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I am considering this DAC to run it directly into power amps. Anyone knows if the volume control is analogue or digital? I will pass it on if it is digital.Any users out there? Would be great if someone could share their experience. Not sure if it is still a reference product considering 7 years since it was produced. I can't find it on the Pass Labs page.
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I pined for a D1 for years before an example with the 24/96 upgrade turned up on Audiogon. I paid a lot, but haven't regretted a second spent with it.I replaced a Benchmark DAC1 with it. Not even the same ballpark, the Benchmark sounds like a cheap toy in comparison, especially if you're using the volume control on the Benchmark.
The volume control on the Pass D1 is analogue. However some have noted that the top end can be a bit recessed when the volume is below 11-o-clock. This is pretty darn loud in my system. I usually run it wide open with a X2 in the way for source switching...
I will note that even with the volume wide open, the balanced outputs sound considerably better than unbalanced - so much so, that when listening on my Grado RA1/RS1 headphone setup, which uses unbalanced input and has its own volume control, I use the tape outputs of the X2, rather than the RCA outputs of the D1...
It is an ridiculously revealing dac, with no personality whatsoever. Want to know exactly what your transport sounds like? What about your digital cable. Heck, changing the power cable on the transport reveals noticable shifts in sonic character.
The AT&T ST optical input is something else... incredible midrange detail from my Sonic Frontiers SFT-1, but loses a lot of low and high end extension compared to AES/EBU.
My Parasound C/BD-2000 sounds very warm and analogue, incredible "air" around instruments, pinpoint imaging... in stark contrast to the SFT-1, which is hyper detailed but not much else. Micromega Drive 2 is somewhere in between, sort of a jack of all trades, master of none.
The point is component matching becomes really important, this dac really doesn't have anything in the way of its own character, but if you like the sound of your transport and want it to shine through, this is a great unit.
Wayne Colburn at Pass Labs, who designed this DAC, with some assistance from Nelson Pass on the innovative I/V stage, has said in an e-mail to a gentleman I was corresponding with whom was considering a D1 that he thinks "...it is still competative but maybe not cost effective. The Marantz SA-11 CD player is very good on SACD and redbook. Three people here [at Pass Labs] still use D1's two of us use Marantz."
thanks jeff,this is an interesting remark about SA-11, because apart from D1, another DAC i am considering is electrocompaniet ECD-1. i know 2 previous owner of ECD-1 who switched to SA-11 and regretted bitterly for that as they both believe that ECD-1's redbook performance was not inferior to SA-11 SACD playback.
have you also checked its digital coax inputs? i'm afraid that in the first months (hopefully not years) i will be stuck with my current CDP (thule 150B) as a transport and it only has coax outs.
i am wondering what is a realistic price for D1 today? a piece i am being offerred is around 2200 USD.
I haven't spent serious time with the coaxial input as I don't have a worthy cable. I was disappointed that it doesn't have a BNC input.
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