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I have installed a new audio system for my test bed computer so I can listen to music while programming and writing. The system except for the home assembled computer is almost all Emotiva. It consists of

Emotiva T2+ speakers
Emotiva BasX A2 stereo amp
Passive volume control using Alps dual pot
Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac
Home assembled computer (Ubuntu 20.04) using Kodi for music server

My question is has anyone tried the Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac and if so what do they think about it. To me it sounds quite good and it is under $100.

Here is what I listen to for background music when working on my laptop. I come out of the laptop via USB to a Khadas Tone Board DAC and then to a Kinter 15W/channel class D amp to a pair of Infinity Primus 150 speakers.

tomp wrote:Here is what I listen to for background music when working on my laptop. I come out of the laptop via USB to a Khadas Tone Board DAC and then to a Kinter 15W/channel class D amp to a pair of Infinity Primus 150 speakers.

I have a similar version of that amplifier. Never really used it. How bad are they?

Not bad at all. Certainly will not replace my main system but for the intended purpose quite good.

Did you ever measure the DC offset on the tripath amplifier?

Just measured it. 69mv in left channel, 21mv in right channel. No problem.

tomp wrote:Just measured it. 69mv in left channel, 21mv in right channel. No problem.

Wouldn't that cause problems?

That represents less than one milliwatt dissipation on each channel and the amount of offset from the cone is probably extremely small. So no problem.

brombo wrote:

Computer Audio 1.jpg

I have installed a new audio system for my test bed computer so I can listen to music while programming and writing. The system except for the home assembled computer is almost all Emotiva. It consists of

Emotiva T2+ speakers
Emotiva BasX A2 stereo amp
Passive volume control using Alps dual pot
Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac
Home assembled computer (Ubuntu 20.04) using Kodi for music server

My question is has anyone tried the Emotiva Big Ego+ stereo dac and if so what do they think about it. To me it sounds quite good and it is under $100.

Can you show how Kodi operates as a music server?

I am not quite sure what you mean. All my audio and video files are on my main computer (I have about 44TB capacity, I haven't checked how much I am using). I access them via an SMB network (note that all the machines run Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04). The main reason I use kodi is that I watch cable TV on a HDHomerun Prime device and kodi has a very nice addon for program selection and recording -

https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHo ... B004HKIB6E

As much live TV as I am currently watching (about the only thing I watch live these days is PBS) I am thinking about doing away with live TV altogether. One other aspect of Kodi (undocumented and only works in linux) is that if I have makemkv installed I can play commercial blu ray disks from Kodi. I can also play CD's directly on Kodi.

I am using Ruby Rip to rip my CD's. I don't download media info for Kodi I only look directly at the file folders with Kodi to select what I want to watch or listen to (If you let it Kodi will download media meta-data).

The audio from Kodi sounds fine to me but I have never claimed to have golden ears.

Also since I posted the picture I am using an Emotiva BasX PT1 preamp. It is all analog except for the DAC on the digital inputs (Spdif, TOSlink, WiFi). For my compute audio I use the optical (TOSlink) input. For my turntable it has a phono (MM/MC) input.