DAC - How much difference does the transport make?

I don't post anymore due to ZG aggression by certain 'regular' pompous posters which by all accounts is sadly still going on- but I'd like to help with my experience-

I'm with Ditton here - the original Audio synthesis Transcend is terrific. But on Hi Fi for sale there are a couple of modified transports by audio synthesis - having heard a few I would seriously consider these much better than the trichord clock and power supply mods (never connected etc) . The audio synthesis DACs are excellent - perfect partners and I think give the expensive DCS' range a run for their money.

 

Thanks for the lesson. As you can see I have some reading to do.

rollo

 

Larkrise whereabouts are you ,I would very much like to hear the Audio synthesis dac, Keith.

 

You would be welcome to have a listen - just outside of Cambridge. My DAC is the Discrete - the top one but not variable and is significantly better than the Decade, though the Decade is excellent an highly reccomended - I prefer to use a preamp as i also use a turntable.

 

Bugger - I've started posting - must vanish again until the Moderators actually do something about ZG

 

strange to report, I actually have three AS transports on my rack just now!! I'll explain in a mo.

But the key thing about the Dax Decade, apart from it being a v.good dac and giving the opportunity to try doing without a pre-amp, is that when paired with an AS (modded) transpoort [called Transcend] there is opportunity to

a) use Ncode
b) use a better interconnect, like AES or glass optical

Ncode is a encode/decode system used by AS to 'eliminate jitter'. It is excellent. The improvement is easily demonstrated.

I have had the AS modded Sony 711 for a while, but when I learnt that Godfather (of Avtalk and hifiwigwam) had moved to Edinburgh I wanted to A/B my 'mod Transcend' against his orginal 'Transcend'. Two others came round to the non-blind testing, and we were unanimous - damn their ears - and my curiousity turned to envy. I was then fortunate to find a s/h AS modded Sony CDP-XA2ES and snapped that up - it has much better build than the 711 and that is evident.

I have the Sony CDP-XA2ES set up at the moment, and know that its much better than the 711 (which I always liked) and am hesitating A/Bing against Godfather's original.

No doubt Godfather will be round to collect sometime, and I'll have to give Dunkyboy first dibs at the 711, as he also has the Dax Decade. But otherwise it will be looking for a good home before Christmas - if only to avoid having to explain too much to visiting family and friends - they really dont understand, do they - its just pity ...

 

Larkrise, thanks for the reply, there might be a small dac bake off in the pipeline, just trying to gather a few different dacs , I may be able to get hold of a Pacific Microsonics model II , there should also be an MSB Platinum III and perhaps a Lavry 2002, and an Esoteric X03 hopefully!

 

It is simple science, the better the transport the less need for error correction which should give a warmer sound (I think).

 

Today a pal of mine came over with a Beresford DAC
http://www.homehifi.co.uk/main/main.html
He's found it very good on his Roskan mid-end CDP.

First we listened to my Copland CDA-823 as CDP.
Then we used the Copland as a transport and Bereford. Pretty close run thing. The highs and vocals are very good on the Beresford.

Then we tried my cheap DVD player / 5.1 amp as a transport.
Actually it was not unpleasant. Everything was a very little bit blurred around the edges and not quite as snappy. Words like ambiance, presence, atmosphere & yes I guess timbre (from hifi speak come to mind).
Still pretty good from a £100 DAC and a very cheap DVD transport.

You pay very dear to that little extra...

The Beresford also did a pretty good job a a Preamp. The headphone output was pretty poor from it though. No match for my China G&W TW J1 http://www.china-highend-hifi.com/prod01123412233.htm

For a reasonably priced or cheap DAC the Beresford is brilliant! Light years better than the NOS DAC (plastic case / blue LED light up) thing I tried a while ago.

 

Interesting. I was looking for a DAC a while back to go with my Teac (vrds-7) CDP and almost bought a NOS DAC (only didn't as it was accidentally damaged prior to me buying it) but in the end bought a Beresford (too impatient to wait for any 2nd hand deals to take my fancy). TBH I'm not greatly convinced by the Beresford at the moment; on the plus side it definitely seems to be more expansive than the CDP but I'm finding it a little ott as far as the treble is concerned - I've physically winced on several occasions during particularly lively cymbal crashes. I keep switching between the normal analogue out and the DAC as I can't decide which I prefer. I understand that they take a while to settle in, so maybe I'll keep it a little longer.....

 

Sounds good. If you want I might be able to add one of my modified Behringer units to the list for comparison, diary permitting. Could be fun!

 

Ten yes that might be interesting, I just wanted to get some idea of the diferences and how large/small they might be! Keith.

 

the score of such a demo is also heavily related to a choice of DAC. some DACs can't cope with PC jitter, some can.


i believe such a test should be made with a DAC that is jitter-insensitive, such as DAC1 or altmann with JISCO.

 

Won't any DAC that re-clocks the data be jitter immune? At least to the accuracy of the DACs inbuilt clock, of course.

 

Aren't most modern studios hard disc based systems?

 

There is a very informative article in Absolute Sound December issue discussing the use of a transport verses a hard drive.
Hartley concludes a computer driven system outperforms conventioal CD. The main reason no jitter. Go figure.
Anyone read it? Whats your take?

rollo

 

Quite possibly, but then you are limiting your choice of Dac. The internal use of I2S is quite possibly the determining factor in my experiment. The Altmann Dac could be interesting but I'm not about to give someone €1k just to find out, nor fill my living room with car batteries!

Rollo, all I can say is we tried to give the hard drive based system as much help as possible. Running WAV files from a PowerBook with battery supply. Using firewire to transfer the signal into a small SPDIF converter, thence into the Marantz dac. It still lost out heavily to the built in transport. Nice for background music though.

 

Most modern studios are clock linked as well as far as I know.

 

la toilette,
The Beresford that we used has a fair few hours on it. The owner did say it settled down a lot over time.
We did find that my Tube amp could happily take Kenrad 6SN7 Driver tubes (warmer, more bassy, less toppy) with the Beresford as DAC.

The Copland straight sounded better on Sylvania Green label's (crisper, tighter bass).

This is the benefit of being able to tube roll

 

Hi - I am suddenly the new owner of a Sony CDP-XA5ES, to use as transport. Not sure what this model is.... but do you think it would benefit from the AS mods?

Are the AS CDP mods only relevant to AS DAC owners, or might the mods yield gains for other DACs?

Thanks
Tony