Accustic Arts

Tbg the Esoteric X-01 LE is a great piece, I have not owned one but a friend does and loves it. What were the dcs and EMM pieces you owned?

Regarding the H-Cat you said "H-Cat users who listened first and asked questions afterwards."

Are you insinuating that I should not ask questions first? if you are I don't agree. Tbg this company has gone to the extent of giving a fictitious dealers name for in my area, no one knows of such along with the phone directory, business directory's etc. what a way of doing business and Roger him self has never given me any address or phone number.

Tbg before you buy anything or look at trying something are you implying that you don't ask questions prior? if this was true I don't believe we would have these threads.

Dev, I owned the Dac6 and the Phillips SACD 1000 and the dCS Elgar with sacd capability and the pro 972 upsampler. In neither case have I heard much of an improvement, if any, in newer models.

I have no idea what the reason for the fictitious dealer was, but I know many of the dealers and they are quite real. I doubt seriously that this is the totality of your questions about the H-Cat, however.

You know that my philosophy is merely to tell of my personal experiences with components. If you or others listen and don't agree it does not bother me. If you question the integrity of people that I know to be good people I will not ignore it. Nor will I ignore dismissing innovations as hype when I know them not to be.

I am more interested in what people like Jeffrey above have to say than what you have to say, because he seems to listen more than pontificate.

Tbg, I was not personally attacking you but the fact making a true statement of my experience with H-CAT. so your sarcasm has no merits.

You seem to be so deffensive and sensitive when talking about H-CAT so there must be more to it than you are letting on.

Anyways enjoy, this thread is suppose to be for "AA" not H-CAT.

Dev, there's no doubt that the Dac1-MK4 was a vast improvement over the MK3. When I got the MK4 I was still using a reference transport from Ensemble, that's still a great piece, however when I auditioned the AA Drive1-MK2 every thing got better(transparency, details, soundstage, extension) but in small increments compared with the Ensemble. So, you might have to let the transport break-in awhile to see if there are significant sonic gains compared with your ARC player used as a transport to make the change.

Also, I don't know what digital cable you are using, but regardless what transport you decide on, I highly recommend you listen to a Stealth Sextet cable. I tried a bunch of highly regarded cables and nothing came close to the Sextet when it came to allowing the Acoustic Arts combo sing to total sonic abilities.

Finally, I use the Ensemble Duo Isolink digital transformer with the the AA combo and it improves all sonic factors by around another 10% to 20% in my system. The rest of my system downstream goes through the Running Springs Jaco power conditioner.

This thread seems to be begging to be hijacked ...

Tbg: I recently purchased a Wavelength Cosecant USB DAC. I reached the conclusion, as many around here have, that it no longer makes sense to continue investing in CDPs or CD transports given the decline in this media. I experimented a bit before i settled on this b/c i didn't want to take a step back just for the convenience of a HDD front end. I am happy to report that I blown away by the Cosecant -- and that is even before i convert from a PC to a Mac. It is every bit as resolving as my AA Drive and DAC and, in some respects, it may be more so. Add to that the convenience of having all of my digital music at myfingertips, and i find the Cosecant nothing short of revolutionary.

Dev: Some free, unsolicited advice: if you are going to start a thread, you likely will get better results if you do not harass those who offer you a response. We're not responding to you under oath pursuant to a subpoena; we're voluntarily offering an opinion that you can either take or leave. Questioning the motives of those who do you the favor of responding to your thread is not productive.