This Saturday was spent playing around with Dacs with [member=15382]juventino[/member]
A few months ago I changed my speakers from Monitor Audio to Proac,
After that I played around with different amplifiers Valve , Solid state , Class A , Seperate amps (same preamp)
Different valves. The changes were always small. I could easily live with either amplifier. The audio Analogue Maestro sounded so close to my separates, The Sugden class A was so beautiful ( I am not a fan of integrated amps so i went in biased) But alas one has to admit when something sounds good. Anyhow my point was that the differences were so small that I could fail blind tests.
So Dacs Thanks to Georgev, Juventino And Air I had 4 dacs
The Aqua Lavoce S3 , T&A DAC 8 (non DSD version) And The Holo Spring 2 Level 2 and my own Soekris Dam1021
We were not looking for a winner, We were just curious to how they sounded. I can easily live with any one of these Dacs.
The Holo was in Nos Mode it has other filters but due to the limited time We had with the units We did not mess around with filters. The Holo has this amazing black background and almost romantic feel to the music. It is really engaging. It puts the vocals in the back, My room is small, my speakers are about 2.5m apart and I sit about 2.8m, so it's almost near field type listening. The holo pushes gives these small pin point vocals creating this air of space giving the illusion makes me feel like my space is bigger than it is. Its so nice it got Juventino using words like "it sounds so smooth"
Bass is tight and fast, it's so engaging made me wanna play every song until the end.
The Aqua La Voce S3 The differences were remarkable it brought me to the conclusion that the things that bring the most change are source and speakers (A discussion for another thread) The Aqua is forward the Vocals were big and forward the Bass Went deeper than the Holo but the Holo is tight. I would have thought with the forwardness of the Aqua it would be bright but it was not, it was faster than the holo. On some tracks it was almost like listening to a different song. Dire Straits you and your friend 96khz Version and Keith Dont Go Nils Lofgren Sampler
T+A dac 8 is still one of my favourite dacs.This we did play with the filter settings are the buttons are right on the front. First filter the sound stage was like in between the holo and the Aqua
Second Filter the sound was on par with the holo. only difference being the holo has a lot more detail
So my conclusion to all of this was that at the end of the day it boils down to personal preference and system matching
Sent from my XQ-AT51 using Tapatalk
A few months ago I changed my speakers from Monitor Audio to Proac,
After that I played around with different amplifiers Valve , Solid state , Class A , Seperate amps (same preamp)
Different valves. The changes were always small. I could easily live with either amplifier. The audio Analogue Maestro sounded so close to my separates, The Sugden class A was so beautiful ( I am not a fan of integrated amps so i went in biased) But alas one has to admit when something sounds good. Anyhow my point was that the differences were so small that I could fail blind tests.
So Dacs Thanks to Georgev, Juventino And Air I had 4 dacs
The Aqua Lavoce S3 , T&A DAC 8 (non DSD version) And The Holo Spring 2 Level 2 and my own Soekris Dam1021
We were not looking for a winner, We were just curious to how they sounded. I can easily live with any one of these Dacs.
The Holo was in Nos Mode it has other filters but due to the limited time We had with the units We did not mess around with filters. The Holo has this amazing black background and almost romantic feel to the music. It is really engaging. It puts the vocals in the back, My room is small, my speakers are about 2.5m apart and I sit about 2.8m, so it's almost near field type listening. The holo pushes gives these small pin point vocals creating this air of space giving the illusion makes me feel like my space is bigger than it is. Its so nice it got Juventino using words like "it sounds so smooth"
Bass is tight and fast, it's so engaging made me wanna play every song until the end.
The Aqua La Voce S3 The differences were remarkable it brought me to the conclusion that the things that bring the most change are source and speakers (A discussion for another thread) The Aqua is forward the Vocals were big and forward the Bass Went deeper than the Holo but the Holo is tight. I would have thought with the forwardness of the Aqua it would be bright but it was not, it was faster than the holo. On some tracks it was almost like listening to a different song. Dire Straits you and your friend 96khz Version and Keith Dont Go Nils Lofgren Sampler
T+A dac 8 is still one of my favourite dacs.This we did play with the filter settings are the buttons are right on the front. First filter the sound stage was like in between the holo and the Aqua
Second Filter the sound was on par with the holo. only difference being the holo has a lot more detail
So my conclusion to all of this was that at the end of the day it boils down to personal preference and system matching
Sent from my XQ-AT51 using Tapatalk
