Greetings all you Outlaws:

For those of you who are not familar with me, I must tell you I am a dedicated audiophile and HT enthusiact.

I checked out the specs for the 997 and I am not pleased to see only 2 coaxial and 5 toslink. This type of design in my opinion is too much oriental and not for the American market.

Why do people use Outlaw products? The HT people will really have a great time using these Outlaw products. For example, at this time, I use three coaxial digital inputs. One is for the HDTV, the second is for movies coming off my DVD player.

The third connection which in the past dit not matter too much for me buy now is very important.

I use a tube based system to listen to music. I have a great tube DAC kit that will go into the system, hopefully late next month. This DAC has a dedicated USB input designed by Jim Hagerman. I will use my laptop to connect to the DAC as be in audio bliss.

For over a year, I have used my desktop to connect the the 1070 so I can listen to music and build my own playlists. I only listen to Lossless mucis, no crappy lossy tunes are allowed in my system.

It was not to a short time agop that I figured out how to get my PC going into the 1070 to sound the best it could. I have am M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI card with a coakil digital out connection. I run a 35 foot cable into a reclocker then out the 1970. The sound is OK, I can listen yet I do have the audiophile disease.

I changed the front end player on my PC and used Direct sound. This helped the SQ and I found myself listening to more music. The Audio bug bit me more and after talks with two buddys I decided to use ASIO. For those uising a PC with Windblows and anything before Vista, I highly suggest you use ASIO.

Now I am so pleased to report the SQ is better than I ever thought I could get with HT!

Until my Dac is ready, I am getting used to useing my desktop now and not is the best way yet I am so pleased with the sound and ease of use. I am not listening to my tube system until the DAC goes in!

This 1070 simply put is the one , HT receiver out there good enough to please someone like me. The decision buy Outlaw not to forget about Music makes me glad that I use the 1070.

Of course the 1070 has 4 digital coaxial inputs so I fear i may have to stay using the 1070 and not go for the 997 due to the lack of the extra inputs I desire.

Change can be good but sometimes chamge is not so good.

My plea goes out to the peopek who design the unbit and i beg you to work around the oriental desire to use all the opttical inputs and use COXAIL inputs, add at least two more like on the 1070.

There are inexpensive devices which change toslink to coaxial and vice versa. Since the information is digital, there is no loss in the translation between formats.

It looks like your cable box also has an optical audio output and I can't remember ever seeing a dvd player that didn't have both coax and optical audio outputs...

When I get my new 997 I will only use 1 digital audio input as the rest will all use HDMI. In another thread someone was complaining that the 997 didn't have enough HDMI inputs. I don't believe the Outlaws intended to satisfy every possible need for everyone. It is an audio/video processor so it is designed to be used as such. What I, and many others, like about their products is that they provide cost effective products.

I typically do not feel comfortable with interfaces. The path of least resistance is what I prefer. As an Audiophile, don't you agree Altec?

Do you have any solid engineering evidence, or controlled double blind listening test results which would point to degredation of a digital signal when translated between Toslink and coaxial?

If you "don't feel comfortable" with these devices, well, I guess as far as inputs go, you're out of luck.

???

It looks like your cable box also has an optical audio output and I can't remember ever seeing a dvd player that didn't have both coax and optical audio outputs...

The optical use the toslink connector. I use very high end Coaxial. Optical is for laymen , not for people like me who take sound to heart!

Maybe you should give optical another honest evaluation. I find the wave-particle duality exhibited by light traveling though an optical cable provides an intriguing synergy with binary data resulting in an audio signal with absolutely no degradation from source to destination.

I understand. The aortic resonances and ventrical overtones can make a huge difference during the D/A process. I was hoping the Trinnov technology might compensate for these, but I guess not.

BOTH of those digital audio transmission formats were created for consumer use - "laymen" as you would have it. I guess you're a "layman" no matter how you slice it.

I've been following this thread for a few days. For those who either want more digital inputs and/or want to conver optical to coax or vice versa here is a product I use with great advantage into one of my 990's inputs

MSB Digital Director

They claim it reduces jitter as well, though I don't know if I have it or not. It has priority auto-switching. There are four optical and two coax inputs. It has coax and optical outs.

They can be found from time to time on Audiogon and ebay.

True story. Only AES/EBU could be considered not for "laymen." Coax and Toslink connections transmit identical signals. There was once a lengthy discussion on the subject here.

You need to get the Emerald Toslink connectors. They feature rare natural emerald connectors with cedar oil reserve tanks to assure their almost perfect clarity. The Emerald Toslink also features dual solid silver and 99.999% OFC shielding to provide tempest quality EMF shielding. The overall result is a cable that is breathtaking in its crystalline qualities.

The key to maintaining these cables is of course the Audio quality cedar oil. For optimum results, this cedar oil needs to be changed every 3 months or 6000 notes. It can be found for $99.95 per .5ml at all better hi-fi stores.

Hey 73Bruin,

Are you sure that it is cedar oil and not "Snake Oil"!!!

TUBES Rule, do not be a solid state fool!

This thread is a joke, right?

I use a compound that contains (depending on atmospheric pressure) approximately 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon, and .03% CO2 among other chemicals. My entire listening environment is saturated with it. I have an electronically actuated system which contstantly monitors temperature changes and initiates a circulation of this substance around my entire temperature-controlled environment.

Although you can buy some of this in small doses as seen here , I prefer to obtain my own from the environment where I live.

You know, if you create a listening environment that omits that gaseous compound entirely, it is reported that you can avoid any unwanted acoustical room effects. You can also save a fortune on speakers and associated electronics, since every brand sounds exactly the same under these conditions. Unfortunately, there are some unfortunate occupant side-effects that may have a low WAF...

I myself find that I couldn't listen to my sytem without the Marigo Dots and the X-coordinate pen .

I wrote that I want to be a beta tester for the 997 with my X-Coordinate pen on the plactic film and it automatically transferred to this forum message. I hope PeterT understands the message.

Youse guys are just plain silly :rolleyes:

Tunage through TUBEage is the Real Deal!

I've read that optical S/PDIF can result in more jitter than coaxial S/PDIF, but never seen any proof of this. But this has led some people to prefer coaxial over optical.

The nice thing about optical is you're guaranteed to decouple the source and receiver. But a well designed coaxial input will do this anyway.

I think any optical<->coax converter would have to be an active device. And could increase jitter even though the digital signal itself would be the same.

Most digital interface receivers now perform reclocking to received digital bitstreams, so any jitter present is automatically removed. This applies to Toslink an S/PDIF coaxial. Jitter is not really an issue anymore.

(I was writing my post while Altec stepped in with the answer I was pointing toward.)

Digital equipment designers and engineers … a question:

In the receiving of digital information by many types of digital equipment, does not the incoming digital information enter a buffer before being fed for manipulation and/or analog conversion? And does not the play-out from the buffer of that digital stream, before conversion, depend on an internal clock in the receiving equipment?

If so, and if the incoming information was captured properly in the first place when placed in the buffer, then the degree to which digital jitter affects the quality of the analog signal depends not on the digital time-stability of the source device’s output nor any jitter effects introduced by a cable or other means, but on the quality of the output from the buffer, through processing and the DAC, based on the clock and electronics within whatever piece of gear finally converts the digital source to analog. Can we say that if the incoming signal had less jitter than the subsequent processing and DAC, any advantage of the ‘better’ incoming digital stream is lost? Can we also say that if the incoming signal had more jitter than the internal electronics of the processor and DAC, as long as the incoming information was properly captured, that the disadvantage of the arriving ‘worse’ digital stream has been made irrelevant?

In other words, is it not true that as long as any digital signal degradation does not exceed the ability of the receiving equipment to capture information properly, the last piece of gear in the process, the one that finally takes the digital information and turns it into analog, determines how much or how little jitter is introduced and any effects this has on the final signal?

Yeah, phase-locked-loop itself should take care of it.

But for reasons I don't yet fully understand, the eye diagram is something that shows how jitter on the signal can still affect the resulting re-clocked signal, because of limits on the reconstruction.

From this article, A second look at jitter: Calculating bit error rates , which I only skimmed, I think they're explaining how jitter can create a sampling error because the signal isn't actually the simple curved line it is usually drawn as.

In other words, getting the right value into that buffer in the first place might go wrong. A perfectly synchronized sender and receiver might sample incorrectly by chance, because of noise in the signal itself, and jitter increases that probability.

Like I said, jitter is not an issue anymore. Worry about bigger fish.

We'd better be careful about the silliness. Not too long ago a little silliness resulted in 12 pages of pain (before the thread had to be forcibly closed, that is).

Shudder

That thread still makes my eye twitch... I'd actually forgotten how messy it got before the it was locked...

I may just keep my 1070!

I thought you said that tubes rule and people who don't use them are a solid state fool.

Sorry to bring this up, but the 1070, as are all of Outlaw's components, are very, very solid state.

Altec,

The tube system is for music, the HT system with the 1070 I use for surround. I am using the HT connected to my desktop using ASIO and I dig the sound.

The DAC will go in soon and then I go back to the Tube system with a quad set of 1969 Brown Plate Genelex Gold Monarch Kt88 tubes!


Tubes rule- Do not be a sold state fool!

Altec,

I am picking the Dac up in the afternoon to test. It is amost done , just a fews screws and then down the near road, some LED's and Diodes. I am hoping to have it fully up by next week.

More to come.

TUBES Rule! Solid state is a miserable state!

Some support for Digital Coaxial...

Over the weekend I went on a mission to eliminate the 'tick' that I was getting between Dolby Digital signal changes. It occurred at every change from program to commercial. It even happened between commercials. It has been most noticeable coming from any cable or Satellite receiver that I have had, connected to the 990 via Toslink.

I tried everything. Last thing I have done is changed from Toslink to Digital Coaxail, and I would say that it has removed greater than 50% of the occurrence. My DVD and Xbox will remain Toslink.

Coaxial is better, trust me. I am using the Stereovox XV2 between my DVD player and my new DAC and I so pleased! Music rules!!!!!!!

maybe try a different optical input on the 990 or it seems it's not the 990 at all but your Satellite receiver.

Plug another source into the same Toslink port you have your Satellite/Cable box hooked into and see if the problem occurs on that source. If it does, it is the 990, if it doesn't it is your satellite/cable box. I have noticed that HD programming is more finicky with my system than the non-HD versions. Sometimes I have problems with the HD program and I switch to the non-HD version on my satellite that problem goes away. I usually notice it when watching the NFL in HD. The issue only last a few seconds then I can switch back to HD.