Audio gd of Days Gone By

In case you have not noticed, Audio gd turns products over quite a bit. This is in sharp contrast to rest of Chi-fi, that keeps production around for quite some time. Viz., the Ming Da 7R has been around since the mid 90s, the Bada DC-222 is a hot seller for us and it is in its 4th year (although minor cosmetic and circuit changes occurred along the way). I could go on and on. Audio gd, on the other hand, shuffles the deck quite a bit. If you are an Audio gd owner, you might be tempted to trade yours in (although most of you have not done that yet ‘cause I can rarely find them on the used market), but before you do, please read my Audio gd of Days Gone By.

The ST-3 Headphone Amp
What a wonderful amp this was. For under $300, you got a quite a headphone amp. It was dead quite and ultra dynamic. It gave your headphones a sense of immediacy and presence that only the best headphone amps have. It was cobbled inside a Lite DAC AH box, and what a fine little gem this was.

The DAC 19SE / DAC 19DF
The original DAC 19, and still the best DAC 19 I have ever heard. It was the first DAC to combine the gut thumping realism of drum spank that only the best NOS DACs do, but with the detail and sense of inner space that a only the finest over sampling DACs bring to the table. The DAC 19SE came in a box the size of a Lite DAC 60. I still have my original DAC 19SE, and I still love it. I know, I know, you may disagree with me. The DAC 19DSP is a little to top heavy for me in the upper midrange. The DAC 19DF was the closest thing to it and wanted to be the 19SE when it “grew up”. In mind opinion, the new NFB-2 beats them all (sans my beloved 19SE).

The REF 1 DAC
There was never so neutral Audio gd DAC (in terms of tonal quality from top to bottom) and probably Audio gd’s best resolving DAC. Although it is still slightly warm, the REF 1 was the first DAC (albeit, listening through CyberServer) that let me hear the bowels of a wood piano after the key was struck. Truly a high end reference DAC. REF 1, you will be surely missed.

The Audio gd Compass
Probably was the one of the great buys in audio today. The Compass stole some of the ST-3’s “magic” and combined it with a DAC and line output pre that still today, mops the floor with anything close to its price point of $369.00. Probably one of the longest break in times of any of the headphone amps, the Compass really showed you what it was made of when you fed it great ripped music after about 400 hours of play. The fact that you could achieve this level in headphone amp-diom plus a great DAC and line pre, will make this short-lived treasure a keeper for a long time.

The P2 Preamp
You had to play with it. It was fussy about cables, it was fussy about power cords and conditioners. It took forever to break in. I am not a fan of solid state preamps. But, once you got it right, for the money, it was untouchable (as most Audio gd products are) for a solid state preamp. It gave John Curl overtones in Levinson – like construction. It threw instruments in the sound stage correctly and never smeared. It was no tube pre, but gosh, it knew how play music.

All the best,
Vic