Wyred DACS

New here but have been following this thread for a while. I also have the DAC2 and tried the JR with XP however, using KS and have been thinking to buy the full license. It is very musical, relaxed and very resolving I may add.

My setup is:
XP with W4S Asynch drivers and JR(KS) or XXHighEnd(KS) (testing both currently)
USB (WW Starlight6 usb)
DAC2 directly driving the W4S ST500 via balanced ic's.

I used the JR for a few days and the results are very good. Recently I gave a shot to the XXHighEnd which brought things to another level. Specially with female vocals the results are astonishing and there is now lots of air around the singers and instruments. On a side note the nice thing with JR is that you can have it read directly from a CD and output via usb to DAC2 (thus you may not need to turn the CD to FLAC). I also tried the up-sampling (for CD playback) used in JR and it gave me the impression that restricts the air around recordings. The sound does become slightly more analytical but I think there is a slight compression as well. It is best to leave DAC2 do its job alone. JR is very good all around and I may still get it, but memory playing with XXHighEnd seriously got my attention.

Kudos to W4S for such a wonderful DAC (and power amp)!

Cheers and happy listening!

Digilog5,
What speakers are being driven by the Wyred amp?

While my pre-amp is getting a slight upgrade and a replacement volume pot, I'm going straight from my DAC-2 to my Musical Fidelity A3.2cr amp and it's sounding a little harsh in the upper register. Wondering if its a weakness in my amp that my pre has been hiding.

Right now the amp drives a pair of ML-Sources due to space restrictions. I also have a pair of older yet wonderful ML SL3s but at a different location which I would like to try with the w4s one day. I am sure it will do fine.

Granted that the little Source has its limitations (in terms of uniformity I would say) it is still very very transparent and still...an electrostat.

Driven from XP with KS and Jriver, the W4S combo sound is wonderful. Never harsh, yet very detailed. Cables are DH labs (BL1 balanced ic & Q10s for the speakers). I also hookedup an old DVDp as transport that was lying around (with a Theta Coax cable) and still the sound was fairly nice, very smooth and relaxed, but felt that using JR with a good USB gave a cleaner sound, more transparent, but never harsh. I actually enjoyed this combo tremendously.

Driven from XP with XXHighEnd, there is additional clarity over JR as if a veil lifted, it is more focused and it does feel a bit brighter now but in a nice way, with some recordings. Nevertheless, the 3D image is outstanding and most recordings sound very good.

I would assume, since the DAC2 is dual differential balanced, theoretically it may be better to drive a dual mono setup with balanced ics. I havent listened to the MF A3.2 Cr amp but given the MF pedigree it should be very musical sounding. Can it be something in the cabling or the speakers themselves?

Hi Cutterfilm

You may be running into the slight upper midrange issue the Saber chip has. This is an excellent DAC but when compared to much more expensive DAC's you can hear this. It may be inherent to the Saber chip or it may be that it is a difficult chip to work with. When we did our DAC shootout one person rated this DAC better than even the much more expensive reference DAC's we had there which is no mean feat. But I think the comments of one person there summed it up:
'An amazing amount of detail, excellent tonal consistency and powerful bass. But it sounded like you were playing a CD and there were electronic artifacts in the form of a mid treble glare that intruded. Grey background. Microdynamically restricted. However its combination of consistent tonality and detail was impressive in a hifi sense and I can actually believe that some listeners might place this as their favourite.'

You may simply be one of those people who prefer something a little different. I am in that boat as well so don't beat yourself up over it if that turns out to the case. I found I preferred the Tranquility DAC.

Personal preferences and system synergies make it really hard for any one product to do it for everyone.

Thanks
Bill

Hi Cutterfilm

Oh I forgot to mention I think you have simply run into a system synergy thing that the removal of the pre amp highlighted. I suspect by bypassing the pre amp your system is now more transparent and you can hear some of the issues that were being masked.

Thanks
Bill