Cambridge CXN Streamer and BL18

[pgbj]

Hi,

I am thinking of “upgrading” my BL8000 (25 years from new – I love them!) to BL18. I have yet to listen to check that the upgrade is worth it for my musical listening (mostly classical) but I am researching some technical “gotchas” first.

My BL8000 are connected to a Cambridge CXN streamer in digital pre-amp mode with (Steve’s) RCA cables. The source is minimserver/BubbleUpNp FLAC transcoded to WAV24, or Tidal HiFi. It works great!

So I see that I could connect the BL18 using the same RCA cables to analogue pre-amp output and I would have volume control on the CXN. But it seems unintuitive to have a digital path, converted to analogue by CXN DAC, then back to digital in the BL18 and then to analogue again to the drivers. (I assume BL18 DSP means it is all digital).

I could connect the BL18 to the Cambridge CXN using digital TOSLINK – but then there is no volume control in the CXN for digital output and AFAIK there is no independent volume control in the BL18?

So B&O would want me to buy the BeoSound Core – but more money and duplicating the functionality of the Cambridge (a unit I like a lot and is widely regarded as a very good streamer).

Other active speakers (Dali, Dynaudio etc.) seem to have volume control on the speakers but unless I am missing something that is not an option with B&O?

So seems I am stuck with the Digital-Analogue-Digital-Analogue path?

Thanks

Peter

[NQVHNWI]

I guess the answer is…it depends?

B&O Tech: BeoLab loudspeakers and Third-party systems

The depend is that the BL18s do not have volume control.

Therefore, this must be done either at the Cambridge CXN (digitally to the Coax/TOSlink) or via the App you use to control the CXN.

 

I connect my Auralic Altair G1 (RCA/XLR out to RCA in ) BL17. Its all at the Analogue state – much I guess where you are now and the volume control works perfectly with the Auralic App.  so its all down to the CXN doing volume control on a digital output?

[NQVHNWI]

Im sure that lots of people have contrary views but most of the Beolabs ever….have received analogue signals and although I get the itch of many to simplify “the chain”, I still prefer my BL90s to receive XLR analogue signals from an Auralic  Vega G2 DAC rather than play from the Auralic G2 Streamer via coax or USB.

As a further side note, I have difficulty connecting a USB link to my BL90s (I think the length is too great – over 5m, and/or the cable not good enough) but it seems to link at DSD64 (88k sample rate input – approx). The Coax output to the BL90 works fine and indicates 178k sample rate input.

The question to answer technically (I have a preference – which is what I actual do) is, Stream, upsample to DSD512 internally, DAC to Analogue to XLR to BL90 OR, Stream, Upsample to DSD128 (178k-ish) and send to the BL90 via coax?

I prefer the Analogue signal into the BL90s but there’s not much in it.

[pgbj]

Mr10Percent wrote:

so its all down to the CXN doing volume control on a digital output?

It definitely does not do volume control on digital output. (I currently have a DAC and Schitt Magni headphone amp connected to TOSLINK on the CXN and the output is full volume.)

[pgbj]

So I suppose the other option is to use a DSP either in Software e.g I think ROON has a software DSP volume control, or some sort of miniDSP box. Then I could have an all digital path with volume control to the BL18? At a price…

[NQVHNWI]

Honestly, I dont think you will see a big uplift in SQ by staying in the all-digital domain. I believe we are over-conditioned with various Writers musings, YTers Vblogging etc that digital is the only way and shortening the chain is best etc….

Decent recordings and good room prep are far far more important in my book.

[pgbj]

Thanks. Yes you can overthink this. I should just go listen to a comparable system and go from there.

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