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If interested, here's a new DAC from Matrix w/ impressive use of the new top of the line ESS 9038Pro DAC chip. It was selling for $1699 for the first 100 units. Don't know if they've reached that point or not yet.
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I'm waiting for the new Oppo Sonica DAC to come out. It also uses the new ESS 9038Pro DAC chip and it's supposed to be priced at $799. The best part about it is its ability to play digital files directly from a USB hard drive. In other words, it's a digital player, DAC and preamp all rolled into one. I hope Oppo delivers.
Best regards,
John Elison
lots of things to change to make this thing sound really good. AC power problems, ordinary rectifier diodes, no damping on heatsinks, bad sounding resistors and electrolytic caps, output coupling caps it does not need, etc. etc. I will have a field day modding this thing. The basics are good however, so with mods this will sound pretty good. Does not look like it has options for various digital filters nor does it have I2S input which gives better sound than straight usb......anotherwords, no matter what you do, this will never be world class. But, at $799 it is a real bargain for all the features and sonic possibilities with modding. And it is cute too.
Well, my BDP-105D sound good to me so I would probably be happy. If the new UDP-205 accepts DSD(128) directly from a hard drive, I might buy it instead. Of course, it no longer uses ESS DACs so maybe I should buy the Sonica DAC instead. Decisions, decisions! ;-)
Best regards,
John Elison
The Sonica can only take DSD64 via its usb input....I imagine the same will be for the 205. Why do you say the 205 no longer uses ESS chips? I see no reference to what chips they will use except everyones guess is that it will be the ESS9038 just like the Sonica. The 203 now uses an AKM multichannel DAC instead of the Cirrus DAC the 103 used.
> The Sonica can only take DSD64 via its usb input....I imagine the same will be for the 205.
Well, in that case, I guess I don't want either one of them. Oh, well.
> Why do you say the 205 no longer uses ESS chips?
I thought the 103 and the 105 used the same ESS DAC chip. Therefore, I expected the 205 to use the same AKM DAC as the 203. I guess I was wrong.
Sorry!
John Elison
The chassis indicates it has only 1 transformer. And it is using OP-amp as the analog stage. Never like an op-amp output stage.
nt
The DAC is quite short and the circuit board is mounted maybe upside down from the bottom.....so there would be little room for any kind of modding. I doubt anyone will even take it apart.....not mod friendly. You need a case that is open on top. The Gustard X20 Pro or Oppo Sonica with mods would kill this thing.
That will keep the HQPlayer software busy!
And you're network as well, if you are streaming from a workstation over ethernet.
They seem to think it's audible.
The new Marantz is Only 4x.
Losers!
2X is plenty good.
And not $5-6000
They do everything in firmware.
But you don't have to generate the upsampling yourself, as you can do with HQPlayer, then try to figure out how to get it into a DAC to get it decoded.
You would only have to input the original file/format, the Player/Dac does the rest.
That would work for me, if I ever got one...
but it might be.
I heard it a couple times at local Audiophile Meetups and while I would be perfectly happy with it (or the Jr. version, for that matter) if you have something you already like, why pay more for just a change?
Actually, in my Den System, I haven't been happy with either the Mytek 192/DSD, Lampizator, and even Exasound E22.
Just got Mac D150 from Music Direct, since they have the return policy that dealers don't have.
I am very happy with DSD 128 on it, quite a big improvement.
I'll be keeping it.
Jitterbug helps, too, I like it.
...I just assumed it was their attempt to future proof the unit. Or, then again, might just be marketing hype. Still looks very interesting!
But it seems ever step up the DSD up-sample tree adds something (or not)?
HQPlayer can up-sample up to 512 DSD and folks are scrambling to find hardware capable of decoding it.
The good news here is that I chatted with Jussi at HQPlayer and he seems rather confident that the higher spec'ed iMac with i7 processors and Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz might be able to handle the job of up-sampling to DSD 512 but doubts that the DSD over PCM (DoP) part (1.5 MHz PCM) will work well out the Apple USB port.
Suggests using Ethernet and running the steam into something like the uRendu then into a DSD 512 capable DAC.
Still, he says that will take about 50+ Mbps on the network as a constant stream. My Gigabit Network would likely require a bit of fine tuning before I could try that out. Oh, that and a DSD 512 capable DAC.
50mbps is only about 6megabytes per second. If your routers and switches are pure gigabit that means about 100 megabytes per second cap, your very very well equipped for that sans the DAC.DSD makes me crazy. I archived my first record to DSD 128, check it out if you want, it was a tribute to my grandmother and reflection on her passing, just dark ambient. Don't let dark in dark ambient scare you, it is very illuminating.
Just throwing it out there, here's the link
Edits: 01/15/17
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