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Bidat vs Perfect Wave vs Weiss and others

This is thread I started a while ago and promised in February i would start doing some real world comparative testing using the Bidat (Plus Mod) as the ref. The units under test are to include in no specific order the MSB Platinum Dac, the Weiss Minervera and the Playback Design player. I posted this under the follow-up of the original thread and it is there is you do a search under Digital for "ps audio perfect". I can't understand why it did not 'promote' to the top of the digital section as it did in the past whenever there was a new contribution, so I have started a new related thread with the first entry of my fun (and I hope edifying comparative experiences).
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Ok, I just got a broken in Weiss Minerva (several hundred hours at least). It has been in my system burning in for about 18 hours (18 hours since arriving in my home, time to come to thermal equilibrium). I have done some comparative listening to the Museatex Dcc-1 (a rarely known digital preamp 19 bit dual differential type) using glass Tos on both and then glass on the DCC1 vs a very expensive (can't name it yet as the manufacturer has not released it...sorry :( ) Firewire on the Weiss. I have a Mac Mini (2007 model) 2.0 ghz Core2Duo with 4Gig of ram running Leopard (although this model can only see 3.01 gig of that (I used 4gig as the memory transfer is optimized when the mem modules are the same). I also have a 1TB NAS (all over wifi). I am of course going to reserve final judement until a bit later.

I will be comparing the Museatex Bidat with the Plus Mod later this weekend. As a teaser, I will go on record and say that honestly at this point I don't agree with the stellar reviews concerning the Weiss Minerva.

It is resolute, almost technicolor but just to give you a short glimpse of what I am hearing, I could imagine a well healed vinyl person listening to Holly Cole on vinyl and then listening to the Weiss (playing the same in CD format) and saying "this is why I will never leave vinyl". Now that may sound harsh, but this is a hobby and I don't have a dog in the race, I am just reporting my ears findings.

I listened to a few high resolution files 176.4/24 and 96/24 but what I heard was a really clear highly resolved soul-less rendition of the music. It never ever made me smile or relax into the music the way the DCC-1/Bidat or even my former (when I actually spun cd's...wow time flies) stellar Dynavox Dynastation 2 (the finest CD player I have ever heard).

In a nutshell (at this point) it just sounds like digital and that aint good in my camp because I am not forgetting about the gear and just listening to the music. I don't like syrupy or dark, I have heard plenty of players try to use that trick to sound musical. No, I look for something that is more elusive and few their be that find that magical combination when forging through the nether regions of the digital domain. I will continue listening to see if the Weiss surprises me :)

More to come...
audiofun
tpaxadpom
12 posts
 
Audiofun, I'm a big Bidat fan, so it's very entertaining for me to read your thread. When was your Bidat upgraded the last time prior to sending it to John? I had mine upgraded to latests form back in 2006. I wonder if you can share your thouhgts on John's latest upgrade.
As far as digital cables going I've been using ebay version of glass toslink with my Bidat for several years. It's a unique glass toslink that outperformed Wireworld Super Nova 5. It's directional and sound very different from other dozen of identical cables I bought from ebay. I have no idea why though... Anyhow this toslink was not quite in the same league as Marigo Apparition 5.7 or Reference 2 cables (though it outperformed Apparition 3A) it had a very interesting midrange that added some special touch to female vocalist, something that I couldn’t live without. I’ve been using this cable as my main digital interconnect until I discovered Belkin Digital Synapse cable. It's so good that I don't think I will ever replace it with anything else (I mean with Bidat DAC). It acts as some sort of filter that get's rid off high frequency noise and allow you to hear recording the way it was intended to be heard (isn’t what we always say when we try to justify the purchase?). It's like highest quality analog playback without any digital emphasis. The most interesting part is that I never felt like I had a digital flavor in my system until I heard this coax. You won't know that until you hear it. Another interesting aspect that worse mentioning is upper bass and lower midrange. I think this is the most critical frequency spectrum that adds body to vocalist and controls my comfort level. Bidat has this range covered better than any other DAC I’ve heard.
audiofun OP
799 posts
 
Tpaxadon: Well this is my 3rd Bidat :) My original Bidat was purchased around 1997 when I heard from a reputable source that a number of the bigger reviewers of the day were using Bidats on the hush hush for their personal syste, (regardless of what they were writing of the +$30K dac crowd). It was a SuperBidat. Now in November 1998 I sold it when I bought the Sony SCD-1...selling my Bidat is what I consider the biggest mistake since getting into this hobby :)

I had another Bidat (owned 2 at the same time) which was a plus but done earlier by the fellow who owned it before me so I don't know when it was modded, I do know it was at least 2 years ago because I bought it from a friend who had it for that time and it was modded when he acquired it. I sold that unit, as my current model was being finished up by John. This unit will have 3 weeks on it come this Wednesday :)

I will purchase and try one of the Belkin digital cables. I use a Monarchy Audio Glass Tos which is absolutley fantastic and as I have stated elsewhere in this thread the only digital cable I have tried which can match the FIM Gold Coax digital cable. I have to use Tos with the Bidat for now, because the Bidat takes up residence in my bedroom system connected to a Mac Mini. Whilst I do use and love the HiFace by M2Tech (I use in "Hog Mode") with the MSB, I can't use it with the Bidat because the Bidat currently does double duty when watching movies. The HiFace uses a big memory buffer which cause lip Sync issues (with video) thus I use the Tos.

"Hog Mode" is a feature of Pure Music which allows me to permanently anchor one output to iTunes. Thus when I play songs from iTunes whichever dac is plugged into the Hiface will play while the Audio Midi setting are set to "System Output" and everything else will be played out the built in output of the mac mini. This works well and I think it was ingenious of the ChannlD folks to come up with this.

The Bidat is still one of the Finest 16 bit playback machines extant and a permanent resident in my system... Heck im still thinking of picking up a second one... again LOL!!!
audiofun OP
799 posts
 
FYI, I want to be clear that the Bidat DOES work incredibly well with the HiFace unit when listening to music maybe even sounds a tad better on some material (perhaps due to the memory mode buffer) than the built in Tos (tlaking Tos with a superb glass cable). But is you use the Bidat for audio when watching movies or actually ANY dac the Hiface will cause lip-sync error i.e. the speech will lag the video by about .25 seconds or so (timing is a rough guess I did not measure it :)
vhiner
544 posts
 
Tpaxadpom,

I have a Bidat that has gone through two sets of Mods; one in late 2007 and one in December of 2009. Audiofun's unit was done in 2010, shortly after John made a power supply breakthrough. The difference between the first and second mods, for me, was that the unit's soundstage was deepened and the whole presentation was made more "analog" and more "musical," which is saying quite a bit when you consider how musical the Bidat already was. I have heard the results of John's power supply innovation on my Museatex Bitstream, so I plan on getting the same treatment performed on my Bidat. Certainly, the latest mods are a quantum leap ahead of the 2006 mods.
tpaxadpom
12 posts
 
Thanks for the info guys. Well I better get my Bidat ready for shipping then. :) So it sounds like the latest break through in upgrades happened early this year? The only problem now is I don't know how I"m going to live wthout Bidat in my stereo setup. In the past I had Bitstream and Idat-44 to rely on while Bidat was traveling.
Friend of mine brought his Bitstream over to my house as it’s been a while since I have listened to it. His unit was upgraded at the same time as my Bidat. It does sound good but very distant from Bidat. Line out is much lower (I use passive preamp) so it’s hard to say why it didn’t impress me. Also it was sensitive to the choice of digital cable. I could hear the difference between toslink and coax, but Synapse wasn’t making such a dramatic change as with Bidat. When I purchased my Bidat it already had Ed Meitner's Plus update (add-on vertical PCA attached to the main PCA). The sound of Idat-44 (battery powered in stock form) in AB comparison was realy close to Bidat. Though I realized what I was missing very shortly after I shipped Bidat to John to get the latest mods installed. Bitstream sounded very different from idat-44 and bidat. Line out on Bitstream prior to updates was higher than on Bidat, with Idat-44 being the quietest. I heard Idat-44 past John’s2008 upgrade only briefly. It wasn’t broken-in yet, so it sounded harsh. I sold Idat-44 before it had the John’s updates installed and the guy who bought it asked me to get the latest mods from John before shipping it over to him overseas. I should have kept that little unit, but it was sitting and collecting dust I figured I should let someone else enjoy it instead.
I use M-Audio Transit in asynchronous mode with my PC laptops. It doesn’t sound horrible, but nothing special whatsoever. I read about its hidden asynchronous mode of operation. If you connect toslink input it will lock to sampling frequency of the clock extracted from the stream. This is not as good as having a good clock on the board but typically better then synchronous mode of operation. I was planning on buying Empirical USB-SPDIF converter but changed my mind several times. Now I’m happy I’ve done that as there are new generation converters from wavelength, empirical audio, as well as hiface, musicaland and such…
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