Relative sound quality of Sky boxes (using Toslink to Linn); anyone compared them?

[Briain]

Hi

I had an issue where a power cycle of my old Pace Sky+ box resulted in the scart output showing in black and white. Bizarrely, it seems to have cause a fault in the TV as other devices I've tried now also show in B&W (bizarre as the TV hadn't been power cycled; it's as if the Sky box has damaged the TV's scart inputs). I've been getting by with using the modulated out to the TV's antenna socket (which still shows colour) but that's not idea for picture quality.

Anyhow, back to the main point, I borrowed a Thompson Sky+ HD box and tried that (using the TV's HDMI input) and it works okay, but when feeding it's optical output into the MDS-I the audio levels are much lower (it sounds about 6 dB quieter than the Pace box, so you have to turn the volume up by about '10' on the MDS-I for the same perceived volume level). That's acceptable (though somewhat odd) but I'm convinced it also sounds less good than the old Pace SD box, which is (to me) a somewhat unexpected issue (given that I'm using Toslink from both).

It's difficult to compare the two as the TV source material is always changing, but I've been using the Leveson inquiry to compare voice quality, and the Thompson box sounds both quieter and bandwidth limited and the voices sound a little more like telephone calls (WTR the Pace box). It's not a huge difference, but that said, I'm only using Levison and thus haven't compared them on a musical source. My concern is that the Pace box might be a lot better when playing music, but I can't compare them as you'd have to pair the Sky card to the new box before you could play a music channel.

Has anyone else compared the various Sky boxes by feeding them via Toslink into an external D/A device (like a Linn DSM) and thus come to any conclusions on which are the better ones. If so, please let me know and I'll see if I can source one from Gumtree or eBay and give it a try.

Bri

[Linnsomniak]

I cannot answer your question but I would point out that the Thomson Sky + HD boxes were not very reliable.
Basically, the capacitors would fail.
If you Google 'thomson sky hd box problems' you will see what I mean.

Beware!

[Briain]

Hi

My friend (a Linn dealer) gave me this to try. He has a pile of Sky boxes that he's just repaired (as you say, dead caps) and this was from the top of the heap (we were very scientific about it; that was the one which was easiest to reach). He reckons the caps they have used are under-specified (ripple current) and I don't think he was just referring to the Thompson boxes. I guess that would mean they're running hotter than designed to and maybe that's why they're failing early (well, these things are built to the lowest possible price). Anyhow, this Thompson box now has new (and nicer) caps in the PSU and thus should last a while longer than most. I was quite looking forward to trying it and was thus surprised that it sounded less good than my ancient Pace (the original Sky+ box with the card slot on the left).

Maybe the better PSU caps make it sound worse by not matching the really cheap and crappy components used elsewhere in the box?

Bri

[Briain]

I guess I could give Russ a call, but his box costs the equivalent of 605 big bottles of Becks beer (and a packet of salted peanuts). I'm not sure what I'd do with all these peanuts, but if I drank all that beer, the sound would from the Thompson box would likely be quite acceptable.

[rowlandhills]

This might be of interest, Bri:

http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-hd-su...quiet.html

Seems to be a known issue with HD boxes. Is there a setting in the Services > System setup > Sound settings menu for output volume?

[Briain]

Hi

Thanks for the link. When I hooked it all up last night, I went right through the menus (I'm used to the old Sky+ boxes) but I could find no options (other than stereo/mono and normal/Dolby). I was hoping to find some oddball setting that sorted things (and maybe improved the sound), but there's nothing that I can spot.

Don't get me wrong, it is acceptable, but I'm sure the old Pace Sky+ box sounds better as well as louder, so I'm wondering if they've done something to match HD and SD volume levels by 'number crunching' a few dB from the SD levels (possibly not that well).

I'm just really curious as to why they're so different in level (and it is lower than anything else I've fed into the MDS-I via Toslink) so there's definitely something unexpected going on, and I suspect that the side effect of the change is to impact on the sound quality.

Bri

[linnrd]

(2012-06-14 16:11)Briain Wrote:  I guess I could give Russ a call, but his box costs the equivalent of 605 big bottles of Becks beer (and a packet of salted peanuts). I'm not sure what I'd do with all these peanuts, but if I drank all that beer, the sound would from the Thompson box would likely be quite acceptable.

But...you get a free cable with it.

[Briain]

I'd still rather have the beer!

It's a pest as I don't want HD (and my old Pace box is fine), but I do now need an HDMI port, just to get a colour picture. I've arranged to collect the entire pile of fixed Sky HD boxes to see if any sound better than the Thompson one, so fingers crossed that one might hit the spot.

According to his site, Russ reckons the latest Amstrad one is the best of the bunch (even before his mods), but as it is so new, the eBay prices for the unmodified version that model are still way to high for me (none are less than about 100 big bottles of Becks beer) so if none of the older HD ones sound any good, it might be worth taking the HD contract for a year (£120; that's only 60 big bottles of Becks beer) to get the box and then cancelling the HD channels after 12 months (and that would also mean a beer increase to look forward to).

You can tell I'm Scottish!

Bri

[macrotech]

You're worried about spending £120 to get a year of HD programming? How much was your cheapest bit of Linn kit again?

[Briain]

(2012-06-14 22:16)macrotech Wrote:  You're worried about spending £120 to get a year of HD programming? How much was your cheapest bit of Linn kit again?

Actually, it was about 66p for the official Linn foam bungs to block off the Akurate 212 speaker ports; I still have nightmares about that moment of extreme decadence and I still experience frequent panic attacks when pondering the possibility that they might eventually crumble to dust in the same way of my old PMS Isobark grills. I've started putting aside 10p per year in a contingency bung fund to cover that potential spend.

To be honest, it's more that I can't really see that much difference on my ancient 37 inch LCD (which only cost me £200 a few months ago; I bought it when my old Loewe CRT expired) and my feeling is that I'm already spending more than enough on TV licence and Sky package, without now adding yet another £10 per month to get nothing more than I already have.

Bri