Its 192K Degrees in here!
Recently I had a discussion with many of you regarding 192K software downloads from HD Tracks and Reference Recordings. I also have had discussions about with some of you with respect to ripping vinyl at 192K and playing it back – expecting it to sound more like vinyl, you see, because its 192K. As I stated many times before, 192K is just not ready for audiophile prime time. And unless you do some intensive lobbying at Texas Instruments, Anologue devices, Wolfson et.al., the wait will just get longer.
Digital audio, once you venture past your CD player, can make you down right dizzy. In our digital audio road show we do try to make you dizzy (more about our road show in an upcoming BLOG). We play music through USB and the Musiland Monitor 02. Then we ask, which one sounds better? Low and behold, it’s the Musiland, by like 100%. Then we try and play 192K through the PC. We use the MD 10 modified because it is: 1) a good DAC with great sound 2) probably one of the best 192K DACs that we have heard and 3) it displays the sampling rate right on the display. Low and behold, out of the few windows players that will actually play the 192K track, most of them down sample the music to a more USB friendly 48K. That’s because my friends, and I have said this over and over, native USB does not support anything greater than 48K.
Ok, you tell me you need to replace these drivers with async ones that support 192K. Two issues: 1) you need an async DAC to do this and 2) how many USB DACs do you know of that reliably support 192K USB (and I mean reliably) and sound good? If you do your research, you will find the pickens for USB based 192K rather slim.
Such is the problem with folks that spent their hard earned cash on the Amarra product, which looks like you could download it for free any day now. It’s great that Apple in the latest Snow Leapord releases will be supporting natively USB Async drivers that plug into Amarra. What’s not so great is that there is very few audiophile quality DACs that you can plug 192K USB into and get it to sound like you’re not listening in the latrine on a long Southwest flight.
The Musiland DACs are the only DACs that I have heard that can process 192K reliably from a Coax / BNC connection and sound good. ( As of 7/1/11, we do not offer any DACs via USB that can support 192K) After many conversations with Audio gd, we got them to drop their efforts at a 192K native USB DAC (and drop the USB port from the REF 7. The audio gd exception is the digital interface, which King Wa uses in conjunction with M2Tech HiFace). As a matter of fact, King Wa agrees, as I do, to drop the whole 192K thing all together until someone makes a decent 192K receiver chip.
Yet another problem with USB 192K, is the amount of EMI interference and latency that the PC introduces. Even with the Async drivers, keeping step is critical to keep jitter low. A missed or heavily damaged packet causes a “guess” by the DAC as to what the packet originally looked like. Because of the SPDIF conversion protocol does not allow for error re-transmit, the chance of getting anything close to 44.1K jitter levels at 192K is next to nil. And don’t try to convince me with the canard that your Benchmark DAC re-clocks jitter. While any cheap DAC can re-clock jitter, it cannot fixed the damage that jitter does to the music. Once the music packet is damaged, its damaged.
As of 7/1/11 the DIR 9001 remains the king of input receiver chips in terms of sound quality and jitter rejection. It has sounded the best for some 6 years now and I don’t see / hear anything new on the horizon. One caveat, the DIR 9001 only goes up to 96K.
See what I mean?
All the best,
Vic
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
The Top 10
Stop Looking At the Amp
This is usually the first thing I ask when you call me for Amplifier Help. I will then ask the size of your room. I am obviously trying to match an amplifier, price point to your speaker room. Overpowering and/or over damping a speaker will make it sound cold. Under powering a speaker will make it sound thin and closed. Yes, there is an amp for every speaker / room combination.
Stop Paying Attention To The DAC Chip
I know that you have heard me say this time and time again. Any designer can make a good chip sound bad and a bad chip sound good. The most important part of a DAC that effect sound quality are in order 1) the filtering that designer chooses to use, 2) the Analogue output stage and finally the DAC Chip.
Don’t go Crazy with Sampling
I get this all the time. The other day I was talking to some poor sole that ripped all his vinyl (some 300 albums) into 192K files and placed them on his PC. He called me up and said that the 192K DAC did not good with these samples. As a matter of fact, it sounds the same as a 44.1K sample. That’s because, and I keep saying this, USB cannot handle 192K without USB driver replacements. The only way to get 192K USB out of computer is the use the M2Tech, Musiland Monitor 02 or the Musiland MD 11. Better yet, place it on a CyberServer and you will eliminate most of the noise that a PC produces. Again, a PC is not a good playback device; it’s a computing device.
Stop using your CD Player as a Transport
Your CD player was not really meant to properly output digital S/PDIF. Quality transports have correct buffering, error correcting and buffer management that make sound good. When your CD player plays a CD, most of this circuitry is next to the converter chip, so it does not have to worry about error correction. When you use it as a transport, your CD player runs the digital output naked to the DAC without any significant error correction. In other words, it comes out with errors galore. Ouch!
Stop Paying Too Much Money for Digital Cables
The best USB cable is the shortest USB cable. The best coax cable is the one that “Larry the Cable Guy” uses. It’s always shielded, 75 ohms and has BNC connectors. Coax cable has 10 times more jitter than BNC, and Optical cable has 30- 50 times more jitter than Coax. No serious audiophile uses optical.
Stop Paying Too Much For Mods
The best mod you can do to tube equipment is to change the tubes. Period. Do this, before investing in any modifications.
Stop Paying Too Much For Audio
I had someone call me up the other day and say that the problem with our stuff (and I was not aware that there was a problem) is that it is too low cost, so nobody believes it’s that good. Look, spending $4000 for preamp, really? Ok, let’s do the math, how much, do you think, the individual components in the preamp cost? Let’s say they are using some really excellent caps, transistors / tubes, resistors and switches. But all that can’t be more than $800 right? After, all they are commodity components available from a supply store like Digi-Key. Then there is the case, another say $300 bucks or so? Now, I would add another say 2-3K for intellectual property, but I cannot. The reason is that the secrets are all out, and audio is not rocket science, it’s not even introductory college science, its prep school science. Sampling, Push-Pull, Inductance – all make audio work, this was discovered years ago. There are not any “New” or “Revolutionary” discoveries are there? So, I cannot pay the 2-3K for IP. What I will pay, however are the marketing, sales and profit costs. Say, another $400. There, that’s a fair price for a solid state high end preamp, $1500. For a tube preamp, I am apt to pay a little more for tubes, say $1500 - $2000.
Stop Looking At the Amp
This is usually the first thing I ask when you call me for Amplifier Help. I will then ask the size of your room. I am obviously trying to match an amplifier, price point to your speaker room. Overpowering and/or over damping a speaker will make it sound cold. Under powering a speaker will make it sound thin and closed. Yes, there is an amp for every speaker / room combination.
Stop Paying Attention To The DAC Chip
I know that you have heard me say this time and time again. Any designer can make a good chip sound bad and a bad chip sound good. The most important part of a DAC that effect sound quality are in order 1) the filtering that designer chooses to use, 2) the Analogue output stage and finally the DAC Chip.
Don’t go Crazy with Sampling
I get this all the time. The other day I was talking to some poor sole that ripped all his vinyl (some 300 albums) into 192K files and placed them on his PC. He called me up and said that the 192K DAC did not good with these samples. As a matter of fact, it sounds the same as a 44.1K sample. That’s because, and I keep saying this, USB cannot handle 192K without USB driver replacements. The only way to get 192K USB out of computer is the use the M2Tech, Musiland Monitor 02 or the Musiland MD 11. Better yet, place it on a CyberServer and you will eliminate most of the noise that a PC produces. Again, a PC is not a good playback device; it’s a computing device.
Stop using your CD Player as a Transport
Your CD player was not really meant to properly output digital S/PDIF. Quality transports have correct buffering, error correcting and buffer management that make sound good. When your CD player plays a CD, most of this circuitry is next to the converter chip, so it does not have to worry about error correction. When you use it as a transport, your CD player runs the digital output naked to the DAC without any significant error correction. In other words, it comes out with errors galore. Ouch!
Stop Paying Too Much Money for Digital Cables
The best USB cable is the shortest USB cable. The best coax cable is the one that “Larry the Cable Guy” uses. It’s always shielded, 75 ohms and has BNC connectors. Coax cable has 10 times more jitter than BNC, and Optical cable has 30- 50 times more jitter than Coax. No serious audiophile uses optical.
Stop Paying Too Much For Mods
The best mod you can do to tube equipment is to change the tubes. Period. Do this, before investing in any modifications.
Stop Paying Too Much For Audio
I had someone call me up the other day and say that the problem with our stuff (and I was not aware that there was a problem) is that it is too low cost, so nobody believes it’s that good. Look, spending $4000 for preamp, really? Ok, let’s do the math, how much, do you think, the individual components in the preamp cost? Let’s say they are using some really excellent caps, transistors / tubes, resistors and switches. But all that can’t be more than $800 right? After, all they are commodity components available from a supply store like Digi-Key. Then there is the case, another say $300 bucks or so? Now, I would add another say 2-3K for intellectual property, but I cannot. The reason is that the secrets are all out, and audio is not rocket science, it’s not even introductory college science, its prep school science. Sampling, Push-Pull, Inductance – all make audio work, this was discovered years ago. There are not any “New” or “Revolutionary” discoveries are there? So, I cannot pay the 2-3K for IP. What I will pay, however are the marketing, sales and profit costs. Say, another $400. There, that’s a fair price for a solid state high end preamp, $1500. For a tube preamp, I am apt to pay a little more for tubes, say $1500 - $2000.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Now, that’s dumb.
In Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, the author speaks of many strategies for defeating and combating the enemy. One of them is “taking the high ground”, where instead of confronting your advisory directly, you kind of “go around”, thereby devising a completely different strategy in hopes of obtaining a victory later.
Our brick and mortar retailer friends, if they can get past there upturned snobby noses, should take the “high ground” by buckling down with what they do best: rubbing shoulders with industry stalwarts such as Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, McIntosh, Levinson etc… After all, this is their niche: catering to the upper crust, who think this high end boutique paradigm is still “happening”. Instead, our brick and mortar friends are doing something that in my opinion, is, well, dumb.
What’s really dumb is offering Chinese-made equipment at Levinson prices, a strategy that I just cannot figure out. The minute that the internet-o-sphere figures out that the high end boutique brand is really offered on the streets of Shanghai at 1/3 of the price, the brand gets flushed down to loo.
Instead of figuring out hot to sell over priced equipment better, they are getting adroit at disguising the brand rip. A little sleuthing and homework will help you figure out which brand is which. Let me share with you my work.
The Raysonic brand, looks good, but to me, it looks like a Shanling, doesn’t it? There is another company that claims it is an “Austrian Brand”. They take out big ads in Stereophile and Absolute sound. But I was offered to sell a Chinese amp that look mysteriously like the “Austrian Brand” with round chrome faced transformers for much less than these are going for. Then there is another importer who sells CD players and integrated amps made by Shanling but marked up much, much more than the comparable Shanling products. That same importer, by the way, has succeeded in running what was left of the Shanling franchise right into the ground. Likewise, with re-branded Chinese vacuum tubes sold at exclusive distributors with what it seems to be exclusive prices. Note to self, “If you cannot find a Chinese tube on the web from China, then it’s a "markup” brand re-labeled. I thought that the whole reason for buying an import these days is the high value proposition, and not high price proposition. Right? I cannot believe that folks are getting conned into these tubes - they are jsut re-branded stock Shuguangs (P.S. - I am not talking about the treasures).
Jolida had it right, sell high value at discounted prices and offer USA based service and support. The Jolida model is the one we choose to imitate. But, buying a Chinese import at Conrad Johnson prices? Well, that’s plain dumb. Buy the Conrad Johnson.
In Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, the author speaks of many strategies for defeating and combating the enemy. One of them is “taking the high ground”, where instead of confronting your advisory directly, you kind of “go around”, thereby devising a completely different strategy in hopes of obtaining a victory later.
Our brick and mortar retailer friends, if they can get past there upturned snobby noses, should take the “high ground” by buckling down with what they do best: rubbing shoulders with industry stalwarts such as Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, McIntosh, Levinson etc… After all, this is their niche: catering to the upper crust, who think this high end boutique paradigm is still “happening”. Instead, our brick and mortar friends are doing something that in my opinion, is, well, dumb.
What’s really dumb is offering Chinese-made equipment at Levinson prices, a strategy that I just cannot figure out. The minute that the internet-o-sphere figures out that the high end boutique brand is really offered on the streets of Shanghai at 1/3 of the price, the brand gets flushed down to loo.
Instead of figuring out hot to sell over priced equipment better, they are getting adroit at disguising the brand rip. A little sleuthing and homework will help you figure out which brand is which. Let me share with you my work.
The Raysonic brand, looks good, but to me, it looks like a Shanling, doesn’t it? There is another company that claims it is an “Austrian Brand”. They take out big ads in Stereophile and Absolute sound. But I was offered to sell a Chinese amp that look mysteriously like the “Austrian Brand” with round chrome faced transformers for much less than these are going for. Then there is another importer who sells CD players and integrated amps made by Shanling but marked up much, much more than the comparable Shanling products. That same importer, by the way, has succeeded in running what was left of the Shanling franchise right into the ground. Likewise, with re-branded Chinese vacuum tubes sold at exclusive distributors with what it seems to be exclusive prices. Note to self, “If you cannot find a Chinese tube on the web from China, then it’s a "markup” brand re-labeled. I thought that the whole reason for buying an import these days is the high value proposition, and not high price proposition. Right? I cannot believe that folks are getting conned into these tubes - they are jsut re-branded stock Shuguangs (P.S. - I am not talking about the treasures).
Jolida had it right, sell high value at discounted prices and offer USA based service and support. The Jolida model is the one we choose to imitate. But, buying a Chinese import at Conrad Johnson prices? Well, that’s plain dumb. Buy the Conrad Johnson.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Still Evangelizing
Now as ubiquitous as John Boehner's smoking habits, high def TV is still alive and kicking - and growing like July crabgrass. To us audio geeks, we know what high def means; it means high sampling rates and more bits per second. If the high rez sampling rate works for TV, just think of what it can do for music.
The problem confronting audiophiles with 96K-192K, lets just call it high rez, is not finding high definition music, but playing it back properly. If the comparison to high def TV is in tact, then 192K should sound significantly better than 44,1. Alas, in most cases it does not and for some 'philes out there, they can hardly tell the difference. So, back to my original theory: there must be a problem with playback.
As you can clearly see from my CyberServer videos, the PC is the problem. Being a computer jock, I know a little about PCs and USB. The block input / output that USB uses requires a pre-fetch of data blocks to be placed in computer memory, where, it is clobbered to death by other high speed clocks on the mother board and graphics card. Computer memory is not a good place for Oscar Petersen. Its really bad, if Oscar is at 192K. Using your computer for high rez playback is like watching high def TV on the SONY Trinitron: it just was not made for it.
They still can't convince me that the standard USB 2.0 drivers are adequate for high end audio and attaching a well made music "streamer" is the end all. The standard USB drivers are not fast enough for 192K (they were never meant to stream music, you see? ) and can barely do 96K. If audiophiles used DACs like the Matrix mini that display the sampling rate, they would find that most DACs, find so much jitter in the 96K signal that they down sample it to 48K. If the Audio gd DACs find ka ka in the signal, they just shut off, refusing the play the mess. The only way to get 192K and 96K reliably out of a PC is to replace the drivers a la Musiland or M2Tech. While they make a world a difference, you still have the block input / output - pre-fetch problem described earlier.
One easy solution to the USB problem is to get a computer with what is called "streaming" I/O (I/O stands for input / output). Streaming I/O reads a byte - writes a byte. No memory to muck up the sound, no blocks with their choppy latency that translates into jitter. While fairly primitive, streaming I/O is ideal for digital playback. The best operating systems to make use of the streaming I/O are the Unix / Linux brands. Here, a computer programmer can open a music file and specify this somewhat primitive I/O mechanism for the pushing the music file down the stream.
The next fly in the high rez ointment, is latency. Since the computer is not really meant for high speed streaming of anything, latency abounds. The DAC sees latency as jitter, and although the asynchronous USB drivers help, they are not as fast as they need to be so latency prevails. You have to cut latency anywhere you can: on the I/O bus, which carries the digital music, to the hard drive. The hard drive is slowest of the bunch and any increase in I/O speed from the disk yields an appreciable improvement. A solid state drive is about 40% to 50% faster that a conventional hard drive with a motor. Its one drawback is that it is expensive. Like a sports car, you pay for speed.
When you put this all together, a Linux operating system with streaming I/O and a solid state drive, you get CyberServer. I cannot tell you how happy we were to see Byrston trying this same idea out with their new media server. One thing though, the Bryston costs over $2K price tag - although it uses a terabyte. The USB thumb drive that they use, in our opinion, may still be a little too slow. Stick with the faster solid state ones. Ours start at $720.
All the best,
Vic
Now as ubiquitous as John Boehner's smoking habits, high def TV is still alive and kicking - and growing like July crabgrass. To us audio geeks, we know what high def means; it means high sampling rates and more bits per second. If the high rez sampling rate works for TV, just think of what it can do for music.
The problem confronting audiophiles with 96K-192K, lets just call it high rez, is not finding high definition music, but playing it back properly. If the comparison to high def TV is in tact, then 192K should sound significantly better than 44,1. Alas, in most cases it does not and for some 'philes out there, they can hardly tell the difference. So, back to my original theory: there must be a problem with playback.
As you can clearly see from my CyberServer videos, the PC is the problem. Being a computer jock, I know a little about PCs and USB. The block input / output that USB uses requires a pre-fetch of data blocks to be placed in computer memory, where, it is clobbered to death by other high speed clocks on the mother board and graphics card. Computer memory is not a good place for Oscar Petersen. Its really bad, if Oscar is at 192K. Using your computer for high rez playback is like watching high def TV on the SONY Trinitron: it just was not made for it.
They still can't convince me that the standard USB 2.0 drivers are adequate for high end audio and attaching a well made music "streamer" is the end all. The standard USB drivers are not fast enough for 192K (they were never meant to stream music, you see? ) and can barely do 96K. If audiophiles used DACs like the Matrix mini that display the sampling rate, they would find that most DACs, find so much jitter in the 96K signal that they down sample it to 48K. If the Audio gd DACs find ka ka in the signal, they just shut off, refusing the play the mess. The only way to get 192K and 96K reliably out of a PC is to replace the drivers a la Musiland or M2Tech. While they make a world a difference, you still have the block input / output - pre-fetch problem described earlier.
One easy solution to the USB problem is to get a computer with what is called "streaming" I/O (I/O stands for input / output). Streaming I/O reads a byte - writes a byte. No memory to muck up the sound, no blocks with their choppy latency that translates into jitter. While fairly primitive, streaming I/O is ideal for digital playback. The best operating systems to make use of the streaming I/O are the Unix / Linux brands. Here, a computer programmer can open a music file and specify this somewhat primitive I/O mechanism for the pushing the music file down the stream.
The next fly in the high rez ointment, is latency. Since the computer is not really meant for high speed streaming of anything, latency abounds. The DAC sees latency as jitter, and although the asynchronous USB drivers help, they are not as fast as they need to be so latency prevails. You have to cut latency anywhere you can: on the I/O bus, which carries the digital music, to the hard drive. The hard drive is slowest of the bunch and any increase in I/O speed from the disk yields an appreciable improvement. A solid state drive is about 40% to 50% faster that a conventional hard drive with a motor. Its one drawback is that it is expensive. Like a sports car, you pay for speed.
When you put this all together, a Linux operating system with streaming I/O and a solid state drive, you get CyberServer. I cannot tell you how happy we were to see Byrston trying this same idea out with their new media server. One thing though, the Bryston costs over $2K price tag - although it uses a terabyte. The USB thumb drive that they use, in our opinion, may still be a little too slow. Stick with the faster solid state ones. Ours start at $720.
All the best,
Vic
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
They Call Me Mr. Chips
Well, they might as well. I probably have here, at my disposal, a slew of DACS and codecs of all shapes and sizes. I have old Philips TSA1543s, PCM 1702, PCM 1798s PCM 1704, ADM 1852, ADM 1853, all sorts of Delta Sigmas and Wolfsons.
What I find interesting is that you say that each of these chips have a sound of their own. See if this conversation sounds familiar to you:
"Hello, Pacific Valve"
"Yes, I am interested in the Bluto DAC, What chip set does it have?"
"It has an AD1853"
"Oh, forget it, I don't like the sound of that chip."
Really?
For the life of me, as I dig through all the DACs and chips that I have, I cannot correlate a sound signature of the chip with the DAC. I can say that it is easy to make the Analogue Devices chips sound soft, but the Lite CD 22 player has the AD 1853 chip and it sounds anything but soft - as a matter of fact, it has given me joy through its dead neutral sound.
Or how about the ubiquitous PCM 1704UK. I have heard this chip sound soft as in the Lite DAC 60 Modified, sound dynamic as in the Audio gd DAC 19SE, sound romantic as in the Brigatta 2 - well, you get the picture.
The disparity between chips and sound is prevalent in Audio gd's latest round of now discontinued. SABRE DACS. The NFB-1 seems to have the classic SABRE sound - slightly analytical, forward, dynamic. But, the NFB-7 has some of that, but not all of that and sounds more like the REF 7, which means the SABRE sounds like a PCM1704UK - get it?
As I have said before, its not the chip, its the filtering and the output stage that gives the DAC its signature. Take for example the NOS DACs. Some use the TDA1543, some do not - but they all tend to sound the same (dynamic, high energy, "just ok" resolution) probably because of the sampling they use which in turn, effects the filtering. So its really the implementation of the chip and not the sound of the chip itself that contributes to the sound of the DAC. It may be easier, for a DAC designer, to get the sound they want by choosing one chip set over another. But again, they are tailoring the sound, and not using a chip's sonic signature.
All the best,
Vic
Well, they might as well. I probably have here, at my disposal, a slew of DACS and codecs of all shapes and sizes. I have old Philips TSA1543s, PCM 1702, PCM 1798s PCM 1704, ADM 1852, ADM 1853, all sorts of Delta Sigmas and Wolfsons.
What I find interesting is that you say that each of these chips have a sound of their own. See if this conversation sounds familiar to you:
"Hello, Pacific Valve"
"Yes, I am interested in the Bluto DAC, What chip set does it have?"
"It has an AD1853"
"Oh, forget it, I don't like the sound of that chip."
Really?
For the life of me, as I dig through all the DACs and chips that I have, I cannot correlate a sound signature of the chip with the DAC. I can say that it is easy to make the Analogue Devices chips sound soft, but the Lite CD 22 player has the AD 1853 chip and it sounds anything but soft - as a matter of fact, it has given me joy through its dead neutral sound.
Or how about the ubiquitous PCM 1704UK. I have heard this chip sound soft as in the Lite DAC 60 Modified, sound dynamic as in the Audio gd DAC 19SE, sound romantic as in the Brigatta 2 - well, you get the picture.
The disparity between chips and sound is prevalent in Audio gd's latest round of now discontinued. SABRE DACS. The NFB-1 seems to have the classic SABRE sound - slightly analytical, forward, dynamic. But, the NFB-7 has some of that, but not all of that and sounds more like the REF 7, which means the SABRE sounds like a PCM1704UK - get it?
As I have said before, its not the chip, its the filtering and the output stage that gives the DAC its signature. Take for example the NOS DACs. Some use the TDA1543, some do not - but they all tend to sound the same (dynamic, high energy, "just ok" resolution) probably because of the sampling they use which in turn, effects the filtering. So its really the implementation of the chip and not the sound of the chip itself that contributes to the sound of the DAC. It may be easier, for a DAC designer, to get the sound they want by choosing one chip set over another. But again, they are tailoring the sound, and not using a chip's sonic signature.
All the best,
Vic
Monday, November 01, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Welcome Aboard
In case you have not heard, "Sound, by Singer" lost its lease and is selling (or, by the time you read this) has sold, all of its inventory. I am not sure how you "lose your lease". I have never lost one. I can understand not being able to pay your lease, trying to negotiate a new rate and then bowing out of it. But I am not sure how your current lease, if paid, can be lost. I am not, by any means, implying that this is what happened to "Sound by Singer", I am just saying.
How can you be surprised? The market where high end retailers play is really a "House of Cards". I want to bet that Singer was a pretty good business man, but he should have known that it is the same people buying the same goods over and over again, and net new customers must have been very small. In the Obmama stimulus-sized high end audio market (some $1 billion now), we know that high end audio occupies the smallest of bread crumbs.
I have said it over and over again, but it bears repeating: I have never seen an industry go out of its way to shrink its market as well as high end audio has. High end audio insults consumers and then prices them our of the market with politician-speak unscientific preponderances.
I hear that Mr. Singer may go web based and offer high end over the internet. I find this very interesting as web based retail, marketing and distribution is a completely different paradigm than what high end audio retailers are used to.
Welcome aboard, Mr. High End Retailer.
All the best,
Vic
In case you have not heard, "Sound, by Singer" lost its lease and is selling (or, by the time you read this) has sold, all of its inventory. I am not sure how you "lose your lease". I have never lost one. I can understand not being able to pay your lease, trying to negotiate a new rate and then bowing out of it. But I am not sure how your current lease, if paid, can be lost. I am not, by any means, implying that this is what happened to "Sound by Singer", I am just saying.
How can you be surprised? The market where high end retailers play is really a "House of Cards". I want to bet that Singer was a pretty good business man, but he should have known that it is the same people buying the same goods over and over again, and net new customers must have been very small. In the Obmama stimulus-sized high end audio market (some $1 billion now), we know that high end audio occupies the smallest of bread crumbs.
I have said it over and over again, but it bears repeating: I have never seen an industry go out of its way to shrink its market as well as high end audio has. High end audio insults consumers and then prices them our of the market with politician-speak unscientific preponderances.
I hear that Mr. Singer may go web based and offer high end over the internet. I find this very interesting as web based retail, marketing and distribution is a completely different paradigm than what high end audio retailers are used to.
Welcome aboard, Mr. High End Retailer.
All the best,
Vic
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