Advice on Dacs please

Hi,
recently purchased a Wadia 6 Cd player and whilst I can understand what all the fuss is about its Cd Transport capabilities I can't help thinking the Dacs in are a bit dated now (16 bit 32 khz) and I should consider getting an offboard Dac.
Funds are a bit limited or else I would go for Wadia's own Dac27...
Am considering Perpetual's P1a/P3a etc or Chord Dac 64...
can anyone tell me if this would be a wortwhile upgrade or is there a better Dac out there my budget is £600-£1000..
The rest of the Hifi elememt of my setup is MF A308 int amp and Nautilus 805's so I suppose Mid Range and don't know if a decent Dac will make a difference with my setup anyway?
Any advice will be much appreciated...

Paul

 

since you are in Nottingham, try contacting David Heaton of AudioSynthesis to see whether he can give a good deal on a p/x'd Dax Decade.

 

paul,
i'd also have a look for an audio synthesis dax-2 - very similar to the decade but without the volume control (which would be superfluous with your pre). you might also want to look at the tri-vista dac if you like the mf sound. others to take a listen to if you can would be the various NOS dacs floating around e-bay from the likes of derek shek (at least one person sold their dac 64 on in favor of one) or if you want something from a 'name' try a 47 labs or audio note version. there are also various us dacs which are well respected - MSB platinum, camelot, etc. another favorite of mine is the c.e.c. dx71.
all that said i must point out that the technology behind the dac has only a partial influence on the sound. i've found that beefy psu's and a good output stage allied to a quality multibit, oversampling dac (no upsampling) produces a sound more to my taste than any others i've heard.
i currently run a dax decade - same as ditton (well without the black gate tweakery he has).
cheers


julian

 

I'd be tempted to go for a nos dac and see what gains you can get from the transport...then look to get a top line dac if you think it worth the effort.

 

Just a quick hijack.. how long is the buffer delay on the DAC64? I use my DAC in my studio and as such play instruments through it, if it has a noticeable delay that will make it impossible to play any instruments! Anything more than about 3 milliseconds would be too much I think.

 

Tenson
you can set it to either 0/2 or 4 seconds.

Just as a answer to the question, I still use 16 bit 44.1khz seems to work for me

 

Is that 0, 2 or 4 seconds? Does it still sound just as good on 0 seconds??

 

IMHO 4 seconds buffering is best, when I used to run one, this is the setting I felt gave best results.

 

The general view is that 4 seconds sounds best. On the other hand, the designer say it makes no difference whatsoever. I'll ask him what the total propogation delay is sometime....

 

What about the Benchmark, how long is that ones buffer? Is the Decade DAC buffered?

Cheers

 

a question for GaryG, Nic or maybe David Heaton himself ..

 

afaik the decade isn't buffered but it does use some very sophisticated clock locking to get < 100 psec jitter. however this is for low jitter sources only. if the source has higher jitter levels then a cruder clocking method is used which allows the dac to lock onto lower quality transports / digital sources.
cheers


julian

 

Julian, your 'my kit' link still lists a dax-2, not the dax decade.

btw, in addition to the Black Gates upgrade - which is worth it when you have both time (for a holiday away from your kit) and money - I have use of Ncode between transport & dac. this reduces/eliminates jitter and allows a very natural sound. keep an eye out for the odd transport or two that come up for sale - I saw a Meridian 200 with Ncode earlier this year.

 

ditton,
i know i need to update my 'my kit' thing as my system is now almost totally different...



****UPDATED IT NOW****

cheers

julian

 

I know its not what you asked, but £1000 + what you'd get for your amp second hand (£1000?) would get you enough for a big improvement (IMHO) in your systems sound by getting a better amp (if you buy second hand).

I used to have a similar MF integrated, and its not bad, and very neutral but IMHO you can do better.

 

The Perpetual stuff worked quite well for me, but you must have the off board power supply so the amount of boxes goes up to 3 and then all the associated cables increases the footprint of what looks like a compact bit of kit. Sound wise they actually do a number of things right, general presentation is good, neither being forward or bright, bass is controlled but not too heavy, although I did feel the soundstage was slightly compressed when compared to other DACS around the price. After all the buzz about perpetual stuff a couple of years ago I bet there are a few good deals to be had now.

 

Good DACs and well-regarded manufacturers with kit in the £600-£1000 price range (used!).

Monarchy Audio (22B?)
Audio Note (1.1x?)
Tri-vista 21 (the best imho)
Benchmark DAC-1
Tag DPA32r (dac, pre & dab)
April Music Stello DP200 (pre + dac)

And loads of others I can't remember. Lovely kit by the way - nearly picked up a pair of N805's recently but a man can only go so overdrawn!

DT

 

Nos Dac

Although I've heard a lot of talk about the NOS DAC, I've never seen one on ebay. Where can a NOS DAC be sourced from, and are there different kinds of NOS DAC, or just the one Derek Shek NOS DAC?

I understand from SSB, that the NOS, is a clone of the 47 labs DAC, being a non-sampling, unfiltered, 16 bit DAC. I'm currently using a Meridian 206 (16 bit), and Pioneer Stable Platter CDP, as front ends.

I'm quite happy with transport performance, but interested in playing around with DACs. I've just got hold of a Meridian DAC 7 263, and want to try this on my CDPs. Having heard Ian's 47 Labs, I'd also like to experiment with an unfiltered non-sampling DAC.

Will PSUs make a big difference? 47 labs use a separate PSU, with their DAC. What kind of separate PSU is available for the NOS DAC, apart from a wall-wart.

Any advice, gratefully received.

 

dax decade on hififorsale.com

 

Six of us couldn't hear any difference to a chord 64 and a benchmark into some atc50's. Both are transparent. Chord has a nice case and bloody annoying delay on it's best quality setting. Dac1 is cheaper at 750 so much better vfm. Why pay more if you can't hear it. Unless you have a case work fetish.