02-Mar-2023, 17:24
So I got the relevant pieces to the puzzle setup, but there’s good news and bad news. My setup is an Apple TV feeding a marantz receiver, analog output converted to digital optical and fed to phantom i in front and phantom ii in back.
Good news:
1) Latency
No issues with latency as Apple TV does a very good job with lip sync. I was able to use regular phantom ii and phantom i without direct optical mode
2) Sound is exactly as good as you think it is. Very satisfying to get surround sound with this quality of speaker in such a form friendly way for my living room (I’ll post a picture if I can sort out how)
Bad / Possibly Fatal News
1) High noise floor
I wasn’t able to get a quality analog to digital box on short notice so I got some random thing on Amazon. It is very noisy and I suspect also curtailing my signal quality non insignificantly.
2) Constant hiss / inability to properly maintain volume control
This is related to point 1 and my biggest issue.. My original plan was to set all the phantoms to ~70% volume (same level they are set to for direct optical I think) and then adjust my avr volume however I liked. Issue is, with such a high noise floor leaving these things cranked to 70% means an audible hiss at all times.
Any thoughts on how to fix this? In an ideal world I could
1) find a better analog to digital converter (open to suggestions!!)
2) find some way to get the phantoms to go into auto standby mode or switch off of the physical inputs. I imagine this situation is not that different from when you have a preamp connected to a power amp (in fact it’s basically identical). Any power amp has input sensing and turns off when there’s no input at all. So the question is How can I setup a similar outcome for my phantoms?
It’s possible this has all been for naught and I just need to give up. I am within the return period for the devialet, though I spent $1000 on the marantz receiver that I cannot return, so I’ll take a loss there. But I’d really like to make this work!!! Getting Dante setup with the jbl receiver doubles total system cost, I suppose I could do that too but man I sure would like to avoid that route.
Good news:
1) Latency
No issues with latency as Apple TV does a very good job with lip sync. I was able to use regular phantom ii and phantom i without direct optical mode
2) Sound is exactly as good as you think it is. Very satisfying to get surround sound with this quality of speaker in such a form friendly way for my living room (I’ll post a picture if I can sort out how)
Bad / Possibly Fatal News
1) High noise floor
I wasn’t able to get a quality analog to digital box on short notice so I got some random thing on Amazon. It is very noisy and I suspect also curtailing my signal quality non insignificantly.
2) Constant hiss / inability to properly maintain volume control
This is related to point 1 and my biggest issue.. My original plan was to set all the phantoms to ~70% volume (same level they are set to for direct optical I think) and then adjust my avr volume however I liked. Issue is, with such a high noise floor leaving these things cranked to 70% means an audible hiss at all times.
Any thoughts on how to fix this? In an ideal world I could
1) find a better analog to digital converter (open to suggestions!!)
2) find some way to get the phantoms to go into auto standby mode or switch off of the physical inputs. I imagine this situation is not that different from when you have a preamp connected to a power amp (in fact it’s basically identical). Any power amp has input sensing and turns off when there’s no input at all. So the question is How can I setup a similar outcome for my phantoms?
It’s possible this has all been for naught and I just need to give up. I am within the return period for the devialet, though I spent $1000 on the marantz receiver that I cannot return, so I’ll take a loss there. But I’d really like to make this work!!! Getting Dante setup with the jbl receiver doubles total system cost, I suppose I could do that too but man I sure would like to avoid that route.
