DAC as an upgrade

Hi Mapman,

Yeah, I know... very, very odd... "the truth is *out there*" in an XFile-ish sorta-way.

It's so odd that it's very tempting to try, but then, of course, you've entered the insanity... but just being here on the 'gon and interested in various components etc etc tells us we're a little "gone" already... LOL.

The one that creeps into my brain is the one that suggests freezing the CDs, and then playing them after a slow thaw...

I'd try it, but if I did, I would know I'd entered the "dark force" Yowza!

Enough already!

It's your da***d chair and moving it that got it all rolling!

:)

Remember that Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner and the little tabletop fortune teller device that freaked him out with its nebulous yet seemingly relevant predictions?

Well, I'm the opposite of Shatner in that episode (most of the time at least).

I believe in Karma and such when it comes to people but when it comes to audio, the engineer in me kicks in. If there is not a definable technical basis for asserting that something sounds "better" as opposed to just different, I am a skeptic.

For example I know that my Ohm 5'speaks are largely omni-directional (but attenuated somewhat by design in wall facing directions) and much, but not all, of the sound that reaches my ears arrives indirectly.

In order to sound "magical", they have to be a couple of feet away from a wall minimum and you sort of have to position the speakers in a location that supports the bass appropriately and "focuses" the reflected sound in a manner so most of it reaches your ears pretty much at the same time at your listening position or positions.

You can get the big soundstage omni's are known for without attention to this, but you cannot get the detail and imaging accuracy needed for "magic" without achieving this "sonic focus", as I'll refer to it.

That's what made the difference for me in this case.

There is a method behind the madness, but the process is still largely one of trial and error.

I also use a test recording that lends itself easily to hearing solid tight bass and positional accuracy within the soundstage.

Of late, I've been using a 1990 CD recording of "Donovan's Greatest Hits" for this. Several cuts on the disk feature a sparse variety of clearly identifiable acoustic instrumentation spread cleanly across the soundstage.

I've listened to several cuts many times on various properly set up systems that sound great. When the bass in the cut "Season of the Witch" is tight and punchy, and when the individual instruments in that tune and "Jennifer Juniper" and a couple others can be identified and located clearly. Then things are tuned in very well for pretty much any kind of music, equally simple or more complex, like symphonic, from there.

One other note about the Ohm Walsh speakers is that a single driver produces most of what you hear (save the very top end) and delivers the sound as a phase coherent line source (hence the name CLS).

However, just because sound is produced in a phase coherent manner doesn't mean it reaches your ears that way. That is where the sonic focusing exercise I described above comes in...to make sure that everyhting reaches your ears still in a phase coherent manner (like focusing a camera or projector).

Other more conventional, less omni-directional, speaker designs that also feature a good degree of phase coherency at the source in particular can benefit from a similar attention to these details, I believe.

The McCormack DAC 1 has caught my eye as a reasonable unit to try based on reviews and value.

Anybody know what the difference is between a "McCormack DAC 1" and "DAC 1 Deluxe"? How is the "DAC 1" deluxe better or different from a basic "DAC 1"?

here's the difference between DAC1 and DAC1 Deluxe:

The chassis is copper plated steel. Separate digital and analog boards - each with its own transformer - are used, along with five voltage regulators. A Crystal Semiconductor CS8412 "E" Version receiver and CS4328 DAC are used in the DAC-1. The CS4328 is an 18 bit system, which includes 8X oversampling digital interpolation followed by 64X oversampling, one-bit, delta-sigma modulation - a lot of technobabble that translates to killer sound. For $250, the standard DAC-1 can be sent back to McCormack Audio and upgraded to the Deluxe Edition which has Cardas Jacks, Caddock and Vishay resistors, some high speed, soft recovery diodes, different op-amps, and some FET current sources to push then further into Class-A operation. Our unit had these upgrades (installed before the unit was initially shipped to us), and we feel it was worth the expense.