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Am I deaf?

Hello all,
Just got a Chord Qutest to use as an outboard dac with my Oppo BD 105. Connected the Chord to the Oppo coax out with an Audioquest Carbon coax cable. $2100 for the Qutest including the cable! I'm not hearing it. I think the Oppo dac may sound a bit better than the Chord. Tried all the filters. Am I nuts?
Ben
honashagen
bigkidz
3,406 posts
 

@mzkmxcv

"Oppo has very good DACs, so you aren’t deaf, a cream of the crop $200 DAC and cream of the crop $20,000 DAC sound more similar than you might believe"

What $20K DAC are you referring to? I am interested to know.


Happy Listening.

2channel8
758 posts
 
@honashagen , Thanks for the thread. I am having a similar experience. Last year I replaced a BDP-95, which I liked a lot, with a BDP-105 with some EVS mods. When I compared the two, I was disappointed because I thought the difference in sound quality was not proportional to the difference in cost.

I still hadn't learned my lesson and recently bought a used Ayre C5xeMP.
I can hear a bigger difference between the Ayre and Oppo, but at the moment, I prefer the Oppo on most, not all, material. Sorry @theo .  ;^)
It may well be because I haven't spent enough time acclimating my self to the Ayre yet. Or it may be that the Oppo aligns better with my particular pattern of hearing loss, which I think influences our preferences more than we'd like to think after a certain age. 

Anyway, I'll give the Ayre a while longer to grow on me before deciding whether to sell it or not, but I've finally learned a lesson: Just enjoy what you enjoy.
theo's avatar
theo
2,698 posts
 

No apologies necessary 2channel8. The beauty of this hobby/passion is there is no real Absolute. Each of use hear and listen differently. As with our taste buds some like rum, some like wine, some like both. In the end we have one person to please, the unfortunate is that person also has to pay for it:)

Enjoy the Ayre


2channel8
758 posts
 
Amen.
joey54
434 posts
 
I'm not sure if anyone asked but are you using balanced cables from the Oppo to the Ayre and single-ended cables from the Chord to the Ayre? Ayre products all sound much better using balanced cables than they do using RCA cables. This may be part of the problem.

If you have an Ayre dealer nearby you might want to try an Ayre Codex in your system to see if you have the same reaction. The Ayre products sound great together. Just a thought. Good Luck!
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