Tír Na HiFi

tony wrote:....
Personally I seem to have gone a different route lately to many here. Valves everywhere and big box Dac from matchbox.
At a recent meet primarily to compare dacs we found interconnects,isolation and dac type all influenced the final sound.
Reality is as I think most of us realize and accept that all things in the chain often affect the final result(Positively/Negatively/ and often not at all).

From hearing various systems over the last few years to get a bit of magic takes effort,investigation, willingness to trial/test and an open mind.
I went to Scalford with a closed mind to CDp's as transports for a dac and came back scratching my head at the people who used this method. Maciej's Meridian transport into a dac opened my mind to what could be achieved with it.

To cut to the chase give us some hi res versions of 3.14avx!

jesuscheung wrote:
DAC is just like a musical instrument. it is about who plays it. DAC isn't supposed to make music "better"

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

DAC can only make signal/sound worse
Maybe more accurate to say some are worse than others
Only reclocking can try improve signal

jesuscheung wrote:
i think there is a misconception of DAC.
people thinks DAC is a CD player.

so manufacturers make DAC to sound better.

if D A C is neutral, it is supposed to sound much worse with people's shitty OS/software.
it is also supposed to sound much more wonderful with good OS/software.

DAC is just like a musical instrument. it is about who plays it. DAC isn't supposed to make music "better"

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

jesuscheung wrote: ...
so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

jrling wrote:

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

DAC can only make signal/sound worse
Maybe more accurate to say some are worse than others
Only reclocking can try improve signal

JC/Nigel you are both right.
There is no trick with Chord DAC64 MKII anyhow. It buffers 4 seconds of incoming SPDIF data, reclocks it, sends it to a FPGA DAC chip programmed to their own formula and sends it out to an Opamp. They engineered it beautifully and have done a great job. More to the point AFAIK, they are the only ones doing this - particularly the FPGA-based DAC. So they are not beholden to or suffering from other manufacturer's poor DAC chip implementation. They are in control.

I think this degrades the signal less than other DACs.

They are expensive and you do pay for the lovely case, but in this instance, I do think you get something for your money rather than another ESS 9018 implementation.
For £1,000 second-hand though, I think my DAC was very good value.

DaveF wrote:

jrling wrote:

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

DAC can only make signal/sound worse
Maybe more accurate to say some are worse than others
Only reclocking can try improve signal

JC/Nigel you are both right.
There is no trick with Chord DAC64 MKII anyhow. It buffers 4 seconds of incoming SPDIF data, reclocks it, sends it to a FPGA DAC chip programmed to their own formula and sends it out to an Opamp. They engineered it beautifully and have done a great job. More to the point AFAIK, they are the only ones doing this - particularly the FPGA-based DAC. So they are not beholden to or suffering from other manufacturer's poor DAC chip implementation. They are in control.

I think this degrades the signal less than other DACs.

They are expensive and you do pay for the lovely case, but in this instance, I do think you get something for your money rather than another ESS 9018 implementation.
For £1,000 second-hand though, I think my DAC was very good value.

I dont know the details of the Chord DAC64 but an FPGA sitting before the DAC is most likely to be doing some type of digital filtering or a choice of filtering as well the possibility of upsampling/interpolation etc. An FPGA is a pretty powerful device capable of doing a lot with audio. Any idea what FPGA it is? (Just to get an idea of the size, logic gates and mem internally)

dCS use Xilinx FPGA's in their DAC's. Well the older Elgar DACs anyway.

DaveF wrote:

jrling wrote:

so i always suspect expensive DACs e.g. chord is doing some trick. i am sure many would be pissed off i say this hehe

DAC can only make signal/sound worse
Maybe more accurate to say some are worse than others
Only reclocking can try improve signal

JC/Nigel you are both right.
There is no trick with Chord DAC64 MKII anyhow. It buffers 4 seconds of incoming SPDIF data, reclocks it, sends it to a FPGA DAC chip programmed to their own formula and sends it out to an Opamp. They engineered it beautifully and have done a great job. More to the point AFAIK, they are the only ones doing this - particularly the FPGA-based DAC. So they are not beholden to or suffering from other manufacturer's poor DAC chip implementation. They are in control.

I think this degrades the signal less than other DACs.

They are expensive and you do pay for the lovely case, but in this instance, I do think you get something for your money rather than another ESS 9018 implementation.
For £1,000 second-hand though, I think my DAC was very good value.

I dont know the details of the Chord DAC64 but an FPGA sitting before the DAC is most likely to be doing some type of digital filtering or a choice of filtering as well the possibility of upsampling/interpolation etc. An FPGA is a pretty powerful device capable of doing a lot with audio. Any idea what FPGA it is? (Just to get an idea of the size, logic gates and mem internally)

dCS use Xilinx FPGA's in their DAC's. Well the older Elgar DACs anyway.