Any better DAC then dCS Scarlatti?

Dear Rainer_weber,

I think a shootout would be possible.

Let's work out the details. Please email me to schedule the time and logistics.

I would like to invite you in my showroom (see www.kaiser-acoustics.com) for this event.

Thank you for your kind invitation, it is very nice of you! Nice showroom you have! Would you please advice on the rest of the equipment that will be used for the event? The NWO-4.0-SE comes with single ended or balanced outputs, but not both. It sounds best direct-to-amp/s so the most important is whether you'd like to use balanced or single-ended amplifier/s.

Wine and food is on me!

Thank you again! And the "rotten scotch drinkers" will bring some Lagavulin, if you don't mind! :-)

Best,
Alex Peychev

OK Alex,

Scotch and top end DAC shoot out, sounds amazing, but I'd bring something a little more up to the situation like the 25 y/o Talisker or 21 Balvenie instead of Lagavulin, but then again, we might disagree on our preference in DACs too! I'd love to hear the NWO in a controlled situation, and would gladly put my EMM Labs combo into the mix!

I'd love to be there too!

From me the best after dinner dgestif...world's best Mastic .

Dear all,

yes this sounds great! Lets proceed and make this comparison.

There were some questions regarding the system.

Lets start with the room. It is 5,12 m width, 6,98 m long and 2,8 m height. This gives a fairly good distribution of room modes. The entire room was build from scratch just to serve as listening room.
Room acoustic (RT 60) is really flat at 0,38 s (not overdamped) in all third octave bands. Only below 50 Hz the reverberation time increases to 0.8 s.
There is a lot of diffusors included. Some are QRD types (based on the prime number 7). A very special plain 2D diffusor is located behing the speaker.

Powerline: Oyaide Distribution block, Vertex AQ coming soon
Powercables, IC, Speakercables: Echole Obsession and Vertex AQ soon
Rack: Special rack made from tankwood (similar to our speaker cabinet)

Tube Amps: Absolare Pure Preamp and Mastersound 845 Monoblock Signature Edition (highly tweaked)

Solid State Amp: GTE Trinity AMP
This amp outperforms the Mastersound easily. It has balanced inputs. So I would prefer to use this amp directly without any preamp.

Harmonix, Vertex AQ and Steinmusic Tuning Feets
7 Lessloss Blackbodies
2 Steinmusic H2a and 2 Steinmusic H2b (see stereotimes for review)
Steinmusic E-Pads and Magic Stones.

Kaiser Kawero Speaker (with some new additional features we are just testing)

PC Frontend with xxhighend memory software player (www.xxhighend.nl)
Weiss Vesta Firewire to SP/DIF converter
M2Tech Hiface USB to SP/DIF converter

and a good turntable (Kuzma Stabi XL4 with 4 point arm)

I will check my schedule and appointments but I think we are not able to perform this before High end show in Munich.

A good friend is willing to send a burned in DCS Scarlatti for that event.

Best regards

Rainer Weber