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Audio Note DACs

darrenyeats said:
I'm not connecting with your statement about vocals not being placed forward enough. What I would be interested in, is how far forward/backward the sound field goes based on the recording. Some recordings have the drums placed far forward of the singer or main instrument, some have backing vocals behind everything else, sometimes the vocal is forward etc. Can you give an example of a recording you used?
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Tom Jones ‘Did Trouble Me’ would be a prime example, it has always sounded very upfront, with the Audionote, it sounded like he was more in a recording booth, not in my room.

Now, not saying that is bad, just not my preference. I was told this is what analog sounds like. In fact, a lot of the music sounded like it was coming from a stage deep in my room, so big orchestral music did sound good.

Clearly there are fans who love it, and why not, just not for me.

Input impedance is 11K ohms on the Moon amp, so maybe technical reasons I was not getting the best out of it.
 
Columbo said:
Just watched the below video. I'm intrigued
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Such videos generate more than just curiosity, they promote expectation bias.
Some people love AN DACs, other don't. There's no substitute to trying, people's opinion won't help.
I spent a whole afternoon listening to an all-AN system (2.1 DAC) and was disappointed. Denitely not my thing.
 
tuga said:
Such videos generate more than just curiosity, they promote expectation bias.
Some people love AN DACs, other don't. There's no substitute to trying, people's opinion won't help.
I spent a whole afternoon listening to an all-AN system (2.1 DAC) and was disappointed. Denitely not my thing.
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Yes , but there is a lot of people who will be influenced by your opinion because you have some credentials and they are not able to form the opinions on their own. I think AN offers best sound to an educated listener who is restricted to moderate listening space and those who disagree are in primitive hoodlums category:)
 
Pirx said:
Yes , but there is a lot of people who will be influenced by your opinion because you have some credentials and they are not able to form the opinions on their own. I think AN offers best sound to an educated listener who is restricted to moderate listening space and those who disagree are in primitive hoodlums category:)
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I went to school and think it sounds rubbish 😅
 
I'm roaming the audiophile rooms for over twenty years and not a single one had sound matching 1/10 th of expenditure and I wager that if I put midfi Kenwood tower and its default speakers behind the curtains 100% of experts would pick it up as their favorite every single time :) .
AN had consistently best sounding rooms in every show I attended. It might not be related to the gear itself but the quality of the people exhibiting it and music selection, who knows? Who's fault it is that 103% of audio public are utter morons and -4% actually deserves something better than a table radio :?)
 
They always do a good demo, the room is low key, the demo guy likeable hipster, and the music selection eclectic. The sound however leaves me cold, frequency response all over the place and no bottom octave.

Likeable but lacking
 
I’d suggest that (as ever, but even more so) auditioning is crucial with AN DACs.

A handful of years ago, having read all I could find to read on them, I convinced myself that I could justify the cost of a 2.1 Signature DAC as a celebration. I drove from Birmingham to Reading to pick up a demo unit and listened to it solidly for a week.

And I just didn’t like it. Similarly to one of the posters upthread I found it thin, tizzy and missing the kind of meatiness I’d expected. Actually quite artificial sounding.

That’s not to say that others would agree - most of the commentary on these DACs says more or less the opposite, with ‘body’ being used quite frequently. But it was a run in demo unit and I spent ages making sure that I wasn’t somehow missing something.

Try one and hopefully you’ll love it. But do try it first.
 
I own a AN 0.1X dac and sounds blooming nice, it has the soldered valves and it is designed to be left on 24/7, something to be aware of though is the lack of inputs of AN dacs - that Noteworthy dac looks interesting for not much wonga.
 
Tarzan said:
I own a AN 0.1X dac and sounds blooming nice, it has the soldered valves and it is designed to be left on 24/7, something to be aware of though is the lack of inputs of AN dacs - that Noteworthy dac looks interesting for not much wonga.
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Very good point, also they are deeper than your average bit of kit, I could not physically fit it in my AV unit. I do wonder how the Deco dacs compare.
 
Juancho said:
There is a direct comparison of my earlier DDDAC version with the modded 5.1. which was modded by AN themselves. Agree the comparison with the Audial is indirect. I was partially refuting the idea that much cheaper DACs cannot compete with much more expensive ones
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I think the 5.1 implies it's the Audionote Kits (now ANK) rather than the Audio Note UK factory device. Would that be correct?
 
No, I may have got the model wrong. It was one of their top models later heavily and expensively modded by them. One reason for its comparative 'poor' performance may have been it didn't have a USB input and the DAC I compared it with did.......
 
This is very implementation dependent. The ultra high end is going the way of high spec optical connections (I've always preferred TOSLINK with my kit so I approve).
 
Phyztech said:
They’ve always got 211 tubes for that
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Yeh, but unfortunately their speaker FR measurements are laughingly optimistic. 18hz at -6db in room. Compare that to the REL 12' carbon special @ 19hz -6db in room with 1kw of class D up its arse.

My experience of them says the AN field coils are mid to high 30hz in room at best.
 
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