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MayaTlab

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  1. Hi, I'm selling a Resonessence Labs Invicta V2 (with the ES9018 chip on the headphone card and additional frequency rate LEDs on the front) purchased new in July 2013 directly from resonessencelabs.com, in superb condition. It's a terrific DAC / source / amp combo. Here's Resonessence's own description on their web page : "Exceptional Value Engineered with more conveniences than a standard DAC Adaptable for home use or in the recording studio. Designed by the chassis designers at IMWorks, and Resonessence engineers intimately familiar with the exceptional ESS Sabre DAC. Designed, produced, and manufactured in Canada. Provides endless hours of high-fidelity audio playback. Minimal amounts of noise and distortion and accurate frequency response Flexible I/O SD card reader for seamless high-resolution sound enjoyment without a computer. No computer, no noise added into the loop. RCA + XLR analog outputs. High-speed USB, Toslink, BNC, AE5. Supports all major audio inputs and outputs Two headphone amplifiers that deliver pristine sound quality." It's in excellent condition bar a few specs of dust that found their way between the OLED screen and the protective cover. There are a few bumps on the Apple remote that is sold with it. It no longer is covered by the warranty. You'll still receive the original invoice, and a letter certifying the transfer of property in English or French. The internal power supply can easily be switched to your country's voltage. I can ship to anywhere in the world, but will give strong priority to European buyers. If I have to send it outside of Europe, you may, depending on certain conditions, have to pay customs taxes. It will be shipped from Paris. Price is 2400 euros. Price includes Paypal but not shipping fees. I am new to these forums but I've participated to head-fi regularly for several years under the same pseudo. If you have any question, don't hesitate to ask me - I'll answer as rapidly as I can !
  2. Do these pop / thumps happen when the unit is switched ON from its full shutdown mode or its standby mode ? Do they also happen when switching it off ?
  3. More information on this page about the differences between the original Invicta and the second generation Invicta, as well as the ones betwenn the second generation Invicta and the Invicta Mirrus : About Mirus… | Resonessence As I guessed all PCBs have been revised. This may partly explain the increase in price in addition to the use of the ES9018.
  4. I don't think it's strange at all that they cost the same : they both probably share almost all their components, the only difference being that the Invicta has a regular DAC board + headphone DAC board (and the little headphone jacks board) while the Mirus has two DAC boards (possibly different from the one in the Invicta, although I wouldn't be surprised they managed to implement the parallel processing with the same type of board). I'm even ready to bet they share the same main board (just a bet though, I'm not sure). I believe Project86 reported on Head-fi that there were other improvements as well, such has higher processing power. I personally believe that there is a very likely chance there have been other tweaks here or there to improve the unit, which may be a bit costlier. But I guess the main reason for the price increase might be that they want to develop their dealer network and improve margins to do so ?
  5. I believe that's the gist of it. But the ESS9018 already works in parallel, just with 4 channels in parallel per output. More details in their upgraded FAQ : "The INVICTA consists of two primary analog modules: the DAC output module that drives the rear panel audio outputs, and the headphone driver module. The DAC output module has an ES9018 Sabre DAC and uses four channels in parallel for each stereo output. The INVICTA Mirus variant substitutes a second DAC output module for the headphone module. Hence it cannot provide a headphone output, but it can provide a total of eight ES9018 DAC channels for each stereo output. (It uses eight DAC channels to drive both the XLR (balanced) and the RCA (unbalanced) analog outputs.) You will read of other manufacturers who have also discovered that every time the Sabre DAC output channels are paralleled together performance improves. It is a unique feature of the Sabre DAC that its outputs can be added in this way (without the need for potentially noisy intermediate amplifiers). Doubling the number of channels reduces the noise by 3db. However, Resonessence does a little more. Firstly, we use a circuit level implementation that distributes the left and right channels equally between the Sabre chips, this ensures perfect channel to channel matching. And secondly, we actually also parallel the AD797 output amplifiers so that they also have their noise reduced by 3db at the same time. This second level of connectivity in parallel extends to the regulators as well: their noise goes down too. The second generation INVICTA and INVICTA Mirus are optimized for 384kS/s. They differ from the first generation in that the USB underflow/overflow indicators are removed and we have added additional LEDs to show 352.8kS/S and 384kS/s. A major upgrade to the INVICTA is also implemented in these second generation machines: the headphone module replaces the ES9016 with the higher performance ES9018."
  6. Ideally two DACs measuring the same should sound the same. But that implies that we've measured everything that's relevant to sound quality. Since sound itself is a notion we still can't completely conceptualise in measurable terms (as I said, we're still debating on what timbre exactly is), we can't measure everything that's relevant to sound quality. In addition, we may also question the relevance on sound quality of measuring things like power noise or jitter at levels that intuitively are well below what we could possibly hear (at least in regard to environmental noise). Im' not questioning the instruments we use to measure DACs, I'm questioning the conceptualisation of those measurements - ie, what measures are relevant to sound quality, in which way, to what effect, etc. If you were to look at the Benchmark DAC1 and the Weiss DAC202 measurements, you'd see they're basically the same in many regards (frequency response, jitter, bit depth, etc.). Yet I'm sure nobody would mistake one for the other in listening tests. Why is that so ? I don't know. Same applies for digital inputs : both of those DACs measure superbly as far as jitter rejection is concerned, but I've read several times people claiming there is a difference between their digital inputs. A/B tests aren't the most elegant way to test something, but at least a blind A/B test should be somewhat sufficient to determine if somebody can detect a difference between two digital inputs. You sound to me a bit like somebody who would say that the Higgs boson "exists" while I believe a more correct way to put it would be "we measured a set of values that we interpret as corresponding to what we have conceptualised as the Higgs boson".
  7. Even when DACs measure practically perfect across all their inputs in terms of jitter (most likely the invicta is one of them, given its USB jitter measurement), it isn't unusual to find reviews where one claims they can hear differences between inputs. It's been the same for the Weiss DAC202, the Benchmark DAC1, and practically all DACs for that matter. For the same product, you'll also find reviews where one claims no difference at all between inputs. As far as I'm concerned, I can very easily do an A/B test between my Lavry DA11 internal USB input and the Lavry connected via the Anedio U2, despite that the Lavry probably measures pretty well in terms of jitter on its own. In the same vein, the Off-Ramp as measured by Stereophile didn't prove to make much of an improvement in measurable terms and yet I've yet to come across a review that claims it makes no difference at all. Remember that sound still is a grey area. Afterall , if we still can't agree on a definition for the concept of timbre, then how could we measure it ? Same probably applies to digital audio : our knowledge of it likely is incomplete. At least Resonessence has sufficient modesty to acknowledge it even in their marketing material (hear me, Benchmark ?).
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