of experiment and out of interest, at the end of the day it'll cost me 16 quid if I don't bother with plugs on the ends.

I'll keep you posted

Good luck!