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In Reply to: RE: Why does a ten year old NOS DAC sound so good? posted by jedrider on May 30, 2014 at 08:50:49
Did the older DACs have that rich sound for the sake of it? Or did they maybe have a touch of warmth added to offset the occaisional brightness of early digital recordings? Taking it a bit further... now that digital recording has somewhat come of age, compensation on playback is no longer necessary.
In the bedroom rig I have the first Resolution Audio product. I recall it was their Masters thesis while at MIT. It has the UltraAnalogue DAC chip in it. It provides excellent sound for a 20 something year old DAC.
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I also have a 20 year old DAC with the UltraAnalog DAC chips in it. Sounds very good indeed and quite musical
This is exactly what I don;t want in a DAC. I actually didn't like any of the initial tube CD players on the market because they all seemed to me to be distortion generators (in fact I didn;t like many of the tube amps I heard either and still don;t care for a number of them). They MIGHT help a system with bright speakers I suppose but the problem is adding "warmth" or adding a softness will effect every recording.
Now sure I might take this over a lot of gear that is ear bleedingly bright and which also doesn;t seem to go away regardless of recording but I'd prefer the discs to be presented as is - the system that will sound bright with bright recordings and mush with mush recordings and will present a soundstage THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS big when it's on the disc and "tis" big when that is the way it was recorded.
There is a difference to me with properly executed tube gear (ie new tube amplifiers from good manufacturers) where the tube isn;t being used as a mushing distortion buffer and one that is actively engaged in the circuit.
A good SET amp will be dead quiet, will have pin drop fast bass and treble extension of a SS amplifier - what it doesn't do is sound gritty and grainy and "processed" and "fake" and "thin" and lacks a sens of the hall ambiance. I directly compared Bryston to an 8 watt Audio Note amp a decade ago ( I was a SS guy and ready to buy Bryston). I played classical music and listened to a Barber piece "Adagio for Strings" (better known as the theme from Platoon). The bass was deeper on the Audio Note for a start (better power supplies and transformers despite the blathering about watts). The treble extension was just as extended but the violin upper notes didn;t have any artificial "fuzz" surrounding the note. It is not evident if all you audition is SS and Bryston. It IS noticeable and very much so when you directly A/B the amplifiers. I want the note and only the note not the note with some sort of echofuzz crap along with it. It was "brighter" which to inexperienced ears may seem like "more treble" but in fact it is noise and the SET amp went just as high in frequency without the grunge.
And you could actually hear the hall - which you could not hear via the Bryston. Interestingly, you could hear it all better on the AN at a much lower volume level - with the Bryston you had to keep cranking the volume with the hopes that it would come through better.
So in spite of the fact that I was there to buy Bryston Separates with a 20 year warranty and good build and easy to sell later and 150 watts per channel and raved about press and excellent measured response and (that I'm Canadian) I elected to buy an 8 watt tube integrated amp with average build quality with only 1 year warranty from a no name company (to me back then). And I play trance, techno, pop, hard rock, metal, as well.
The same comparison with the AN K/SPE versus Paradigm's best standmount and B&W's 805 followed. The supposed superiority of metal drivers and tweeter on top both just blared "metal tweeter over here" at me. Again noise in the treble (break-up) and the K just frankly embarrassed the hell out of them on acoustic instruments like the piano. Halfway through Moonlight Sonata and those speakers dropped off the list instantly.
But I have also heard the mushy distortion boxes over the years and not been impressed. The Ack! - meh, older tube amps from Copland - blegh and the ST70 eesh WTF? I bought the Solid State Rotel preamp 1585 or whatever over the ARC SP(something) tube preamp - eesh that preamp SUUUUUCKED - muddy has hell.
The big problem with tubes is the HUGE variance from one end of the spectrum to the other. Audio Note DAC's can sound shockingly Shrill - no one would ever call them "warm" (see above review). They are absolutely NOT the DAC to buy if you want to make a bright system sound warm. You could add a Rega Planet if you want that - and it is SS.
If you haven't heard a DAC with an UltraAnalog chipset then you haven't heard the best commercially available ladder DAC. It sounds really, really good. Very high resolution but with natural tone and great dynamics...really surprised me because I bought for a VERY reasonable price.
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