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KevinFlippo

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  1. Steely Dan - Aja & Gaucho Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat Diana Krall - Live in Paris & Only Trust Your Heart Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here & Dark Side Of the Moon Roger Waters - Amused to Death Fleetwood Mac - Rumours James Newton Howard & Friends Jazz at the Pawn Shop The Eagles - Hell Froze Over Is that more than 10?
  2. Here is a link to a photo on what's in the box of the M1 and V-DAC. http://www.ippinkan.com/m1_dac_musicalfidelity.htm As you can see that they have pretty much the same parts with the exception that the M1 has an extra opamp for the balanced outputs and the small power transformer and supporting caps for the power supply. The Pyramid power supply I purchased for $17 is way larger than the built-in for the M1 and the WallWart for the V. I figured that I can take the extra money that I am not spending on the M1 can be used to buy another DAC. This is what is in the box from Audio-GD for about $300. http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/Headphoneamp/NFB11/NFB1125.jpg No opamps, real transisors for the analog section. Also it is a headphone amp as well. I am not nocking the V-DAC because it is sounding really good as it breaks in. I am happy with it and I will be keeping it.
  3. The V-DAC now has two and a half weeks of burn in time and has improved much since I first hooked it up. It has a different presentation from other DAC's that I have heard. There is more space around the players and instruments. Depth of the soundstage is improved, also the speed, impact and texturing of instruments has increased. I have read over on Head-Fi.org that other folks have compared the V-DAC to the M1 and find them very similar sounding. I think I am going to keep the V-DAC for now. I have also ordered up a new NFB-11 HA/DAC from Audio-GD and it should arrive in the next week or two. I figure I can throw up my Tube audio rig with the NFB-11 and have both it and my Solid State rig with the V-DAC running. I have not had my tube amps up and running since I acquired and rebuilt the DQ-10's. The tubes are not a good match with speakers that only are about 85db sensitive. The DQ's really like having 300 watts available to get things moving. I do miss the warm, sweet and high sense of presence sound that tubes present. I was impressed by the Zu family of speakers that I heard at RMAF last month. I maybe shopping for a pair of those.
  4. When I ordered my V-DAC off of Amazon.com, I also purchased a Pyramid PS-3KX 12 volt power supply for an extra $16.99. It's rated at 2.5 amps continuous and 3 amps peak. I have been running the V-DAC for over a week now with no issues using the Pyramid. I have read that some V-DAC owners report that thier V-DAC and Wallwarts become hot to the touch due to the Wallwart putting out 17 volts and the V-DAC's internal voltage regulators working overtime to adjust for that. My V-DAC and Pyramid run cool to the touch. Excessive heat can shorten the life of electronics. I used a connector from an old universal power adapter to fit the V-DAC's power jack. I soldered two 18 ga. wires to the connectors pins for the V-DAC side and two banana plugs for the Pyramid side. Check Radio Shack or Walmart for a universal adapter that you can raid one of the connector that will fit the V-DAC.
  5. I think the Cat 6 cable from Monoprice.com that I ran to my Laptop/music server's NIC makes Pandora sound better than using the WIFI connection. YMMV.
  6. At the RMAF two weeks ago the Guys from Peachtree Audio were using a MacBook as thier music server and then used the Apple TV units as wireless receivers to send music to their Decco DAC units. They used a Toslink cable from the back of the ATV to the input on the DAC's to demo the equipment they had setup in one of the conference rooms. I think they said that they were able to stream up to 24/96 signal through the ATV.
  7. Thanks for the link to your original thread. It's great when some else voids their warrenty and opens the boxes up to get some pictures. Except for the internal power supply, a handfull of ceramic disks changed out with mylar caps and the Balanced connectors bodged in the box, it looks like they are basically the same DAC. I don't think that the M1 is really worth the extra $400. I think if I am going to send my V-DAC back before my 30 days is up would be for one of the Audio-GD Dac 19 series DAC's. http://www.audio-gd.com/Pro/dac/NFB-2/NFB2EN.htm I have read that the NBF-3 can be had for about $350 including shipping to the USA. It appears that it had more and better parts in the box. Deffinatly a bigger power supply is included.
  8. Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that someone else has the same question I do. The V-DAC has 30+ hours on it now and the high end is starting to smooth out. I am hoping there is some more improvement coming over the new few 100 hours of use.
  9. I have been listening to a V-DAC for three days now and I like it. I am using a 3 amp rated power supply to power it instead of the 500 milliamp wall wort that it comes with. This little unit is totally impressing me. What do you more seasoned folks think of it and should I ship it back and get one of the new MF M-1 DAC's? What kind of improvements would the M-1 or something like a Audio-GD provide that the V-DAC can't do? I am trying to stay in a $700 or less budget. My current DAC is a Audio Alchemy 3.0 with the updated power supply that I have had for the past 15 years. I also have a Phillips DVD 963SA SACD player that dose upsampling to 192khz when playing CD's. It sounds better than the AA 3.0 dose because of the newer DAC's in it and I am finding that the V-DAC is sounding similar. But the Phillips is 7 years old and I know that D to A technology has improved in this time period. Any imput and suggestions that you folks can come up with will be welcomed. Thanks in advanced.
  10. I also was not impressed by the TAD-Bel Canto room. The speakers seemed to beam and were unable to create a stereo image unless you were setting the last row of chairs in the middle. There were maybe 10 rooms that I thought things were setup correctly and sounding really good out of the 50 or so I visited Friday and Saturday. My list kinda goes like this:<br /> <br /> 1.The $80,000/pair Acapella High Violoncello II's with Einstein tube electronics is my overall top pick of the show. They were as perfect as anything at the show. I heard this room on Friday morning but I have read that sometime Sunday that they blew out one of the ion tweeters.<br /> 2.The Avalon Transcendent speakers with Jeff Rowland electronics was probably the best sounding small room that I heard. This was one room that did not cost more than a 3-series BMW to own.<br /> 3.The suites on Mezzanine had many big dollar setups in the conference rooms but Dynaudio, Wadia, XLO room was the best balanced sounding setup. I think John Atkinson said he thought it was the best sound of the show.<br /> 4.Just down the hall on the Second floor from the Avalon/Rowland room was Audio by Van Alstine/Salk Speakers room. This is my favorite of all that I heard at the show mainly because it sounded as good as the insanely priced rooms and it is priced within my attainable budget. The Salk Veracity HT2-TL's had everything going for them, tonality, imaging, bass and focus when driven by Van Alstine's electronics. Also the real kicker was that their source was a Vortex music server(setting in the bathroom) over WiFi to a Logitech Squeezebox!<br /> 5.My second favorite in the attainable budget category was the Zu Speakers/Red Wine audio room. Nice warm sounding with good imaging and dynamics. The Zu's sounded way better in this room than down in one of the conference rooms that they shared with the PeachTree gear.<br /> 6.McIntosh was demoing their new music server and their new C50 preamp, MC302 power amp and their large multi-driver tower speakers. It was McIntosh, damn near perfect sounding.<br /> 7.The Classic Sound/Tri-Planer room was the best Turntable driven setup at the show. Those large horn speakers driven by Atma-Sphere amps were to die for.<br /> 8.I had to go see one oldest friends of mine, George Merrill. He is the man who got me hooked into this hobby over 25 years ago. He was showing off his new Turntable with Quad electronics and Quad speakers. Alright, maybe this was the best Turntable driven room at the show. <br /> 9.The Nola Metro Grand Reference speakers driven by Audio Research electronics just rocked. I could not believe the bass that these small tower speakers with 6.5 inch woofers could produce.<br /> 10.The last notable room on my list was the AudioKinesis and Atma-sphere room. This was an excellent example of a Horn/tube setup with the great warm mid-range sound. <br /> There were some other good rooms and some horible rooms, but these stood out as my best pics for excellent sound that I heard at the show.
  11. Ditto.. I was very diappointed with PS Audio's room when I visited on Saturday afternoon.
  12. I received my Hiface about three weeks ago and it now has 50+ hours on it. I had some clicking between songs early on but they were corrected by the WASAPI drivers download. I am throughly happy with it. It takes 50 or so hours of burn-in time until is starts to open up and smooth out. I can notice an improvement in detail and imaging as time goes by. I am now saving my pennies for a PS Audio Digital Link III so I can try out some of the higher resoloution recordings that are out there and the DVD-Audio disks that I have to be ripped.
  13. Thanks for ending my confusion. I have been chasing this High End Unicorn for over 30 years and just receintly stumbled into using a computer as a high quality source.
  14. I am trying to configure Foobar to work with the M2 Tech Hiface USB adapter and I am wondering which is the preferred Output setting in Foobar. When I select the "KS :HIFACE Kernal Streaming" setting I get a warning box pop up when playing a song that "Kernal Streaming" is experimental and use at your own risk. I get no warning from the "WASAPI :SPDIF Interface (2-HiFace 1.0.3 Usb to Spdif (44.1 Khz - 192 Khz)) setting. Which is is preferred setting for "Bit Perfect" output to my DAC?
  15. It dose have a Toslink in the headphone jack like Mac's do. I also have been reading up on using the M2Tech HiFace USB to SPDIF to run to my "Vintage" Audio Alchemy DDE 3.0 for now. This will also let me upgrade to the PS Audio Digital Link III when funds become available. I just thought the Aspire Revo fit the criterea of small, quiet, and lots of input/output options and reasonable costs.
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