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In Reply to: RE: I did not like a DAC. Can I generalize . . . ? posted by pictureguy on November 08, 2014 at 19:22:11
had one and very much enjoyed it's smooth sound. It worked very well.
I wanted to be able to go into very high rez with my Mac and so I replaced the DacMagic with a Yulong DAC8. The improvement was startling, way better performance plus a great headphone amp built in that you can use or leave out of the circuit.
Yulong DAC8 is about 4 times the original cost of the DacMagic but the improvement is worth it. YMMV.
Follow Ups:
The DacMagic/Plus sound is very dominated by the Wolfson WM8740 DACs. These DACs do the I-V conversion onboard and there isn't a whole lot in the output stage to make a night and day difference with the basic design. Other products that have current output DAC ICs on board can sound radically different depending on the designers preference. I bought one of each of the DacMagic models for a project and I went to town on the DacMagic, re-capping the power supply, and all critical bypass/decoupling caps etc, replacing the 5532 and OP275 for LME49722, replacing the metal film polypropylene caps for matched polystyrene caps, replaced the output NP caps for Nichicon MUSE ES and the difference hardly justified the effort and expense! Doing similar on a Musical Fidelity X-DACv3 (as well as grafting in a Tentlabs XO clock module) transformed it from sounding "OK" to something outstanding!
Looked at another way, the Cambridge Audio design is actually very good engineering - they have achieved close to the best performance for the price point chosen. More exotic components aren't necessary. To improve the sound they choose to go to a current output DAC AD1955 as in the 851 DAC and CD player for the reasons I outlined.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Did you have the DM or the DM+?
The plus (+) does have a reasonable headphone output which is of some use very late at nite. It is 'old school' 1/4" while the output on my P5 is 1/8" or 3.5mm.
What is meant by 'very high rez'? And where do you get such files?
My mac will output 24/192 if I HAD the file.
I just looked up photos of the Yulong and the ONE feature which bugs me is the single optical or coax input. And the 1200$ retail is about 2x the DM+ list.
Too much is never enough
and by HR I mean DSD and DSDx2. The Yulong will do those and the music player I will be adding to the new Mini will output those too. Thus doing an end run around Itunes limited output range.
"Automatic sample rate switching, up to 384 kHz PCM sample rate or 2.8 or 5.6 -MHzDSD" The Yulong can only go to those rez with the USB connect. My McIntosh SACD/CD player will use the optical inputs as it has been doing. Those are the only two Digital inputs and/or devices that I need to accommodate.
Those high rez files are available from downloads all over the net.
Yes, the cost is higher. I feel that the improvement in sound was well worth it but the real selling point was the unlimited ability to play any and all present and future resolutions.
And the Sennheiser's sound magnificent with the headphone amp....
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