Sony freeview box/DAC64

Hello all

Flicking thru the latest issue of Hifi world the other day I was somewhat surprised to read how good they thought the little set-top box they tested sounded, compared to the dedicated [and more expensive] tuners they also listened to.

The Sony freeview box is available for under £80 now and has a digital out, so I could use it with my DAC64. I was thinking of getting a DAB tuner at some point in the future, as I can't get BBC World Service or Five Live on my Quad FM4 to name but two channels. I've a better amp and speakers that I used to have, and was originally thinking of going down the Magnum Dynalab or Troughline route, but the non-availability of digital channels with these tuners bothers me.

Has anyone tried using a Freeview/Sky box with an external DAC before - and if so, were the results good ??. I understand that the musical signal is uncompressed on freeview/sky, whereas on FM/DAB it is - so I'd hope it'd sound pretty good.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Paul Venables

 

If you use it for watching TV then obviously you will need to switch off the buffer on the DAC64. A 4 second lip-synch problem will definitely be noticeable!

 

Alan

I probably wouldn't use it with a screen immediately [I have a sky box already] or with the buffer [I don't use it], but I see your point !!. Cue "Enter the Dragon"-style dubbing !!.

Paul

 

I use the Freeview box to DAC technique for radio and am perfectly happy with it, but I wouldn't say I ever critically listen to the radio. Freeview does though generally have higher bit rates than DAB, so I'd be hard pushed to justify spending money on a standalone DAB radio in your position.

 

If it is the Sony VTX-D800U you are referring to then that has been around for some time now. It was my first and only freeview box and that was since 2-3 years ago. Easy to set up as it just tune itself and since I have never needed to adjust the thingy. However, you do need a TV monitor to see what channel is selected. Got it plug to the Tag AV32R internal DAC and all TVs and radio channels everything appear very good. Vocal tracks are very easy to follow. Musical passages are also very good indeed. Tonal accuracy very convincing. I always assumed freeview was pain free to adopt and so good. I guess I was lucky to stick to Japs crap.

 

I ran my Philips DTR1500 through a Entech DAC. Sounded very good. Didnt' notice any lip-sync problems either.

 

I tried this with my old Cambridge Audio DAC, it was very very very revealing to the point where it was distracting, you could hear objects in the studio move on a weather forcast for example, it was just all too much.

It was very bright but that is probably the DAC. I didn't have any problems with snychronisation though.

I have the Philips DTR1500 as well.

 

I'm not sure the Sky music channels are uncompressed you know. At one point (may still) they had all the top ones on a single channel and you choose which you wanted to stream via an interactive screen. I think its mpeg 2 sound like on a DVD. The same with Cable I think, I am sure I can hear compression artifacts. Sky does sounds damn good though.

 

I use the radio channels from my freeview box for Radio 5 and some of the other digi channels and it is ok.

However, my Magnum Dynalab beats it hands down for pure sound quality, especially on the likes of Radio 3.

It depends how much you want the digital channels and how much you seriously listen to the radio. Bearing in mind the price of MD tuners.

 

I didn't believe it was uncompressed either (as an observer outside the UK) so I found this thread on a chat group http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33551&hl= that explains the compression standards and has audio samples. Radio 3 on DAB should be goodish though. It's a pity for me there's no way to get DVB-T e.g., freeview outide the country, since it's terrestrial.

 

Fascinating set of links - thanks. Confirmed a lot of my suspcions, and reaffirmed my memories of the BBC FM standard - ie. 16kHz digital encoding.

Anyway, I've always fed the digital o/p of my digibox (old Nokia) into my HT decoder for off-air broadcasts, with very good results - watching live classical broadcasts, Jools Holand Later, films, my wife watching ER etc. Never really tried it with dvb-t radio stations because I've got a DAB tuner. Although my son did for a period. He uses a Marantz SR4200 for his hifi and feeds it with digital input from his CD player and from his PC, and for a while he also had a digital input from another digibox. But never really listened to the stations available, so now the digibox is on a tv in my bedroom.