Dreadhead

Yesterday I rearranged the cables so that all three DACs are using the mogami gold interconnects I have (and hence look identical). I then had my wife reconnect them in any order she felt like so I am now doing a blind test I have no clue which one is which and I am not doing the test to find the one difference I found above (noise floor) and at normal listening levels I can't hear if I prefer one or another. I can't hear any difference One thing that I have gotten is that the Mytek is an amazing value. It's better than the DAC1 for about the same price. I have not tried out its headphone amp but I'm seriously considering one for me to take to work or a rig somewhere else.

Yay!

You are right! the quotation was more of a quotation but in retrospect came off far more sarcastically than intended. I apologize for the that personal attack even if it was not intended to be personal to Craig. That said my beef with the way he does business is entirely valid as far as I'm concerned. He's in business and earning a rather healthy fee for it so I expect service for it. The outbid occurred at 11am Japan time which I believe leaves quite a bit of work day to tell me that it I have been outbid. Craid is definitely a gentleman to deal with and so are many other people out there in this world it does not mean that they run their business well. I really am very appreciative of the detailed explanation Craig gave here and in private but I will still never do business with them and I hope that the business model/site automation is improved soon (which it sounds like it will be). Again I apologize for the personal attack.

Well kuboTEN lost a customer today. It's one thing to offer a bid service that has delays because they have humans looking over the bids but not telling me that I was outbid for nearly 24 hours after I was and conveniently after the auction had ended is absolutely ridiculous. Many said that Craig is a "gentleman" but when you're dealing in things costing thousands that's rather ridiculous/insane in my opinion. Is it too much to ask the human that's entering the bid notify the other KuboTEN users that they've been outbid when it happens not 24 hours later. I think not.

Well I got worried because when I switched to my unused port of the switch I heard the output of the other DACs (WTF!!!) after checking some stuff it occurred to me to check and see if I could hear anything with the DAC actually attached to the port but not putting out music. I discovered that when the XLR port is attached none of the music leaks through from the other inputs regardless of amp volume. Disaster averted. Anyway this made me wonder what's that hiss? Well it turns out that the DAC3 is the only one of the DACs that when you crank the GS-X to max volume you still hear nothing. The DAC2 has some noise and the Mytek a little more again. At listening volumes you can't hear anything but it is a difference.

I would vote Headamp GS-1 (Heard as the single ended output of my GS-X) or one of the Headroom Ultras (unheard, but well respected).

Well the sale price was less than my max bid but I don't really know what the deal is yet. Who knows what the rules are because I think Craig was representing 2 or 3 people.

Hopefully a pair of 02 and a 717 that's going to a fellow HC'er

lol

Go with toslink and a upsampling/jitter removing dac and you're just fine. I prefer it because there is nothing conductive betweent he noisy ground of the computer and the DAC. On my DAC1 you could hear the ground noise with very sensitive phones but through toslink it was dead quiet. YMMV with the amount of ground noise.

Logitech has lots though I have no idea how crap they are: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speakers_audio/home_pc_speakers/&cl=us,en#

Pure, spent uranium? It gives the music a certain glow I really am looking forward to hearing this DAC though. Even if they don't particularly reference others their approach is theoretically well thought out which is a step up. If I had not moved on to firewire I think I would be a whole lot more interested.

It's going to be interesting to see how this works out. The part that worries me is this: http://www.ayre.com/PDF/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf This is in no way new knowledge and it's been around for years in pro-audio/mastering when down sampling but Ayre doesn't seem to mention that. Applying that filter to 44.1 audio is as far as I'm concerned editing the digital signal, which may of course sound amazing but not what I'm looking for.

You are right. By the time I got the DAC3 I never used the USB port and I just assumed that they had 24/96 like their dongle thing. I dunno why I typed DA10 though. As you say it isn't necessarily Ayre saying this.

List of ones that I know for sure support it: M-Audio Transit, Audiophile Benchmark DAC1 USB etc Bel Canto DAC3 Lavry DA10/11 Wavelength Stuff crapload of other cheap 24/96 usb soundcards I'm not even sure about the 1.1 limitation but I know those at least 3 of those work through personal experience. In the price range that Ayre is sitting at that's disingenuous to say most don't because most do. Firewire is even more fun... the DAC2 I have right now does 192/24

Utter horse crap. Nearly every DAC in that price range takes 24/96 over USB and a whole lot of cheaper ones do to.

Dear god those are ugly.... I'm sure glad I'm in the "stock is plenty" camp.

Dusty your answers were all right so we are all good The IRFs that I have created here are IRFs that model the difference between the response of one pair of headphones to another pair of headphones in the same conditions (in this case attached to a ECM8000 measurement mic with a building foam coupler). They do not capture the distortion properties of the heaphones or some of the differences in geometry that do effect the sound but they do get very close. It's much the same idea as what Smyth does with their system. The 650 to SA5000 track is here (go to the post for the attachment): And I've just retried (with a 32 bit file and the original file) it and I'm happy with the results. I'm listenening to a pair of HD650s turned into SA5000s and I'm very happy with the soundstage it seems perfectly wide to me. What's missing possibly is the background that the 650s give; the people are just floating out there far left and far right. That may be why the poster above thinks it's small. One last thing: I recommend that you turn down the gain to -1.0dB or so since I appear to have cut it a bit close to digital clipping in the file.

Well for giggles I made up the 650 to D5000 converter and it works amazingly well. I can email it to whoever but I can't attach it because it's over the limit. (I switched to 32bit WAV files to keep the noise floor ridiculously low) If anyone is interested let me know. I've been doing A/B with the D5000 and the soundstage conveys.

This was my convolver based fun no DEQ required, just the foobar convolver plugin. When I did it A/B the sound stage conveyed as well but that was a long while ago and the SA5000 is long gone at this point so I can't check. If you're interested I guess I could try and turn 650s into modded Denon D5000s too.

I know. That's why I'm there. But I was hoping to get it down to two, triple blind is a bit of a PITA

That's my biggest problem right now, my DAC3 is supposed to be a lot better than the Mytek or my DEQ and it's all I've listened to at home for months (maybe even a year?). Currently I'm not seeing it especially not $1600-$2400 worth. I'm actually thinking of asking my wife to hide the back the switch and move around cables so I wouldn't know which was which. It's reached that point

Setup: I have the following: Bel Canto DAC3 Mytek Stereo96 Weiss DAC3 They are all running off a 24/96 out of the Foobar2k using the SoX resampler with linear phase and alaising allowed (not that matters in this case since it's upsampling not down sampling). The signal goes out optically from my Edirol FA-66 and then to my DEQ 2496. Then to the DAC2 which has the added feature of a AES out and SPDIF out (reclocked and de-jittered, or I can change it if I like) that are hooked up to the Mytek and DAC3. These are all hooked up to the Kramer VS-4X mechanical 4 way switch that outputs to my GS-X. This thing is f&*king awesome: under $150 from B&H and virtually no switch bounce and absolutely transparent. To make sure everything was matched up I used my trusty little multimeter and a 1kHz signal and used the analog volume control on the Mytek and the Digital Volume on the Weiss to turn them down until they were well within a very small voltage band with the DAC3. The volume control is 0.5dB steps and the mismatch is less than 1/5 of that between any of these. Honorable Mention: The Weiss Firewire interface kicks serious amounts of ass. It is very very nice and very configurable but due to lack of ways to hook up 3 DACS any other way I needed to use my Edirol FA-66 in the manner listed above. I am really really impressed with it and it took 192/24 with no problems whatsoever through a single wire. Very impressive. Story so far: Volume matching makes things really really hard to compare. The first thing is that these DACs are all very very close, none of that weird harshness up high in the Benchmark DAC1 (my only issue with that DAC). I haven't come up with anything that really separates one from the other yet. This was about what I was expecting though because earlier in the week I matched up the built in DAC in my DEQ to my DAC3 and that race was very very close and I didn't have time to really come to any conclusion before the new toys arrived. All I know is that for the DEQ2496 sounds better than its price would ever lead you to believe. I have another 6 days with this setup before I have to ship the Weiss, Mytek or both back

I've got a very similar setup going with my Kramer VS-4X swticher. It's very close to silent during the switch and entirely passive. It's not a passive preamp but a straight switch. Right now I have a Bel Canto DAC3, Mytek Stereo96 and Weiss DAC2 all hooked up and volume matched for a little A/B/C action.

Icarium, I thought I told you. I'm there I am feeling like crap so I took a sick day and setup my new package from Vintage King. I have 3 exactly matched DACS hooked up to my GS-X and I can switch between at any time. I am one pair of XLR cables short to include my DEQ in the showdown I also have to use the Weiss as a splitter so I can't have it as my firewire interface though I did try it and it worked amazingly well. Time to go take a nap...