Greetings Everyone.
I wanted to update you regarding Steve Nugent's Empirical Overdrive Diamond SX with the
optional internal galvanic isolated Ethernet direct I2S converter cpu. I
have run the is unit 24/7 for now over 1000 hours and I must admit the caps
needed this time to break in. This will be the first dac that I felt
needed over 6 weeks of almost continuous play to break in. However, this
is one instance where patience paid dividends.
Since we all have our own perception and certainly favor different qualities, I
am not going to delve into a lengthy review. The qualities that stand out
and I believe most would agree, the dac is well balanced on all fronts and
certainly demonstrates design implementation is more important than the dac
chip itself. Historically, I have been approached by others who felt the
ODSE was overly analytical. I humbly disagreed as I found it to be
detailed, accurate and perhaps unforgiving. While I found the SE
emotionally engaging, the SX is addictive.
The more dacs I audition, I find myself with a preference to
non-oversampling design implementation. My goal is to compare this unit
to a R2R ladder dac, Totaldac, and will report my results. At 4x the
price, it would have to engage me on an entirely different level. Steve's
dac chip is proprietary and I feel discussing design theory should be left to
the electrical engineers.
At first blush, I had found little difference between the ODSE and the ODSX.
Over time the Diamond SX bloomed, creating an even more precise
presentation of the music. Well-recorded
intimate recordings immersed me into a room of musicians. Big venue live recordings placed me back from
the stage, closer to the soundboard, creating a deep and viable soundstage. Both the ODSE and the ODSX have been the best
interpolating PCM data and recreating an accurate presentation of the
recording, especially piano, wind instruments, and particularly the mid and
upper range of percussion decay. I still
hold to my initial assessment years ago.
I have yet to find a DSD dac that performs better than Steve’s
implementation of PCM. However, I have
not heard a ground up designed DSD only (non PCM) dac.
The chassis is no
different that the ODSE. The faceplate
now states SX in place of SE and the knob has a very subtle recessed
diamond. Nice touch but for those who
upgrade their SE to SX, I would keep your old faceplate and save money. The rear panel is the same. Mine had a manual cutout where the Ethernet
input replaced the USB. This does bring
me to another point: For those of you
who will upgrade, the ODSE/X run hot.
The morphology of the circuit boards change and this will affect the
soldering. I highly recommend you pay
the extra nominal fee and use a virgin board.
Longevity is essential. While I
am sure Steve will service these units well into retirement, save yourself the
headache.
Those of us who owned
these units before know these units run hot.
While breaking in, I ran the unit in my office on my desk, which is
quartz composite. The unit ran hot, up
to 208* over the Ethernet board. Steve
assured me this is not an issue. When I
placed in my system on Bubinga wood, the temperature dropped by 50* while being
relocated in direct sunlight and reset to high-output line out. Surfaces matter, ventilation matters. I have run this dac hard without failures on
any level.
The Ethernet
DNLA/UPnP is simpler, more robust, and strait forward. Unlike USB, Ethernet packets of data are
checked for errors and packets with errors are resent. The more I read about USB implementation,
more validating why I despised it and found it universally inferior to
AES/EBU. ROON uses its own RAAT protocol
in place of DNLA/UPnP. The third party
company which designed the Ethernet to I2S converter CPU chip has no interest
in RAAT. ROON states they will implement
DNLA but with no timeline. Because of
this current incompatibility, I have not pursued ROON at this juncture. One manufacture who uses this CPU has figured
a work around and was able to implement ROON RAAT. However this was not to an I2S
conversion. Through Bubble UPnP and Linn
Kazoo (both free) I am able to stream Tidal without any issue. Linn Kazoo is not on the same league as ROON
or even Tidal’s own controller. To say
it plainly, the user interface sucks.
There are many third
party controllers. Some are free, while
some are cheap to purchase. They all work
well, and I give credit to this third party manufacturer. Not all Ethernet dacs/Renderers have this level
of performance. Please note: I find those controllers that send a file
direct from NAS to the DAC without processing sound better. Those who have interest in this topic please
PM me for more detail and discussion. I
would love to learn where others have found success and discovered absolute ‘do
not’s’.
I wish to commend
Steve on a well designed dac. Thank you
for reigniting my passion for this hobby.
This last year has been somewhat frustrating for me. High-end components do not necessarily play
well together and this certainly has been a journey. When my wife leaves a concert and says that
sounded as good as listening at home, she is complementing the venue…and Steve
the credit belongs to you.
