Hi everyone!!!!
sorry for the long hiatus. Work and family take up a lot of time and sometimes leave little room for audio play.
Laufer Teknic is amazing gear. Sam and Mark make a terrific team. Their gear is true high end and they don’t go 6 months without releasing an update or improvement that makes a notable step forward in performance. And they share each upgrade with their customers and most come without charge unless there is a hardware change needed to implement the upgrade. Mark is a software Savant and what he does works and works better then anything else I have heard.
Now, as you all know, I pride myself on that last statement being accurate. And with Antipodes and Innuos newest products I can no longer say I’ve heard it all. I am making efforts to remedy that situation so I can give you all an opinion that is both accurate and CURRENT!!
As as far as DAC’s go, I’m not a huge fan of variable output dacs direct to amps. I see the financial advantages of course. But I have never ever heard a system at any price that doesn’t sound it’s best unless there is an active preamp with gain in the circuit. Maybe the only caveat to that might be Rowland and Bricasti, where the amps and Dacs are specifically designed to work that way and the gain and impedance matching have been accounted for.
That being said, Chord does offer a nice variable out in all of their DAC’s that does as good a job as possible of compensating. Its not ideal, but it works and sounds very good.
Empirical Audio’s volume control is not a solution. It attenuates but doesn’t go down to zero. The DAC is nothing short of amazing though.
To be hoenst, nothing earth shattering has been released recently DAC wise to warrant special attention. I think the new Mola Mola DAC is worth listening to. And supposedly Chord has released a box to increase the processing power of the Chord Dave so now it goes to 11. I have a friend who is a dealer and we will listen to the improvements it makes. I was not blown away by the DAVE (sorry Chord fans). So I’m hoping the extra box fixes it’s issues.
Im trying to get in that Innuos Statement and Antipodes double box music server. I’ll update if I can make that happen.
sorry for the long hiatus. Work and family take up a lot of time and sometimes leave little room for audio play.
Laufer Teknic is amazing gear. Sam and Mark make a terrific team. Their gear is true high end and they don’t go 6 months without releasing an update or improvement that makes a notable step forward in performance. And they share each upgrade with their customers and most come without charge unless there is a hardware change needed to implement the upgrade. Mark is a software Savant and what he does works and works better then anything else I have heard.
Now, as you all know, I pride myself on that last statement being accurate. And with Antipodes and Innuos newest products I can no longer say I’ve heard it all. I am making efforts to remedy that situation so I can give you all an opinion that is both accurate and CURRENT!!
As as far as DAC’s go, I’m not a huge fan of variable output dacs direct to amps. I see the financial advantages of course. But I have never ever heard a system at any price that doesn’t sound it’s best unless there is an active preamp with gain in the circuit. Maybe the only caveat to that might be Rowland and Bricasti, where the amps and Dacs are specifically designed to work that way and the gain and impedance matching have been accounted for.
That being said, Chord does offer a nice variable out in all of their DAC’s that does as good a job as possible of compensating. Its not ideal, but it works and sounds very good.
Empirical Audio’s volume control is not a solution. It attenuates but doesn’t go down to zero. The DAC is nothing short of amazing though.
To be hoenst, nothing earth shattering has been released recently DAC wise to warrant special attention. I think the new Mola Mola DAC is worth listening to. And supposedly Chord has released a box to increase the processing power of the Chord Dave so now it goes to 11. I have a friend who is a dealer and we will listen to the improvements it makes. I was not blown away by the DAVE (sorry Chord fans). So I’m hoping the extra box fixes it’s issues.
Im trying to get in that Innuos Statement and Antipodes double box music server. I’ll update if I can make that happen.