Any heard/heard of Whest DAP.10 R processor?

It only supports unbalanced. They have a website address www.whestaudio.co.uk.

I compared the output of a BAT-D5se player running balanced to a preamp and the same player running unbalanced in to the DAP.10. The balanced version was absolutely crap compared to the DAP.10 output. And that was with the DAP.10s own interconnects which retail for £89 or $US130 or thereabouts.

I recently bought a Whest DAP.10 for use with my Benchmark DAC1 and Audiomoded CEC TL-1x transport. Transparency, focus, and depth and width of soundstage improved quite dramatically. An expensive "tweak", but nothing else I know of has this particular effect, especially with a state-of-the-art DAC. I know it's not coming out of my system for the forseeable future.

Robm1 and Emag,

Did either of you notice the slight power hum alluded to by the reviewer? Also, are you using the stock power cord on the unit? Finally, have you experimented with other IC's?

I just ordered one from Audio Advisor. I figured I would give it a try on my Prima CD player. They have a 30-day trial period.
All the best,
Howard

Boa2 - Please let us know what you think of the unit when you get it.

I'm on the fence about ordering one. First, it's silly expensive, and second, its operating principles don't make sense.

Whest claims that the DAP acts to realign frequencies above 35khz and has no effect on frequencies below this point. The problem I have is that no properly designed CD player, whether oversampled, upsampled, or non-oversampled (1FS) has any output above 22.05 khz (half the Nyquist sampling frequency of 44.1 khz). One of the major jobs of the reconstruction filters (digital and analog) in the player/DAC is to block everything above this point.

SACD has output beyond 35khz, but much of this is quantization noise relocated from the audio range to this region by the player's noise shaping circuits. It has little correlation to the music.

SO what is this box really doing? Since my DAC has no output above 22.05 khz on Redbook, then what is this box acting on?

Let us know your impressions.

Ghostrider45,

I'll definitely post my impressions here once I've tried out the unit. It should take about 2-3 weeks to get one. Heck if I know how it works. I'm intrigued by the claim that this unit will take a Prima beyond the performance of a Capitole. But what do I know? It's offered with a 30-day trial, so I figured why not? Indeed, it is rather expensive, but it's still about $1-2K less than mating a decent transport with the Capitole DAC. And between the price of a Prima and that of even a used Capitole, I just have not found another player that really grabs me so emotionally. Granted, I've not heard everything. And at this time, I'm not really up for spending $4K or so on a modded player.

Perhaps it's best if you wrote to www.whestaudio.co.uk directly and posed your technical questions to them. At least then we have two bases covered. I can offer my listening impressions, and you can verify the footwork on the unit.

All the best,
Howard