tennessee

So with 130+ hours on it the DAC2 is sounding much better and more importantly there is a noticeable difference between it and the dac in my AV preamp. I like that I was able to do A/B tests with a known quantity over the last week, it tells me that it is indeed the equipment and not my ears doing the breaking in. I'm also able to do A/B testing with USB from a Macbook and Toslink from the AppleTV or SageTV (the latter lacks the slick interface but can output 24/96 over toslink). Those sound identical to my ears, and just a $6 toslink cable. Sure I can convince myself that USB sounds a tiny bit better but I am unable to detect which is which just by listening. Source material is lossless 16/44.1 cd rip and a couple of 24/96 vinyl rips. That makes sense to me. Personally I think most of the differences between USB and Toslink are down to processing on the computer and not jitter. (If it's upsampling to 24/192 it's doing some kind of processing.) So I probably won't go to the trouble of doing a USB setup since Toslink is what I already have, and anyway there's very little high bitrate content out there. But I am a happy W4S customer. Will be borrowing a Rega and a Bel Canto in the next week to make sure I'm not missing out.

Patience, what a concept Yeah I read this whole thread (amazing I know) but am new to the whole break-in concept. Will check back after it's been cooking for 16 days and 16 hours. I'm also picking up a set of balanced cables to feed the pre, since I see the balanced outputs are a bit stronger than the unbalanced ones on the dac. The engineer in me doesn't want to believe in audible jitter or differences between reliable digital inputs, but I will give the USB thing a try. Giving up the AppleTV would hurt though, the interface is crazy friendly and the photo screensaver is a family-pleaser. Thanks for the replies.

Add my name to the list of folks trying out a DAC2-- so far just 50 hours into the break-in. It sounds good, but... so far I'm a little underwhelmed because in an A/B test I can barely tell any difference between it and the dac in my AV preamp (Anthem AVM-30). Imaging is a bit better but not enough to justify the cost and increased system complexity. I'm not hearing the punchy bass that others have mentioned-- if anything it seems a bit weak and the soundstage, while wide and precise, is also distant and flat to my ears. I may be hitting the limitations of other components: AppleTv streaming lossless 16/44.1 via Toslink to DAC2 DAC2 -> pre-in on AVM-30 (bypassing DSP) AVM-30 pre-out -> Naim 112x pre -> Naim 150x amp w FC2 Snell QBx25 speakers Blue Jeans cables (unbalanced) Yea it looks redundant to have a DAC2 and two pre's. My own experiments show the AVM-30 is good about passing the analog signal through unmolested and it gives multiroom capability. Probably the Snells are the weak link because they are not that strong on the bottom end. I like them for their smoothness and clear imaging. Anyway, will give the DAC2 another 100 hours and see what happens.