NOS DAC vs SuperDAC, Round 2

[snip][leftnews]http://www.zerogain.com/forum/gas/images/1/1/4/1/bakeofft.jpg[/leftnews]Earlier this year a group of the ZeroGain faithful rolled up at Lordsummit's for the big fight of the budget DAC sensations, NOS DAC versus SuperDAC. Result was a no score draw due to some technical mishaps.

Come back to the present and both DACs are back, both fighting fit and ready for the rematch. But as round two gets underway, there's a dark horse lurking...[/snip]Earlier this year a group of the ZeroGain faithful rolled up at Lordsummit's for the big fight of the budget DAC sensations, NOS DAC versus SuperDAC.

Unfortunately, a few technical hitches were encountered with the NOS not being entirely well, and the SuperDAC having its sockets falling off.

Come back to the present and both DACs are back, both fighting fit and ready for the rematch. Thus, round two was arranged, this time at a new venue courtesy of rsand.

The rabble in attendance was: Rsand, ChrisPa, Chris1968, SCIDB and myself. Rsand's system comprises of a Copland 288 CD player, Quad Preamp, Quad II Forty power amps and Quad ESL-988 speakers with Ecosse cables.

The additional kit brought in included my modified Marantz CD16 and modded SuperDAC and Chris1968's NOSDAC and wall-wart psu. However, a third contender joined the fray. Attracting comments on its blingworthiness with gold nameplate, solid alu casework, window and shiny LEDs, SCIDB's Chord DAC64 came along to see how the budget DACs compared.

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Various excellent tunes were played before we even got onto to fiddling with hifi kit. Howard Tate put in for "Strangest Title" award with "She may be white but she be funky", but was immediately smacked down by the winner of that award, Tori Amos with "The power of orange knickers".

Earl Okin had us rolling on the floor with his cover versions of Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag and Blur's Song 2. During the course of the evening many cover versions were played, including Howard Tate - Kiss, Me first and the gimme gimmes - Stand by your man, Tori Amos - Smells like Teen Spirit and KD Lang - Hallelujah.

A little bit of setup time and then we were let loose on the Pizza. Well, these evenings have their priorities. :cookie:

Wading back into the fray, and we encountered what appeared to be the first technical hitch of the bake-off (it wouldn't be a bake-off otherwise!). A strange crackling echo coming from the output of the DAC64... It didn't recur later, so I think it was to do with the buffer overflowing as it reached the end of a 77 minute disc that had played over the food break.

So, the DAC64 was let loose in anger on Thea Gilmore - Land of the Free. We decided to follow Michaelab's route, and try the NOSDAC next, and finally the SuperDAC. On balance, my preference was for the DAC64, which was very natural, extremely detailed but coherently presented. The NOSDAC was extremely smooth and rounded comparatively; a very different presentation. The SuperDAC, strangely, fell almost exactly in between the two.

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The next track was Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter". Again, the DAC64 gave a very beguiling presentation that was easy to forget about testing and comparison and to just listen. The NOS was again very smooth and mellow, but it lost out on some of the fine details and had a flatter soundstage than the 64. On this track the SuperDAC came in third, without the delicacy to handle the fine detail as pleasantly as the DAC64, and verging into a harsh edge on a few vocals.

After some experimentation with speaker positioning, we played a few more tunes and eventually, at around half past midnight, decided to call it a night.

The synopsis of the evening was the expected result of a good bakeoff: Good food, good people and good tunes. Of the DACs... for me, the DAC64, but taking price into account, both the superDAC and the NOS provide excellent value. The NOS was a little too smooth in the test system for my liking.

The evening's track listing:

Thea Gilmore - My own private riot
Alison Moyet - Windmils of your mind
Nitin Sawhney - The river
Howard Tate - Kiss
Howard Tate - She might be white but shes funky
Tori Amos - The power of orange knickers
Me first and the gimme gimmes - Stand by your man
Earl Okin - Teenage dirtbag
Earl Okin - Song 2
Radiohead - No surprises
The Zutons - Dirty dance hall
Louis Prima - Buona sera
Mark Knopfler - Boom, like that
John Martin - Glory Box
Ray Lamontagne - Forever my friend
Luther Vandross - Lets make tonight the night
Damien Rice - The blowers daughter
Thea Gilmore - Land Of The Free
One Giant leap - My culture
The Mavericks - La Mucara
Fox - Single bed
Red hot chilli peppers - Give it away
Red hot chilli peppers - Under the bridge
PJ Harvey - Working for the man
Alvin Cash - Keep on dancing
Cymande - Brothers on the slide
Tori Amos - Smells like teen spirit
KD Lang - Haliluja
Jill Scott - Do you remember

 

Thanks for your company guys, i hope you enjoyed the evening as much as me although as you were all driving this time I probably enjoyed it that little bit more.

Great write up Isaac, this is a good feature. Surprised there are no other comments, Chris's? Dean?

I agree with Isaac, the 64 is a top drawer piece of kit and showed its class (I want one!) the Nos and super however are both very good but were outclassed but definately not shamed! I would prefer the superdac in my system over the nos, the 64 is vastly more expensive and the law of diminishing returns applies here.

Expensive kit on dem is now banned from my house in future

Thanks for your company (and alcohol)

Rob

 

hello folks, finally catching up with myself, thursday was a late night for sure, much yawning on friday! :SLEEP: :SLEEP:

firstly - great food and great company, many thanks to Rob for the hospitality!

as for the kit side of things - have top agree with everything Isaaac has said.
The DAC 64 certainly sounded sweet in Robs system and sonic differences between the 3 dacs were evident to all but at what cost?? i mean -cant they take the magnifier out of the top, bin the LED's and charge something more reasonable for it!!

Shame WM could not make it - i wonder how his tricked up NOS and PSU would have faired?? Guess we'll have to try that comparisson another day.....
.....once we are fully settled the invitaion will go out from me to come around, but i think we'll look at a Saturday afternoon! mine is but a modest system but, if its fails to excite anyones ears we could do some listening then hit the local!.....

 

TBF, the nos dac only comes alive when fed by a decent psu. I cobbled up a basic one over the wkend comprising of 80Va transformer, schottkies diodes and about 6600uf worth of caps, this made an improvement over the last one I made which in-turn was much superior to the one supplied.

 

T Bone, why not sell your old one to chris?

 

Its still in use, the one I did this weekend was an experiment its in bits again and will go on my phono amp. I will make another for my dac but Id still keep the original for back-up. However, Id be more than happy to make him one for the cost of the parts.

 

t-bone - may thanks for the offer, will look into following that up at some point.
what benefits have you preceived?? i all i have heard so far is Bass improvement, nothing about improved detail etc?

 

Hi

a big thanks to Rob for having us round. An enjoyable night. Thanks for the beer and food. Good to meet Chris and Chris. Good to see Isaac again.

I'd go along with Isaac with regards to the dac shoot out. My much travelled dac won a few more over. The Nos dacs offer very good value for money. The Chord Dac64 did suit Rob's system very well. These can be had 2nd hand from around £1100. I had bought along 2 other dacs but didn't get to try them. Maybe next time.

His Quad speakers did work better away from the back wall but got in the way of the door when tried this way. It was a good chance to listen to the Quad electrostatics and Quad valve amps. Nice speakers.

Good to see (hear) a few cover versions at the bake off. We ought to have a bake off with just cover versions.

A very enjoyable evening, thanks for having us round.

SCIDB

 

Good company (yet again), great choice of music. Particularly impressed by the way SCIDB pulled gems from CD's most of us would walk past or pretend we'd never owned. Thanks for your hospitality Rob.

I've not replyed earlier because the following day for me was Whit Friday in Saddleworth - the annual celebration of walking in the morning, Band contests in the evening; Beer walk on Saturday (watching, not walking (and staying dry)); Christening on Sun.; working flat out ever since... so a quick response now at some stupid hour of the night.

1st of all, Dirty Dance Hall is by the Zutons (though I understand why my writing looked like '2 wons')

Overall the quad system made some very lovely noises - particularly important was pulling them away from the walls - and made me feel I'd found a system I could happily live with. I think Isaac described the sound as a little laid back for his tastes, but in terms of overall balance, suited mine extremely well. A fair judgement on the overall sound was that at the end of the evening we simply played more and more music.

So what about the DACs? I could have lived with (and got great musical enjoyment from) any of the 3. I think there was overall more detail and slightly more tonal 'depth' to the DAC64. The soundstage on the NOSDAC seemed to fall back behind the speakers where the DAC64 placed it between and in front.

But overall I was extremely impressed by the NOSDAC. My suspicion is that the sound it was producing had still more to come with further tweaking/tuning (especially new PSU?). And therefore its value for money is excellent, and its improvement over a stock CD player couldn't be faulted. What we don't know from the evening is just how important the transport was - overall I'd expect 'very' for the NOSDAC (based on both theory and experience from the bakeoff at LordSummit's) and 'negligible' ('nil') for the DAC64 - I suspect Isaac's modded Marantz is hard to beat in this respect.

The evening's given me another push to sort out my CD front end, but for me (and my budgets) it's going have to be a DIY (or DIY modding) approach, and I've too many other domestic DIY projects (Cinquecento suspension swap this weekend) and a few existing hifi projects to get out the way first. And I have a definite requirement for a multi-input DAC - CD, DAB, HTPC

I'd be interested in another DAC shootout - maybe with a few more comparisons to see, for example, the effects of transports and PSUs.

Anyway, thansk once again

 

Its a shame we didn't try your Nos with PSU Dean, I remember you telling me you were going to bring it, but thought you had changed your mind as I didn't see it.
I think I will be altering my front end before too long but still a bit unsure what to do. I am favouring the super over the nos but would like to hear a nos thats had as much done to it as Isaacs superdac with psu before deciding as I think the mods might take it beyond the superdac?
The cost of a dac, psu, clock4 with NC PSU, opp amps and other mods will take me half way to a second hand dac64 and selling the copland should take me the rest of the way, and if Isaac is right about transports making no difference to the 64 then my denon dvd would sound the same?
I think the copland's VDRS transport should make some difference over the denon dvd player due to it picking up less vibrational errors?

 

Nice write up chaps, good one, just wish I'd had the opportunity to come and join in.

I wonder about the issue of system synergy with the above findings.
I picture Quad gear as being very clean and slightly laid back, and wonder whether some of the preferences for the DAC64 were based on the fact that it worked well to have a more upfront presentation on the Quad gear?

Any thoughts?

I can certainly concur that the NOS is reasonably laid back. That's one of the reasons it actually works very well fronting my Naim/Linn combo as it was rather tiring before.

 

I don't think there's anyway I'd have described the DAC64 as 'upfront'. Rather, of the 3 it was the smoothest, but had the most detail and was the easiest to hear what was goiing on.

The only reason why you might conceivably use the adjective 'upfront' is to do with where the DAC64 placed the stereo image. To my ears the DAC64 was between and in front of the speakers whereas at the other extreme the NOS DAC was behind the speakers.

No, 'upfront' is definitely not an adjective I'd have used.

 

I'm sure that's how many people use the adjective "upfront" and indeed the difference in placement of the image, just as you described, is one of the things I noticed immediately when comparing my DAC64 to my NOS DAC. To me, the DAC64 placing the image further forwards has something to do with the way it grabs your attention but also something that can make it tiring to listen to. The NOS DAC by comparison is much more natural and can be listened to for hours on end with no fatigue

Michael.

 

Again, we need to hear the NOS with PSU. I'm now torn between modding the copland and adding a tweeked superdac (or NOS PSU) or selling the copland, buying a second hand 64 and using it with my dvd player as Isaac reckons its transport immune, although I would expect a VDRS to have some effect on sound?
I cant imagine the 64 ever being fatiguing in my system, the way we sat back and just enjoyed the music for the last hour or so said it all.

 

Not the way I'd use it, so I don't really want to get into the semantics of how to apply a particular subjective adjective.

Let me instead say that the thing I'm always striving to hear from a CD playing system is the removal of what I'd describe as excess sibilance, or extreme treble 'splash' etc. on cymbals.
...and of the 3 DACs the DAC64 performed best in this area - it was the smoothest, least harsh, least brash, least 'upfront'

However, I really liked what I first heard from the NOS DAC and felt there was still more to come.

I've heard stereo images shift to all sorts of locations when comparing equipment, but I've never found any correlation between that and the smoothness of the system.

I'd agree with all of that.

PS. How's the cinq? I've just fitted lowered suspension to mine and it's so much fun

 

Chris what is a cinq?

 

Can I ask what cable was used? Thanks

 

Ecosse cables throughout. Super Monocrystal copper sprakercables and between pre and powers with a Monocrystal silver (the Legend) from source to pre. Power cables throughout were Monocrystal copper 'big reds.' All fed through a Dezorel G2 mains cleaner.

 

Fiat cinquecento. I found michaelab lurking on fiatforum - cinquecento boards - a great source of all things cinquecento - when his cinquecento failed its emission tests....
And as you know I've spent the last 18 months driving one as I gave my daughter driving lessons. SHE'S PASSED ... and my son get his provisional license at the end of June

Anyway, I've just swapped the suspension on my cinq - 40mm lower, stiffer shocks. Dirt cheap fun motoring for shortish distances - wouldn't want a long motorway drive in one.

 

40mm lower either its now on the floor or it was a bouncy castle? or both? I am a fan of low suspension just as you say not on long journeys