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Post by MartinT on Feb 23, 2020 20:14:20 GMT
I'd never heard of it but it's worth a picture.
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kirk
Rank: Soloist
Posts: 28
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Post by kirk on Feb 23, 2020 20:19:54 GMT
I'd never heard of it but it's worth a picture.
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kirk
Rank: Soloist
Posts: 28
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Post by kirk on Feb 23, 2020 20:20:11 GMT
That looks very nice!
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kirk
Rank: Soloist
Posts: 28
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Post by kirk on Feb 23, 2020 20:26:22 GMT
DACs that I probably needed more time with included the Thetas, Esoterics and Krells. Was about 60/40 for with Naim's effort. In the pro column - Wadia, Schiit, Chord, MSB, Meridian.
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Post by puffin on Mar 18, 2020 18:10:24 GMT
Dacs I have had/still have with my two pennorth :-
QED Digit (modded ala Hifi World DIY supplement with 2 Positrons) and other Puffin mods. At the time it sounded better than my Phillips CD player, but I plumbed it in the other day as I was bored and it sounded very grey.I suspect that they were voiced to counter some harsh sounding on-board Dacs
Cambridge DacMagic 1. Quite lively and ballsy and "good fun"? Sold to a mate years ago
Cambridge DacMagic 1. Modified ala Hifi News article where Audiocom had completely blitzed the board and replaced most voltage regs and caps and other stuff. Bought secondhand and sounding smoother than the one I sold. I still have it and must try it again.
Lite Dac-Ah NOS. Bought in the days when I was mad on stuff that could be modded. Very cheap for a well put together unit. Amazed it arrived from China in one piece (very heavy) I modded it to remove the op-amp output and then a few years later put them back again. Must give that an airing as well
DIY "Cheapo Chinese Dac" This was bought for more modding purposes. There was a thread in the Rock Grotto site (where the guy replaces most of the bits on the Musical Fidelity X-Ponents. For very little money it gave good results and could be modded to run as a balanced out. Still have this.
Beresford 7510. Again this was bought for modding purposes, but I might start to bore people if I go on about what I did with it. One of the things was to mod the variable output to passive with some nice output caps.
DacMagic (the "New" version circa 2006) I bought this from Richer Sounds and there was a competition to win the £230 purchase price back....and yes I won! I have the confirmatory email somewhere. I still use this and I think it is a great performer. 3 filter modes, in phase/ out of phase and balanced out.
Behringer Ultramatch Pro. Bought a few years ago for £100 new. A real bells and whistles Dac. Upsampling (96kHz) Jitter and other bits to play with. Analogue in with ADC to DAC conversion, balanced out, master word clock.
EDIT: Forgot the muse 4x tda1543 NOS little Dac. Not bad.
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Post by puffin on Mar 26, 2020 10:25:37 GMT
Hello, me again. Having written the above post I dug out the Cheapo Dac as I couldn't remember what it sounded like. My memory told me that it was a little dull. The CS8416 Digital Receiver has a differential line driver and so it will output in balanced mode. I did implement this when I was modding it (about 2008) but I didn't have a balanced Pre to really test it.
I have now added the necessary bits and I can't believe how good it sounds. You can tailor the sound to some extent by the use of different output caps, but I think I may have been lucky in my choice. These boards were about £10 (I think) and I reckon it could embarrass those costing considerably more.
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Post by The Brookmeister on Mar 26, 2020 21:24:57 GMT
Numerous DAC's over the 35+ years of being an audiofool. They all make a sound. This is my latest one, hooked up with a Fidata and I cant say much else otherwise the forum police will ban me.
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Post by robin5 on Mar 29, 2020 12:31:40 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Mar 29, 2020 12:38:43 GMT
They've got valves! I'm not really keen on valves used as sound modifiers.
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Post by robin5 on Mar 29, 2020 12:42:57 GMT
Oh I quite like valves. They can make digital sound less sterile and more musical imho.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 29, 2020 12:45:33 GMT
Of course, it's just my opinion. I see no need for them in a DAC.
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Post by julesd68 on Mar 29, 2020 13:57:44 GMT
I've not heard them but remember that the designer is active on AOS forum. There might be some punters there who have the DACs.
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Post by The Brookmeister on Mar 29, 2020 21:03:04 GMT
Of course, it's just my opinion. I see no need for them in a DAC. That's where you fail oh master Taylor LOL
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Post by MartinT on Mar 30, 2020 1:51:44 GMT
Of course, it's just my opinion. I see no need for them in a DAC. That's where you fail oh master Taylor LOL Hah - no sound modification components for me. Purity is where it's at
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Post by robin5 on Mar 30, 2020 10:08:00 GMT
Purity can sound very harsh, hence attention to acoustic paraphernalia in concert halls.
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Post by MartinT on Mar 30, 2020 10:22:50 GMT
For a concert venue, the sound quality is critical to the enjoyment of the performance.
What I mean by purity in the replay chain is faithfulness to the original signal.
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Post by Slinger on Mar 30, 2020 12:53:47 GMT
As I understand it, recordings are meant to reproduce music as the band (or at least the producer) hear it. Any modifications etc. to the original signal, whatever they may be, should have already been done, and the result is then mastered. The job of hifi equipment is to reproduce the mastered signal with the greatest amount of purity it can muster. The clue's in the name, high fidelity.
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Post by julesd68 on Mar 30, 2020 13:00:48 GMT
Everything is a compromise in this playback equation.
So if an album is mastered using tube amps and Tannoys, we need to be using similar gear to be as faithful as possible to what they heard in the studio? Maybe, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do that as it will compromise many more modern recordings ...
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Post by Slinger on Mar 30, 2020 13:06:29 GMT
What you need, ideally, is absolutely nothing, but you obviously must have something, so that something needs to add or subtract, as little as possible from the recording. It doesn't matter if it was recorded on a wax cylinder, you don't need the same technology to play it back. What you're doing by adding *warmth* or whatever is disguising the original signal. Of course, with some of the crappy mastering about that can ultimately work out to be a good thing.
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Post by julesd68 on Mar 30, 2020 13:27:54 GMT
I have a contemporary system now and am using Spotify only. I am satisfied that my system doesn't add or subtract much from the signal it is being fed from Spoti but I'm not kidding myself that when listening to ELP I'm hearing very close to what they did when mastering.
I'm happy with the compromises taken to listen to as wide range of music as possible. If I was just listening to classic rock, for example, my system would probably be very different!
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