DACs: Burmester vs. Meitner vs. dcs

Mes....are you saying i am a little delusional?

just because you had a 6 month 'train wreck' don't think it has to happen every time.

btw, what does it mean when the acoustical designer and the contractor want to kill each other?

actually, so far it seems to be ok. but then again my contractor hasen't seen the detail yet of the acoustical features. since the room will be quite large (29.5' x 20.5' x 11') it won't need much baffleing or bass traps. only a few between the joists in the ceiling. they have a clean sheet of paper.....that should reduce the amount of treatment required.

my contractor has done a 4 million dollar commercial project with me so i think he is up to it.....we will see.

6 months?!? You're being a little minimalistic :-)
No, not delusional, just just spuriously optimistic LOL
Really, I hope it goes smoothly and expeditiously for you, I wouldn't wish my experience on even my worst enemy:JT notwithstanding :-) My contractor had also done huge multimillion dollar jobs. But, as yours indubitably will, thought that acoustical measurements and sticking to them was, well, ridiculous. How can a foot or so here or there effect the sound?!? My advice: stay on them, and see what they are going to do BEFORE they do it, so as not to have to UNDO it and do it again. Know the prints well, weedhopper. It's a painful but ultimately worthwhile process. Oh, and expensive. I'll be out when it's done. I may be much older then :^)

i have already found a discrepency between a measurement that my contrator gave the acoustical designer and one's i had given them (3 times). they started designing for the wrong height. i caught it by asking questions (which, as an anal SOB, i do constantly). we will see who tries to pin the wasted design time on who. the acoustical designer didn't consult the measurements i had provided him and the contractor had miss-communicated the height.

i have used this contractor for 20 years on 10 or so projects....he is a good guy and knows his stuff but it is my responsibility to make sure i get what i want. as long as i am clear on the design.....it will be right.

i appreciate that i get the benefit of the learning curves here.

I talked to EMM Labs about running a Placette passive volume control and they did not reccommend it. It's not a sufficient current output and the signal would be out of balance regarding tone.

Again, the DCS gear is optimized for direct connection to an amp. Pass Labs D-1 and the DCS are the only ones I've personally heard that will actually drive any length of cable and sound top notch. Camelot Uther is anothernice one I heard but lower on the food chain. As an example, I bouhgt the Marantz SA-1 when it first appeared. I was all excited because I could take that big balanced output (6 volts ) and use a Placette (I'm a big fan of pasive pre-amps and volume controls) volume control. It sounded awful. The 6 volts wasn't optimised for driving an amp same as EMM.