Dreadhead

I've just added a 4th one to my list that I want to hear: DAD AX24 I found a price list: http://www.transaudiogroup.com/uploads/images/products/DAD/DAD_US090107_Pricelist.pdf Telarc just replaced all their Meitner gear with DAD and raved heavily about the improvement. Even selected them using a blind A/B. 384/24 vinyl drops DXD or DSD too.

Well I heard back and it's a demo unit which is good news: That way I can't just keep it. I'll let you guys know when I get it for demo sometime next month or the month after.

They are expensive as hell and rare You might be better to look for the new Spectral gear.

Well the the DAC2 is supposed to use the PCM1792. I believe I read that in the DAC1 all upsampling etc is done outside of the DAC chip all it does is the DAC part. 2 chips per channel I believe. Apparently Daniel Weiss "reserves" the right to replace the chip in the future who knows. DAC chips are cheap but shipping it to Switzerland to get that done would be a PITA.

I am almost certain that the internals are identical to the Medea pics of which are here (note the fact that the chip running everything in the Medea is labeled DAC1P1A ): 6moons audio reviews: Weiss Engineering Jason &*Medea But I will try. I will do the trial, I'm not going to spend that type of money blind.

I'm pretty sure they place a hold for the entire amount. When I wrote them I said I was fine with "buying" it for a trial. So that's likely what would happen. I emailed the guy and thanked him but told him I would need to delay it until after I get back from my holiday. Hopefully they won't have one ready to go when I return and I can wait a month or two before I can get a trial unit fall in love and waste, I mean spend, all that money.

I don't know the details as yet but in the pro industry it appears most of the time all they need is a CC# and that's about it. This is what I got from them: I'm heading out of the country for a week at the end of the week so I will not take them up on it right now but it really is very very tempting.

Vintage king got back to me and is willing to send me a DAC1 for trial.... crap. I really can't do this right now.

Ah ok. I'll futz around and see if I can hear any difference with this SRC. If not I'll stick to what I'm doing but I see what you are saying.

Not quite following why it's worth that trouble at all. For me this would actually be a fairly large PITA but doable since I already have an optical switch leading so I can switch between SACD/CD (through HDFury) or the computer. My point is that the SoX resampler is good enough that I don't care about it upsampling anyway, downsample is where you have to worry and I'm not doing that.

Yeah it does. I have a couple high rez things so I just want to leave it so I don't have to change it (I guess I could leave it at 44.1 and I'd likely not hear the difference). The SoX converter looks good enough that I can just trust it to do its job and leave it at that. The txt document that comes with the SRC is rather informative about the audibility of the SRC to do with phasing on impulse responses. I'll have to futz with that a bit and see if I can pick it out. In the end my DAC 3 still does it's own thing and resamples the data anyway so this may all be moot

Just in case people are interested in having a sample rate converter for Foobar2000 I just found this: A new resampler DSP for foobar2000 - Hydrogenaudio Forums I don't think the SRC is going to make my audio sound any different but I have also learned that they can do a lot of damage too. If you don't believe me look at the comparisons here: SRC Comparisons The one above is based on the SoX resampler which looks excellent in the test results above and has lots of options about phasing of the impluse response if you buy what Ayre says in that other thread. I went looking for something that had been measured to settle any misgivings I had about the PPHS resampler. I need to resample because my pro sound card has a physically fixed sample rate (by a switch on the back) and hence I need to resample to 96kHz period.

Well maybe we're both done then.

I'll consider anything. I'm not getting DSD so PCM it is and then it's between the pro ones. The DAC2 is much easier to swing especially if I sell my Bel Canto DAC3 to fund the purchase. That said I was sort of looking at this as a "I'm done" DAC and if there is a step up then I will always want to get it. Talking with my wife this will likely have to wait until after taxes next year anyway. We shall see.

Interesting. Well I dunno. I was looking at less famous studios. Also the reason I doubt it at least in the Prism case is that they don't even have an audiophile market, and Weiss didn't until well after they had already introduced the DAC1. As you say times change.

I would have to disagree with this. The pro audio mastering studios pay for their gear or at least as best I can tell on gearslutz.

To thread crap a little more there is a guy over on HF that has a Weiss DAC1 and has had a Weiss DAC2 and he says they are very similar sounding to the level that he can't determine which is which blind. He also claims the transport makes a difference but I can't see that one since the signal is entirely reclocked within the DAC1 and DAC2. In all testing I've seen Jitter has remained constant through a large range of transports.

Anyway yes I plan to learn how to adjust said bias myself.

Well I emailed Koss and they emailed me back with an update. Pretty excellent customer service turn around time for an email. The only email based customer service that I have dealt with was more impressive/responsive was the Canadian passport office I know, I know an responsive/helpful government.... They claim that they will have them back in my hands in 2 weeks. Neato...

Morphsci if you like the Ultramatch I'd recommend you take a look at the DEQ2496 (unless you need the SRC or the heaphone outs).

I've seen people come to a meet with over 10k worth of amps and headphones and a well under 1000 dollar source. It happens, not to me, but it happens.

:D

Someone probably just didn't want to bring their good source, or not. It's not like the OPPO horrible, it's just not good.

Al, yeah I would just drop Weiss an email but I'm 99.9 that the manual is right about the AES since a single channel 192 AES is very standard. It is not uncommon for people to have updated firmware and the manual but not the website. If you get one can you ship it to me first and then I'll send it along to you after a week

Already emailed them to see about a trial... I doubt I'll be successful but I will let you guys know. To be honest I need to run 96kHz because that's all my EQ can do anyway. I haven't found one at any price with a fast enough processor to EQ anything at a higher bit rate.