HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

"Wasn't disgraced" as in for what it cost it was a minor miracle that it was even being compared to Dacs costing up to £1000. Never mind being praised by all who attended and it didnt sound as if the guys felt as though it was out of its depth at all in the lineup. Condescension was not my intention and I didn't mean to raise your blood pressure Doc.

Blood pressure stays put, I have a machine to measure it, it is fine. Irritation does other things to me, gets my tail up as they say. I owned the best DAC ever made on the planet in most authorities opinion, Sony DAS R1, sold it for a lot of dosh as this Chinese thing was a hundredth of the size and nearly as good. Remember I judge things musically, I really couldn't give a feck about hi-fi criteria unless they contribute to the music, and they rarely do. There are loads of Hi-Fi DACs out there, Beresford is one, I wouldn't give them house room.

http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-DAS-R1.html

It looks like I may have to mod one to prove my point. FOR ME and to prove the point. I wanted Stu to do it but he is busy growing our food.

Not sure when I will get around to it.

Remove it from steel case, hardwire psu to board, see if circuit will take more than one psu, build necessary psu(s). That is as far as I have got with thinking about it.

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: ↑Tue May 08, 2018 12:09 am

http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-DAS-R1.html

It looks like I may have to mod one to prove my point. FOR ME and to prove the point. I wanted Stu to do it but he is busy growing our food.

If times a problem just buy a decent LPS from MCRU and try it. These are put together by Nick aren’t they??

Yes but if MCRU are involved and taking slurp it wont be cheap.

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: ↑Tue May 08, 2018 10:32 am Yes but if MCRU are involved and taking slurp it wont be cheap.

From memory they do do a escalating (in price) range of LPSs it would be interesting to know (From Nick?) what improvements happen as the range goes up in price. Or what changes inside are made to ‘better’ on (say) a £40 LPS.

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: ↑Tue May 08, 2018 12:09 am Blood pressure stays put, I have a machine to measure it, it is fine. Irritation does other things to me, gets my tail up as they say. I owned the best DAC ever made on the planet in most authorities opinion, Sony DAS R1, sold it for a lot of dosh as this Chinese thing was a hundredth of the size and nearly as good. Remember I judge things musically, I really couldn't give a feck about hi-fi criteria unless they contribute to the music, and they rarely do. There are loads of Hi-Fi DACs out there, Beresford is one, I wouldn't give them house room.

http://www.thevintageknob.org/sony-DAS-R1.html

It looks like I may have to mod one to prove my point. FOR ME and to prove the point. I wanted Stu to do it but he is busy growing our food.

Only time I heard the Sony/DAC transport it was in an all Sony system and though it had great detail it all sounded rather bright and hifi. At the time I owned a 337ESD CD player and I concluded that this was a little more listenable but still had the Sony brightness trait. It used the much revered 1541A DACS. My conclusion is later bit stream was smoother if a bit bland and modern DACs I am using are better including the Beresford SEG. I think the DAC in my OPPO 205 might be much better still but unfortunately Oppo are closing their digital business because likely they find mobile phones more profitable (big in China). Not so surprising that a basic Chinese DAC might be close these days since they are chip and software based. I think people pay for added facilities and case work mainly in a DAC. Something like Chord is a bespoke design to a large extent hence the price. Also it's a Brand that charges a large premium. Their stuff looks nice is all I can say as what I have heard has not impressed for the asking price. They may be wasting their time if Chinese can knock out good DAC modules for a few pence. Perhaps someone in UK will latch onto this and produce a top notch DAC unit for under £100 using Chinese bits.

Before Metrum Acoustics started making their own NOS DAC modules, they were using an industrial off-the-shelf chip that wasn't specifically designed for audio.

Processing chips of high capacity are mass-made these days and audio data doesn't really need that much CPU space.

Also very intrigued by the Doc-Dac & LPSU combo. Might be worth ordering to try against my own devices here.

Our next bake-off project

http://hififoofight.org/2018/05/08/nort ... row-march/

The Doc's Sony pair were as stock I understand (no delving needed I was told) and they didn't sound 'toppy' at all, to me at any rate. Rather, bass was presented with proper power and grace if the recording allowed it. I do know the slightly 'whiter than white' portrayal of other top single box ES players (502, 505 and 555 in particular), but Sony seemed to mellow out a little after these and I believe the Doc's pair were from this slightly later generation? The previou two-box offering was a little 'stark' in the wrong system (Naim)...