claudioguillermo

I have heard the Hugo TT has removed the PCM decimation for DSD conversion, but I'm not completely sure, and I don't know about the 2Qute. No idea about DSD256.

The best-selling Japanese music album of all time has been remastered in high-resolution. According to Universal Music Japan, Sterling Sound's Chief Mastering Engineer Ted Jensen was tapped to do the remaster. Here's a Japanese Review: www.phileweb.com/review/article/201403/10/1111.html The remastered version is clearly less "loud", but a Japanese enthusiast went in and took a look at the files, and there was basically no signal above 22 kHz, perhaps suggestive that the source material wasn't 24/96 to start with and likely Red Book resampled, and/or that a low-pass filter has already been applied to the music. Here's the guy's blog entry: fixerhpa.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-255.html It seems (can't read Japanese, have to rely on Google) that he believes the material is resampled Red Book, and that the resampling process from 44.1 to 96 kHz made the timbre sound off. He did comparisons of the CD version processed through IzoTope RX3's Declip, and the results are quite similar. Not sure what to believe; this fixerhpa guy seems to think it's all a cash grab --- the album weighs in at ¥4000, or about $40 USD.

I have a Resonessence Concero HP, and IMHO it's very, very good --- extremely close in performance to the biggest, baddest DACs I've ever heard. PSRR seems absolutely excellent, and the unit is dead quiet, even with very sensitive earphones. I've also tried hooking up a clean USB power supply like the iUSBPower to the HP, and it doesn't seem to help all that much, pointing to the HP being really, really good at processing USB power. Of course, it's not ultra powerful (only 3.5V full scale) but the AD8397 inside (the Concero HD is the same) delivers good current levels so even low-impedance devices sound very good. Of the several USB DACs I've had for my laptop, only this one has managed to exceed my performance expectations. Of course, the Concero HP is about 1.5x the price of its nearest competitor, e.g. W4S uDAC2-HD, and most competing devices are 2-3x cheaper, but to me, it has absolutely blown me away. FFTs of the GEEK are looking very impressive for such a tiny device, too. Looking forward to seeing that in action.