Blues
AVForums Super Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Messages
- 1,061
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friday afternoon my eagerly awaited gerdac arrived. a big thank you here to the manufacturer, who went out of his way to ensure free and quick delivery.
unpacking the parcel revealed a slick little unit with gold-plated rca connectors. the manual is a bit on the short side, but hooking up the gerdac is simple enough. on top of that, the helpline was always available and extremly supportive. so 10 out of 10 for aftersale-service.
the reference system used for this review consists of a homemade memory-player equipped with a juli@ soundcard, hk680 (temporarily used as pre-amp), mcalister pp150/8 (75wpc pp tube amp) and the fabulous north creek rhythm speakers.
speaker cables are supra ply 3.4, interconnects ixos and some ellis and similar crap. (before this review only 1 ic was needed)
since I introduced the mcalister into the system, it was very revealing and pleasant to listen to to begin with, so I was extremly curious what improvement this little box would be able to achieve, if any. but this curiosity was soon replaced by pure disbelieve.
how could this little dac extract so much more detail ? one of my favourite cds is '10 new songs' from leonard cohen, where his beautfully deep voice is accompanied by several background singers. with the gerdac in the chain, these ladies where more seperated from each other and I could hear more detail than before. this continued to be true with about any music I threw on the system and right through the whole frequency-range. and all this detail sounds more beautiful than ever before as well. full bodied, well rounded, sparkling, punchy and emotional. several times I caught myself wanting to applaud the artists when a performance came to the end.
very pleasant was listening to acoustic music. the decay of some notes could probably be measured with an egg timer.
it's really like there's quiet a bit more information delivered to the amp, which gives just the additional info like spacial clues, texture and so on. at the same time there is no digital glare whatsoever.
even soundstage and focus where improved a notch, not really larger than before, but more exact and sharper.
among many others I used the 'marantz high end demo cd', 2 chesky discs, 'siltech acoustic measurements', which can in some parts sound not very pleasant, if the system is not up to it. with the gerdac even the weirdest tracks sounded good. that is usually my acid-test for the system, and it was passed with flying colours.
unfourtunately. since it's my first dac, I can't compare it to any other external dac. but it totally leaves the cdx993 in the dust, and it lifts the performance of the juli@ soundcard to a new level. actually it plays more like 2 levels higher now.
so, no downsides ? like I mentioned in other threads, I'm not a big fan of these all-positve reviews, so I digged deep and came up with two negatives.
first, the blue led on the dac is a bit on the bright side.
second, and this is much more serious, this dac may change your life. I'm for one am glued to my listening chair since it's arrival. the missus gave up calling for me, she brings me the food upstairs now. my dog is sulking, my beard is growing and all the weekend chores were cancelled. I'm desperatley hoping for bad weather, so I have an excuse to stay inside. you've been warned.
so is it worth the money ? is the pope catholic ?
I consider the gerdac the most amazing value for money deal I've ever made. it's a no brainer, it's unbelievable, it's the real mc coy.
for the price of a few cds I've got an upgrade that lifted my system from very good to marvelous, you don't find something like this in the real world. I'm already looking for an excuse to buy another one.
and I really feel sorry for the gerdacless...
unpacking the parcel revealed a slick little unit with gold-plated rca connectors. the manual is a bit on the short side, but hooking up the gerdac is simple enough. on top of that, the helpline was always available and extremly supportive. so 10 out of 10 for aftersale-service.
the reference system used for this review consists of a homemade memory-player equipped with a juli@ soundcard, hk680 (temporarily used as pre-amp), mcalister pp150/8 (75wpc pp tube amp) and the fabulous north creek rhythm speakers.
speaker cables are supra ply 3.4, interconnects ixos and some ellis and similar crap. (before this review only 1 ic was needed)
since I introduced the mcalister into the system, it was very revealing and pleasant to listen to to begin with, so I was extremly curious what improvement this little box would be able to achieve, if any. but this curiosity was soon replaced by pure disbelieve.
how could this little dac extract so much more detail ? one of my favourite cds is '10 new songs' from leonard cohen, where his beautfully deep voice is accompanied by several background singers. with the gerdac in the chain, these ladies where more seperated from each other and I could hear more detail than before. this continued to be true with about any music I threw on the system and right through the whole frequency-range. and all this detail sounds more beautiful than ever before as well. full bodied, well rounded, sparkling, punchy and emotional. several times I caught myself wanting to applaud the artists when a performance came to the end.
very pleasant was listening to acoustic music. the decay of some notes could probably be measured with an egg timer.
it's really like there's quiet a bit more information delivered to the amp, which gives just the additional info like spacial clues, texture and so on. at the same time there is no digital glare whatsoever.
even soundstage and focus where improved a notch, not really larger than before, but more exact and sharper.
among many others I used the 'marantz high end demo cd', 2 chesky discs, 'siltech acoustic measurements', which can in some parts sound not very pleasant, if the system is not up to it. with the gerdac even the weirdest tracks sounded good. that is usually my acid-test for the system, and it was passed with flying colours.
unfourtunately. since it's my first dac, I can't compare it to any other external dac. but it totally leaves the cdx993 in the dust, and it lifts the performance of the juli@ soundcard to a new level. actually it plays more like 2 levels higher now.
so, no downsides ? like I mentioned in other threads, I'm not a big fan of these all-positve reviews, so I digged deep and came up with two negatives.
first, the blue led on the dac is a bit on the bright side.
second, and this is much more serious, this dac may change your life. I'm for one am glued to my listening chair since it's arrival. the missus gave up calling for me, she brings me the food upstairs now. my dog is sulking, my beard is growing and all the weekend chores were cancelled. I'm desperatley hoping for bad weather, so I have an excuse to stay inside. you've been warned.
so is it worth the money ? is the pope catholic ?
I consider the gerdac the most amazing value for money deal I've ever made. it's a no brainer, it's unbelievable, it's the real mc coy.
for the price of a few cds I've got an upgrade that lifted my system from very good to marvelous, you don't find something like this in the real world. I'm already looking for an excuse to buy another one.
and I really feel sorry for the gerdacless...
