New JKDAC32 USB DAC

[Sligolad]

I wrote up my thoughts on the new JKDAC32 which i had the pleasure to purchase recently from John Kenny.
This not so much a review but a potted history of how i got to the JKDAC, me raving about how good it is, and probably embarassing John in the process, and a comparison against an analogue setup.

Since retiring my Young DAC and Teddy Pardo power supply after listening to the JKDAC32, I have been amazed how much this DAC has opened up. I am not one for all the hifi jargon which often leaves me wondering what it all means but the best way I can describe the sound is something like this, it now has a weight, body, depth and detail I had not heard before. It may be one of those lucky mistakes when I installed the JKDAC using the existing Young driver but the sound is so good I have no desire to try the HiFace driver yet for comparison until I get a little tired of listening to lots of music as it all sounds so good.
This evening for the second time I ran an experiment using my analogue set up against the JKDAC32 using Jplay. For the first time the PC based system left the analogue system behind. I used a fresh vinyl copy of Van Morrison’s “His Band and the Street Choir” against a FLAC rip off the CD for comparison and after repeated switching back and forward with both playing simultaneously all I could hear were the weaknesses in the analogue setup. Now I understand why people spend such crazy money on cartridges, turntables and phono stages. The analogue system sounded soft and lacking real separation of the instruments. Don’t get me wrong here as it is a sound you could easily live with and enjoy if you had not heard the PC based system in comparison and alas I guess this is what happens to us all when we hear a system with greater resolution but still retaining the weight and depth in the music.
What’s even more amazing to me is how John Kenny developed such a wonderful piece of kit without any real serious investment in playback equipment at his disposal from what I had seen during our comparison tests at his place. He is either a genius, very lucky or I have a lot more to learn about what can be done at reasonable prices in this often bemusing, dazzling and flash world of HiFi.
For those willing to read on I have written a snapshot of how I got to this stage more as a record for myself for the changes that are most assuredly yet to come in this fast changing world of PC playback.
I come relatively new to FLAC and WAV based playback and already within a year I have been amazed at the progress of PC based playback in such a short time.
To set the scene on my playback chain which has remained constant throughout my foray in to PC based playback I have invested heavily in Nordost cables through eBay mainly including the recent mains distribution block with earth spike. Amplification comes through Conrad Johnson 17LS Preamp and MV60 Amp, all tubes by the way. Speakers are Quad ESL63s in which I recently rebuilt a panel which was a challenging but rewarding experience.
My first stand-alone DAC was a Beresford Caiman Gatorized TC-7520SE which I found was a very good DAC at the time since it presented a level of detail I was missing from my Logitech Touch analogue out especially when playing high resolution files.
It got me hooked on the stand-alone DAC route for digital playback and within months I had moved from spinning CD’s to ripping CD’s to FLAC and playing these from my laptop. Foobar was my player of choice and I put in the hours getting it set up with artist info, lyrics, LastFM integration and all the nice GUI stuff Foobar offers.
I then decided to get a larger budget together for a DAC upgrade as it was clear from all the activity on various forums that there were a lot of new DAC’s hitting the market and after a lot of excellent reviews of the M2tech Young DAC I went for this with a Teddy Pardo linear power supply. It was a real step forward from the Caiman so this was mothballed and I was very happy with the Young, I was convinced that I would have to spend serious money to make any further substantial improvements.
Next I focused on what was happening in the playback software arena and after running round all the forums for several weeks I came across Pureplayer and this became a serious challenger to Foobar for some time. The real step forward came when I tried Jplay, this was one of those major steps forward which create a real jaw dropping experience and there were no AB comparisons necessary.
It was some time after this I really wanted to know where I was at compared to vinyl playback and since I had sold off all my vinyl many years ago I had to step back in to that world again. I picked up a second hand Dual CS 455-1 turntable with an Ortofon OMB 10 cartridge, and a second hand Puresound P10 phonostage, finally some new heavy weight vinyl pressings which were nice to hold and look at again to complete the analogue system.
I put aside an evening to compare my PC based playback system with the Young against my newly acquired Vinyl based system and I was a little disappointed that I could hear more body in the sound from the vinyl setup but the difference was not so big that I was switching back to vinyl.
To bring it all back up to date now I went to the HiFi show in the Burlington 2 weeks ago, met with John Kenny and brought my Young DAC with the Teddy Pardo power supply back to his place for a comparison. John wanted to hear the Young to benchmark his DAC against it and as far as I was concerned I was there to help him out not expecting what happened next.

[jkeny]

Don't worry about my embarrassment, P - with therapy, I will be able to deal with it :)

Thanks for posting this mini-review, much appreciated & it makes for a good story with a happy ending

[DancingPriest]

Thanks for that.
I'm currently using a Beresford myself so it was nice to get your perspective.
The JDAC is looking tempting, that and Fran's Frugel Horns.

Amazing output from a forum with 200 members!

[Ken Moreland]

Pearse, the JKDAC32 certainly sounds tempting, maybe Santa Claus might do something. The combination of JK and Jplay is certainly cutting edge stuff. Maybe you've tried it already, but I see you're working in FLAC and I could never detect any difference between FLAC and WAV until I used Jplay. I suggest you convert a couple of your favourite tracks in FLAC to WAV and compare.
You can use Foobar to convert or download http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html ... 4Qodw1c_mg

Jplay say their player unpacks FLAC before playing as WAV but they concede that a straight WAV is better.

KM

[jkeny]

Ken,
Another improvement (& not a small one) is to download & manually install the Young DAC driver instead of the Hiface driver. Thanks to Pearse for discovering this. It really sounds much more organic & integrated. Try it & let us know your impressions.

[Ken Moreland]

Hi John , did it yesterday and the sound quality improvement is impressive. I'm just listening to it now with Ray Charles /Genius Loves Company , more detail and greater separation of the vocals/instruments. Even Willie Nelson sounds good. I'm using a 24bit Benchmark DAC with the Mk2JKHiface and the improvement is clear using the Youing driver so I don't think it's a 32bit dac thing.
KM

[Fran]

There's a bit of software called "xxrecode" that is very useful (and free) for converting between formats. Also very handy... say if you have your stuff as flac or wav and you want to add an album to an ipod or something in lower res. You can keep your library intact, and just export the lower res stuff to the ipod, no duplicates in the main library.

I'm very much looking forward to getting my hands on this bit of kit to try out. I'm fairly well acquainted with the JK stuff, so also am aware that any gains in SQ at this point are really at the cutting edge. I think many of those who hang on to CD for SQ purposes would get quite a shock if they heard these dacs.

Fran

[jkeny]

Hi John , did it yesterday and the sound quality improvement is impressive. I'm just listening to it now with Ray Charles /Genius Loves Company , more detail and greater separation of the vocals/instruments. Even Willie Nelson sounds good. I'm using a 24bit Benchmark DAC with the Mk2JKHiface and the improvement is clear using the Youing driver so I don't think it's a 32bit dac thing.
KM

Yes, it is a significant improvement in the sound field - seems to me to be more organic, more integrated. I have noted before big sound differences when changing USB drivers on other USB devices. Even though I'm an IT guy, software, at this level, is still a mystery.

[DaveF]

all interesting stuff.

A few questions:

A driver change mentioned above gives improved sound quality. If so, what where the "deficiencies" on the older Hiface driver? From a technical point of view what does the young dac driver do that the hiface doesnt?

Does the JKDAC come into its own with Hi Rez files or is it at least comparable if not better than other dacs/CDPs that deal with normal 16bit CD quality?

Is there ANY way to evaluate this DAC using an existing CDP as a transport? (one with an spdif output only).

[Fran]

DaveF - I've only ever heard it with 16/44 files, so the advantage is defintely there for normal res materials, not limited to hi res only.

As for comparisons, I'll let John answer to be sure, but AFAIK, his JKDAC32 is USB input only, so not possible to use the SPDIF output from a CDP to compare.

We did however do some of this in the past but only in the experimental stages. John, have you still got the details on it?

Fran