feckn_eejit

Curious to hear why, but who cares when it looks like that! Fucking insane.

...ropey jets of schism... all over the Ref. 1's face...

Surprised to see the G4 cube left out. Beautiful computer... piece of shit, but beautiful... Somewhat off topic, gotta love these: if Darth Vader were shopping for a computer in the early '90s... obviously he'd get one of these.

Actually, I find unless the digital cable is truly shit, the flavour of sound is more dependant on what sort of connectors you're using rather than the brand/price of cable...

Was born on the west island, but unfortunately my anglophone family moved west the year before I would have started French immersion at school. When my current job/career runs out of steam I swear I will learn French and move back... every time I visit I am so sad to leave... the food, the women, the music, the vibe in general... fuck I am pining hard now, thanks...

really it's just a Sun workstation monitor cable... though I don't remember the old 13W3 cables having a ferrite bead on the load end so... Yeah, ~$2.5k seems right for a Mk.III alone, couple hundred more for the D2D-1, and a 1.5M orchid aes/ebu cable should be $350ish. You saying you paid $1.8k for a DAC3, DAC3.1, and D2D-1? Colour me green with envy... I've always found AES/EBU to sound too laid back and syrupey smooth without as much impact in the lower registers, particularly compared to BNC-terminated coax which I understand is the ideal medium for S/PDIF. I'm told the XLR connector is not really ideal for high-bandwith transmission such as S/PDIF though I honestly don't understand why this is and would love to be enlightened...

will be soon(ish)! Siemens CCa... Thanks, glad to have finally stumbled upon this place... sad it took me so long. Actually I don't feel like a total idiot on this one - I paid $3.1k (AgoN auction...) for a package consisting of the Mk.III, a D2D-1 upsampler, I^2S-e cable, and an original pre-Kimber Illuminati Orchid AES/EBU cable, which I guess I should get around to comparing to my later Kimber version... too bad I'm not a fan of AES/EBU cables.

and you can give me $3k

Output stage and digital filter (DF1704 in the D1, PMD200 in the SF) are the two big differences. I'm torn about the op amp in the SFD-2 thing. I really like the sound of this DAC (save for the weak bass which I'm told will improve with bigger output caps as part of the SE+ upgrade), yet I know I should hate that it uses friggin op amps for I/V... I'm really not much of an electronics buff and am just learning about this stuff, and am not inclined to tinker around with my own multi kilobuck DAC... so I'm sort of limited to what I can get others to do for me and PartsConnexion sells the Bursons, so... I'm not inclined to have the whole I/V stage re-engineered so I guess I am interested in whatever is the best drop in replacement for the OPA627s... I guess what would be really sweet would be to build a Pass D1 I/V and output and somehow merge it with the digital bits in the SF... then I wouldn't have to deal with the t00bs either! edit: or yank the PMD200 from the SF and learn how to or pay someone to engineer a new digital board for my D1! Good to be here! Think I'm going to like this place... We'll have to do a bass-off some time....

shadowy men!! great track, great show. Enjoying this thread.

A the end of '05 I almost sent my Benchmark DAC1 to Steve for the full meal deal, was going to be a $4.5k $1k dac... just feels wrong... got a Pass D1 instead and never looked back. I'm with monseigneur Nugent on jitter being a bastard but his products are certainly not the only way to deal with it...

NECROPOST! Wow, this is one of the very early SFD-2s. The SFD-II Mk.III I'm listening to right now was an original Mk.I SFD-2 as well. My case is rather different - rather than just the top coming off it's a top and side type arrangement. Mine says 1994 on the analog board near the output jacks. Apparently the analog board changed a bit over the Mk.I run. If you bought a brand new Mk.II, you have the latest analog board. Some Mk.Is have the same but only the later ones. I'm not sure that the Mk.II upgrade changed much other than the digital filter swapout to PMD100... The Mk.III was available as an upgrade only as far as I am aware. The Mk.III added SF's funky I^2-Se input (output mod available for SFT-1 and standard on Transport 3, and Assemblage D2D-1 upsampler). Mk.III uses CS8414 receiver for all but I^2-Se, PMD200, PCM1704s (eight of 'em!) and OPA627s for I/V... The Mk.III is fucking great... and insane with the D2D-2 via I^2-Se... (changing my redbook life, i'm in heaven! you know that face Fremer's pulling in the gizmodo article listening to Avalon? that's me right now but with Stax on, and for only 5 cents on his $350k dollar and instead of a big black vynil disc it's the fabulous redbook layer of the SACD version of this album) my only complaint is the bass (both quantity and quality) falls short compred to my Pass D1 (24/96 upgraded unit with CS8414/DF1704/8xPCM1704). Chris Johnson tells me the SE+ upgrade should more than address that and I'm going to have Bursons put in place of the OPA627s as well... just waiting for funds to materialize... As for digital cables, I have a SFT-1 (sans I^2-Se output...) with ST-optical output and have used it extensively with my Pass D1, and a bit with the SFD-2 Mk.III (rocking a Micromega Drive 3 mostly these days). It's definitely got its own sound, different than coax or xlr... I've only got one ST cable, a grey plain looking AT&T jobbie. Aural Symphonics would be happy to sell you a $1k "Optimism V2"... anyway, I find ST and XLR to be opposite sounds with coax a happy medium. XLR = smooth, laid back, good in the extremes, kind of fat and slow PRaT wise. ST = awesome midrange, wicked PRaT, weak in the extremes. coax = great balance of the two. This has held true with all the cables and transports I've used...