Recent content by dtd

Should one get on with the T+A house sound they (often) kill any box swapping antics in the process. Agreed total bargain (I own the T+A SDV myself).

It's not the same as those tubes. You'll have to hear to believe.

Adding distortion can be a real good thing, one should try something along the likes of the Korg Nutube buffer which gives you the ability to dial in more or less H2 distortion along with other modes. Many are converts now, who cant live without it!

I had the Ncore NC1200 (oem, buffers disabled) for quite a while, and last year made the switch to the Purifi IET400As. Despite 15a less current available to my KEF Blades, the IET400As after many weeks of break in quite frankly walked over the NC1200s even at crazy (100db) volumes which was a...

I went back to my T+A DAC 8 DSD, although this time it now has a copper top/bottom plates instead of alu + panzerholz underneath the PCB upgrade (Taiko Audio provided, although they dont have any left). It's a 2016 design as well. Source wise: Ryzen 3900x, industrial RAM, SMPS psu (yes...

Yes, because JTest jitter tells you everything about a DAC.... right.... Well, I've said my piece :) Just to add the SMSL D1 I had, had at the time one of the best cleanest jitter readouts of all DACs at the time. And yet I've sold it. I'll leave you lot to draw your own conclusions.

Many were feeding their IAN DACs with RPIs, and sometimes the USB Bridge Signature. Having owned both (see my latest For Sale thread - had the USB Sig + Shanti for a while too), they're very decent VFM and very listenable sources, but against say an Sonore OpticalRendu (yep, I owned this and...

I suspect newer DACs are better at handling poorer srcs. Better jitter rejection etc. Not a bad thing by any means. But as mentioned now having conducted my own testing with a lot of srcs (now at JCAT XE USB card these days), this is my findings at least. Worth mentioning I had the same...

To be honest I used to agree with this idea that "good measure" = "sound about the same". Infact that was the case for a while for me, a Chinese DAC (SMSL D1) easily matching and in areas bettering my 4x more expensive German DAC. However it is worth pointing out that at the time, I wasn't...

I dont have golden ears for sure :-) But as mentioned above from my own experiments i've now gone into "there is differences - it just depends on the rest of the chain" category. Hence as always just try at home and see what floats boats.

You never did state what you stock as DACs Keith?

I was till lately in the "they both sound the same" camp. See previous threads where my SMSL D1 had no problem keeping up with the T+A DAC 8 DSD even in DSD mode. Then I improved vibration control across the board and what-not. Now they're not comparable. So yes, system isnt resolving enough...

Would you like to remind us what you stock for that matter? ASR measurements set is too small to deduce whether it will work well in your own setup, or even if you'll like it subjectively. As always try at home with your own ears over the course of a week. Differences exist but even i'll...

As much as it pains me to write this, the digital source does matter, along side vibration control (dramatic in my case). Having said that there are certain off the shelf Intel NUCs when fed with good quality power supply that'll get you a long way towards happiness but it does require...

Bollocks. Sure their stuff can be bettered these days, but having owned a SMS 200 ultra neo myself it wasn't bad by any means.