The road to a Chord DAC 64 etc

Oh well I've gone and done it now. After ages of feeling that the Arcam amps (A & P85's) were'nt cutting the mustard, and that the Arcam cd72/DAC 20 was perhaps a little laid back for my tastes a minor clear out has happened in the last few weeks.

I tried various amps by Arcam/Naim/Chord/Rega/Cyrus. After lots of too-ing and fro-ing the list was down to Rega/Naim/Cyrus. The Chord integrated was just a bit too much and the Arcam FMJ was just more of what I was trying to get away from.

In the end I was really surprised at how much I liked the Naim amps, but like the Cyrus, I basically got fed up with trying to sort out all the additional boxes you had to get to make them sound anything like. In the end I went for the Rega Cursa + Exon mono blocks. Please don't ask me to say things like they were more musical, or timed better than the Naim because the factor determing the final choice was that this combination was the one I liked best. It just seems to drive the FB1's with more authority.

So on to the CD player. I wanted to try the Naim 5 & 5i, the Cyrus , Arcam fmj, Rega Jupiter and a few others. Again it came down to the Rega and the Naim offerings and quite frankly I found it very hard to seperate them. In the end I thought I'd gone for the Jupiter. However after a little reflection I decided to try the Chord DAC64 againts the Naim with whatever extra boxes were prescribed for its condition and the Jupiter versus my Cd72 as transport. The 64 won against them both by quite a margin. So the only choice left was do I get the Jupiter as a transport? The answer to that turned out to be no, for the little differences between that and the cd72 were not worth £1k! and I rather fancy the idea of getting a proper transport in the near future.

Whilst the Cursa/Exon combination may seem superficialy to be more of a sideways step than upgrade, the difference in sound and presentation is astonishing. The Exons simply should not be sounding that good for the price (IMHO!!).

Anyway apart from one minor question I'm one very happy bunny at the moment. That question being what optical cable do other 64 users recomend, after lots of mucking around with co ax's for the 20 I'm not sure I'm up for the same learning curve with optical jobbies so any pointers would be appreciated.

Cheers

timbo

 

And que Mike

 

Cue Mike you mean ...and here I am. I've only ever tried the optical cable I'm currently using with my DAC64 which is a bottom of the range IXOS (XHD308) and it was much better than any coax connection I've ever tried. Costs about £20-30.

Two of my friends here who also use a DAC64 with an optical connection are very happy with a cheap plastic optical cable like the freebies you get with a CD walkman. Personally I doubt there's any difference at all between optical cables, especially at short distances and especially with the DAC64.

Michael.

 

Michael

Sounds good to me I was struggling to hear any difference between the two IC's I have. So thats one less thing to worry about.

Off back to the music now.. A little bit of Killing Jokes 2003 lp atm

Cheers

timbo

 

Hi,

Welcome to the Chord Dac64 club.

As one of the founder members, it's good to see new blood coming along.

I must admit, I have never tried the optical input. This is mainly due to the fact that the Tag transport dosen't have an opitcal output. But I'm going to give it a go using a Pioneer DVD player I have. I hope to borrow the Chord Blu transport again & will try the optical output from that.

When I got my Chord Dac64, it came with a optical cable. I have no idea how this compares with others.

I might have a bash tomorrow.

SCIDB

 

Is optical connection the preferred method these days? I thought it was frowned on in favour of electrical some years back? Never having had a separate Trans/Dac, only single box players, I never really gave it too much thought.

 

Optical is the preferred connection for the DAC64 . It's buffer eliminates the potential jitter issues with an optical connection and therefore the benefits of the electrical (noise) isolation that an optical connection gives are well worth having.

Michael.

 

I'm saying Nothing at the moment

 

Michael - I ducked out of this one on my first ever thread a couple of weeks ago, as I didn't want to get into a heated debate with the gaffer when I had less than five postings on the clock, but it's a rainy sunday afternoon so what the hell.....!

Are you saying that the optical connection should always sound better regardless of basic transport quality, because the buffer effectively makes the signal into the DAC64 jitter free and the electrical connections will always add more noise than an optical one, or only that all things being equal the same transport should perform better via the optical connection, if there is one, than the electrical ones?

As I mentioned on my earlier thread, I bought a cheapie Toshiba DVD player (DVD220) partly in the hope that I would find no difference between it and my Tag as a transport, but to me the differences between the Tag throught the BNC connection and the Tosh through the optical one were not at all subtle, and none of them favoured the Tosh. To my non technical brain this made sense at the time, since the Tag is clearly a "better" transport. Are you saying this shouldn't be relevant because of the inherent superiority of the optical connection, or are there other variables at work besides noise and jitter you've not mentioned, and that could affect the outcome? Presumably Chord think it's the latter or they wouldn't have bothered with the Blu (rave reviewed in HFC this month I noticed, but still too pricey for me!)

I'll be interested to hear the results of Dean's experiment!

Cheers, Steve

 

Steve,

I think you may find that Micheals views on the optical connection are not universally held on this forum. But as always, it pays to try out the options and go with the one that sounds best to you.

Cheers, Robbo

 

Robbo

Excellent advice, and when I get time to do a proper comparison I will. I currently can't find my optical leads, they're not in any of my boxes of hi-fi junk - suspect the cat may have 'had' them!!

timbo

 

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's also what Rob Watts, the designer of the DAC64 says and he also uses an optical connection with his

That view incidentally is a superset of your second point (that any transport would sound better with an optical connection to the DAC64), ie. if the first is true then the second must be true also.

There are many people who disagree with me about the DAC64's jitter immunity but no one has come up with any viable explanation of how the DAC64 could be susceptible to jitter (given the way it's buffer works).

Using straight 16bit/44.1kHz output I can see no reason why the £4.2K Chord "Blu" transport would sound any better than any other (via an optical connection of course). However, the Blu also offers a number of upsampling options which almost certainly will affect the sound allthough whether it's better or just different will be a subjective thing. The highest upsampling output , 176.4kHz, requires the use of two electrical (BNC) connections so optical couldn't be used in that case. However, I believe that the higher the sample frequency the less scope there is for jitter issues anyway. Having said all that, I used to use a Monarchy 48/96 upsampler (upsampling to 24bit/96kHz) with my DAC64 and got rid of it as it seemed to take some of the life out of the DAC64's sound and didn't really add anything - not to mention having to arse around with 2 digital connections.

The writer of a local hifi "magazine" here in Portugal (www.hificlube.net) also has a DAC64, also uses an optical connection and also tried the Blu transport (for a review) and found that for him it was best at 16/44.1 and then no better than his existing transport.

When you tried your Tosh 220 with the DAC64, are you sure it was outputing 16/44.1 PCM? The Tosh is 24/96 capable so it may have been upsampling which might well have been making the difference.

Michael.

 

I believe a song title is most apt here 'A momentary lapse of Reason' And I'm still saying nothing here :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

IF the first is true! A tricky one this as you (and obviously Mr Watts!) have the technical knowhow to back you up, but I am reasonably certain of what I heard when I did the original comparison, and anecdotally I'm not aware of lots of DAC64 users binning their pricey transports in favour of £50 DVD players, which by your argument should work just as well.

Yes, I had Tosh on the PCM setting (the only choice is between that and "Bitstream"). Assuming the settings were right, why else might the Tosh have sounded clearly worse (not marginally worse, and not just different, IMHO) than the Tag, if your theory is right? Assume for purposes of argument that it did, and in return all this has got me intrigued enough that I'm going to connect up the Tosh again and see if it still sounds less good - may yet save myself a few hundred quid! Will report back....

Cheers, Steve

 

Chord used to demo the DAC64 with cheap transports (including a Sony Discman IIRC) on the basis that the buffer it used made it transport-independent.

It ceased to be officially transport-independent when they introduced their own transport. Funny old world.

-- Ian

 

Funny old world indeed Sideshow, John Franks (chord's boss) I do believe has a Teac P0 as his own personal transport, must be the fact the chord blu, has improved tea drinking sales due to it's Tea-pot lid design, one for the Damien Hurst to run with I feel

 

LMAO! :lol:

:ffrc:

 

I have absolutely no idea why it might have sounded clearly worse. There certainly is no rational explanation for it.

Michael.

 

Despite the theory, perhaps the DAC64 isnt transport independant after all.........

Must be all those bit read errors.

 

Hmmm - the plot thickens!!

Well, as promised in my post last night, in a spirit of fair minded enquiry I hooked up the Toshiba again, and did it sound "clearly worse" as I remembered? Errr - no - in fact at first blush it sounds identical - score 1 to Michael and egg on my face!

All of which leaves me intrigued, and slavering at the thought of the new turntable I can buy with the proceeds of the Tag, all the pricey digital cables sitting around the house, and my Rega P25! Even if I do eventually hear a difference I suspect it's not going to match up to the difference between the Rega + Super Elys and a Michell Gyro SE/better cart in terms of improvement

I'm going to listen through the Tosh for the next few days and then go back to the Tag to see if I hear a difference, and if I don't then the Tag and the Rega are going on the market.... Never has being (possibly) proved wrong been so pleasant.

My earlier question, which wasn't just rhetorical, still applies though, because I have no doubt that the Tosh DID sound noticeably worse when I tried it straight out of the box. It now has a Russ Andrew powercord on the back, and has been burnt in by hours of DVDs, but presumably going by Michael's theory none of that should make a difference either. Maybe I stuffed up the connections!

So logic (and Michael) appears to have triumphed over the forces of unreason. Time for Dean to try the same test and tell me if I have cloth ears.

Cheers, Steve