Eric5676
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Posts posted by Eric5676
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I respect and appreciate the cynicism all the way. Believe me.
I tend to be that way myself. I lurk a lot more than I post but I am well aware of the Singlepower debacle...I still can't fully wrap my brain around that.
And yes, it's definitely a tank, the way I like my gear.
Pics forthcoming soon... -
How long has this company been around? Would it by definition be FOTM due to this fact alone? Will they survive as long and continually be producing top quality products as say a Krell?
Good enough for me. Go around some of the other audio forums like I did and just so searches for "Wyred" and see the feedback that comes through about their amps and other products. You'll slowly start to see more DAC feedback as well. Long/short: I'm confident in the company and their long term prospects. Apparently they are as well considering you get a 3 year warranty out of the box.
If I recall correctly: Rick Cullen, at least, worked for PS Audio at one time.
If you look around, you'll still see a lot of people refe highly to the "Cullen modded PS Audio Digital Link III DAC"
Long/short: All of these guys have been in the biz for a long time with excellent reputations and backgrounds.
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yes impressions please. Sherwood is probably talking about jump the shark in terms of the FOTM effect.
my CDP-2 is acting up so I'm considering whether to repair or get a new DAC.
IMO it's not FOTM. Not even close. No way. In a some ways these guys might be a well kept "secret."
Customer service was excellent to the point that the nice lady called me yesterday morning and told me that a buyer had dropped out and they had a new all Black DAC-2 (what I wanted) all set to go and would I like to have it? Sure!
I couldn't be more impressed with their customer service. It's a good sign when you call during business hours and a human being with a pulse picks up under 4 rings.
Yes I splurged for Saturday delivery. Yes it was worth it.
First impressions: It smokes my Cambridge 840c. No BS. It really does. I was surprised to notice it that quickly especially since I really do try to guard myself against that "honeymoon glow new gear is perfect everything else is garbage" that's easy to come by.
Now, obviously I'm going to heavily disclaim myself with the usual "Yes, it's a new toy and I'm giddy" so please take that into consideration but the instruction manual was very clean and well written and I was basically connected, up and running inside of 5 minutes. The USB connection to the PC was easy as well. You install the right driver off the disc and then go into something like Foobar, flip it to 32 bits, max it all out and...oh hell yeah!
I'll be posting pictures but this thing is a dense brick. If you dropped this on your foot accidentally it would be contusion time. You're done.
Build quality impressed me big time right of the box. I'll say that this and the Headamp GS-X are easily the best pieces of equipment that I have and have ever owned. Hands down.
I can honestly say: I can't believe this only costs $1500. Really.
Even my sister who is not exactly the audiophile type came over, looked at it, picked it up, felt the weight and exclaimed: "Whoah, this is some serious equipment."
The pictures don't do this thing justice. Yes, it's not the sexiest looking piece of kit in the world but boy does it have it where it counts. I think that's why it started to catch my eye several months ago.
These guys are about ground up fundamentals and delivering performance first. They did it. In spades. You're going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about these DACS, believe me. FOTM my aching butt. No way.
They've had a great reputation for years with their amps anyways. That's easily going to carry over to the DACs.
The next time I need an amp or something else I'm looking to Wyred first and foremost every time.
The shipping weight was 15 lbs and I can assure you that most of that weight wasn't the Fort Knox like packaging. This thing is uber meat and potatoes from the ground up.
Obviously burn in comes into play but I'm typing this right now listening to Foobar over USB cranked to 32 bits maxed out and I'm here to tell you that yes, I'm hearing the natural warmth that these guys were somehow able to inject into the 9018 Sabre. My hats off to them because I know that's not an easy feat with those Sabre chips.
I'm hearing some details that I haven't heard before. That bright glare that the 840c had is gone. I basically have a best of both worlds thing going here: I think everyone here knows what the strengths of the Sabre chips are and especially the newest 9018. But it's all about the total sum of the parts and this piece of kit is basically a magic black box that I see myself keeping for a long, long time. Nothing but the best components from the ground up.
Sherwood: Get ready to get very excited my friend. No BS.
And again: I suffer buyer's guilt easily and I feel none whatsoever right now.
There's no bling. No flash. No cool pretty touchscreens...every last cent of money you pay is going to kick ass performance, period.
And really: It's not that ugly looking.
Pics and more to come... I apologize in advance. Some of the pics probably won't be that great but you'll get the idea.
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My guess is you're going to love it. Post pics and impressions asafp.
I'll do my best.
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I hope you won't, as I've placed an order as well. Part of me feels like this thing has jumped the shark already, but that's an odd feeling to have about a piece of electronics.
I'll have mine tomorrow it looks like.
What makes you feel like it's jumped the shark?
I feel pretty confident about it with the talks I've had with several owners, some of the reviews and feedback I've seen. I know Rick Cullen and his work as well as the rest of this crew.
I'm impressed with the company and their products. It sounds silly but I'm impressed with the fact that if I call them during business hours someone with a pulse answers me and/or my emails in a timely manner. Barring a real shock, it's obvious that there's a pretty good value/performance ratio going on here.
3 year warranty out of the box on a $1500 or a $999 piece of kit (DACs) tells me these guys are confident in what they've got and they're not going anywhere.
Quite frankly, I'm not really sure how you and I could go wrong here. I've been surprised by some of the positive feedback I've gotten during my information overload recon runs.
I feel good about this and I'm someone who is a notorious fence sitter and can sometimes feel buyer's guilt BEFORE actually buying something.
Not in this case. I'm expecting to be very happy come tomorrow.
Want an example of what I saw? Go to AVS, put "wyred" in that Google search engine at the top of the forum. Before long you're going to run into threads where you've got these high rollers praising the company and their products with the amps going against Anthems and the rest of it. Some of that then trickles down to talking about the DACs and it's the same kind of positive feedback. Plenty more where that came from.
Look at this: http://audioaficionado.org/digital-music-servers/4241-wyred-4-sound-dac2-preview-6moons-com.html
Take note of what kind of forum this is and some of the gear some of these guys have as you skim that. I lost count of how many McIntosh logos for example.
AudioCircles has one or two threads just like that and the same AVS like praise for the amps and the company. I PM'd several of these owners of the W4S DAC-2 in those threads and took note pretty quickly of their backgrounds, some of the high end gear they were using and had used and suffice to say: I'm feeling pretty damned confident and I think you should, too.
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Happy Birthday!
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Fence sitting is tough and I've been deliberating and researching a hell of a lot but the value/performance package of a DAC-2 simply couldn't be ignored any longer so I just placed an order for one and should hopefully have it before next weekend. I'll do my best to post...whatever...when I can.
I had some good chats with several owners and it looks like the best place for me to start. Somehow I doubt I'm going to be disappointed.
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Doing a little audio recon for myself.
Heads-up on a DAC not mentioned much here | Computer Audiophile
I bet everyone here to a man already knows exactly what that thread's going to be about without even clicking on it. It's amazing. Every audio forum I've lurked through I almost invariably see something like that. Pretty damned impressive viral thing going on there although Head-Fi has to far and way the worst I've seen with that.
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Antelope Audio Zodiac + (evolving review)
For those of you still curious about this unit. Keep an eye on that thread.
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The lazy person in me has been keeping an eye on these products.
I've seen mixed opinions and feedback out there about quality control and customer support. Again, that's all hearsay via whatever I've read as I've gone along so don't take it to the bank.
Their products to tend to strike me as a tad on the overpriced.
I realize there's more to this machine than just the hard drive but I bought myself a 2TB Western Digital Black Caviar (top of the line basically) for $165 not too long ago.
So that's when I start scratching my head when I start looking over this product line.
I'd like to hear from owners of any of their products as well, if there are any around here.
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Happy Birthday!
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Yeah, sorry if that was condescending -- it wasn't meant to be. It just sometimes bears repeating when we get too carried away discussing minutiae such as what chips are used, upsampling, etc. -- just to bring the focus back to what really matters.
Agreed. And I didn't think you were condescending.
At some point it comes down to what a wise man told me in another thread here not too long ago: "Or, you could just buy stuff."
That's the only way to really be sure.
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Here's the thing: I'd rather have a really good 16/44.1 DAC for 16/44.1 source material than a mediocre upsampling one, but if I have 24/96 material (or whatever) -- which I do -- I, personally, would rather hear it at its original bitrate and bitdepth.
That said, I have had good luck with (another MSB product, the Link DAC III) upsampling as well. Perhaps because you're starting with a signal that's closer to the analog signal before the analog stage, that makes it easier...somehow...? Again, making stuff up, because I don't know the real explanation. All I know is that I like the sound.
What really matters is that it's a well-designed DAC with a well-designed output stage more than anything. And that if you have other source material than CD (16/44.1), that it handles it well.
I basically agree with you. I bolded the part that I can't see anyone disagreeing with. It's all about implementation in the end. It's either a good piece of equipment or it isn't.
red wine audio products are often very expensive for what they are, IMHO.Yup. A little more research was starting to reveal that to me a little bit.
Dan Lavry writes white papers and publishes them on his site. That is not a peer reviewed scientific paper so take it for what it is, an opinion, dressed up to look like a scientific explanation.True although it's quite educational. Some of it does go over my head since I'm not an engineer.
Although I tell you: It takes some hotshots to try and really be able to swim through it and pick some of it apart and attempt to refute it. That is when you can get the aforementioned soap opera on his forums and the gearslutz formus from the past. Shoot, it might have even crossed over onto a couple of other audio forums, too. Man, that was some epic stuff. 90 percent of the engineering and techno jargon was flying over my head but it was still entertaining as all hell.
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Dusty and others: How do you feel about NOS DACs? Like something from Red Wine Audio — battery–powered purist hi–fi
This: Products > Isabellina - Red Wine Audio Comes in several variants. I've been reading up on this company and their products and I admit to being quite fascinated.
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The HD 800 is a pretty compitent headphone, and I'm not tearing it down at all. But I do think the LCD-2 is every bit as fast, refined and detailed, but the more forward nature makes it the winner in my book. It really comes down to a taste thing. I think HD 650 lovers will prefer the laid back nature of the 800. To me the LCD-2 sounds closer to a live performance (at least as close as a headphone can get).
See? My wallet really dislikes these kinds of posts, folks. People can get funky and tempting ideas during moments of weakness and such when they feel intrigued and an A/B would so simple...
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My stance on this is well known, but I'll repeat it since you asked this question out loud -- I don't know whether or not the actual frequencies above the known human cutoff (which is age-dependent, amongst other things) can be heard, but I, for one, believe that their effects can be heard, albeit very subtly.
Wouldn't surprise me. I have excellent hearing myself.
You can't go wrong with this kind of disclaimer.My guess (purely talking out of my ass at this point, but when the mind does not have enough information, it makes stuff up -- it abhors a vacuum of knowledge)
Certainly plausible.... is that it does something to the phase of the signal, which the ear is known to be pretty sensitive to. Or something like that. Another guess is that once most of the harmonics in a triangle, square, or clarinet wave are heard, the mind's ear can hear a triangle, square, or clarinet wave, respectively, and therefore any discrepancies between what it thinks it should be hearing, and what it's actually hearing (what I call "negative hearing" -- not necessarily being able to hear to the level of detail of being able to know what's missing, but just the binary, "it sounds right"/"it doesn't sound right").
Someone has to say it: Placebo. I see that higher number and I expect it to sound better.In all reality, it's probably some typically human complex combination of those things as well as others I haven't even figured out myself yet (IMO, again).
Sure, I can agree with that.That said, upsampling isn't at that level of technology that it's going to correct phase, if the original information isn't there, so it's not going to fix that, though it may fix other things. Which is why keeping that information from the source to the point of delivery is more important than upsampling is at this point.
It's like talking about upscaling/upconverting regular DVDs. Sure it makes the image look "better" to a point, but if the source material is crap to begin with then it's "garbage in, garbage out." And it's still never going to look as good as real high definition.That said (yes, another one, on top of the other one), how much information is really there? The answer is almost none. Which is why (a) so few people can hear the difference (on top of just plain not caring or not being able to hear it anyway) and (
it doesn't matter all that much.
I think I know what you're trying to say. Certainly plausible IMO. Since I'm not an ENT or some other high end audiologist, I'll be happy to salute your "pull out of my ass" disclaimer and think you did a pretty good job here.Pretty much everyone else on this board disagrees with me, and I honor that, but every once in a while, my frustration at not being able to explain my side of things that I have to try and express myself again. I'll try not to get too heated about it this time.
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I have previously spent some time reading his posts on gearslutz. But now I’ll have to go back and find dissenting opinions. I’d really be interested in hearing Cambridge explain the benefit of sampling at 384kHz. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. But a justification seems warranted. Have you played around with the different rates? Do you notice any differences?
Honestly? Nothing terribly earth shattering to my ears. Now that's hardly a scientific treatise and I wouldn't take that all the way to the bank sight unseen. Others may swear by it and it may be the case in their setups with their ears. I admit that I have to watch out myself with "Oh look! Higher numbers! Must mean it's better!" when that may not necessarily be the case.
As it stands, I did sell my 840c this morning because this buyer really made me an offer that I couldn't refuse, especially given that it was two years old and outside of warranty. I really can't believe it.
Whatever the 840c does overall is pretty darned good. It could be a little dry and sterile, especially towards the higher end. It might be a situation where some people would describe the sound as very "digital" instead of "analog-like."
That being said: I remember my Apogee Mini-DAC that preceded it that was "only" 24/192 instead of 384 and I'm going to be honest with you: It may have been just a smidge better if not at least equal to my ears. And that thing was $800 and change and the 840c is $1500 new on the street.
At the end of the day even I have to ask: How much can the human ear with even the best hearing really pick up and discern once you get past lots of loaded marketing rhetoric and "higher numbers must automatically be better"?
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IMO a comparison to the HD800 makes more sense, and IMO the LCD-2 wins on all accounts.
Pretty bold. How and why? At the risk of making you repeat yourself I may have missed it maybe you could just link me to an earlier post.
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Sounds like a pretty tempting offer, and "upgraditis" is a hard itch to get rid off
It's a strange balance here. $1000 for something I paid $1400 for new two years ago is a no brainer on paper. The thing's warranty ends at the end of this month. This guy doesn't care.
I just want to make sure that if I do sell this I don't move on to a lateral move or even an accidental backwards move.
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Do you use the transport and the digital in?
Yes.
If I sell this two year old player at a grand it's a great deal. I'm actually surprised someone bit on it at that price.
I have two other players here I can use as perfectly viable transports so that would mean going the DAC route. At that point, I'm either looking at Perfectwave stuff, Wyred 4 sound, maybe one of those Zodiacs, Neko, and stuff like that.
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Right now what I'm doing is debating: A guy just offered me a grand for my two year old (already?!) Cambridge 840c. It's a good source. That's a damned good deal. And yet, despite my little bit of upgraditis itch and all the rest of it, I'm having mixed feelings here.
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If Dan Lavry is right, and I’ve not seen anyone challenge him,
Yes and no. If you want your head to spin look up on his own forums and Gearslutz some of the old and back and forths from the past. Got pretty soap opera-ish.
Regardless of how someone may feel on the issue, they do owe it to themselves to look over some his musings on the subject.
...than all digital audio products with uber high sample rates are just gimmicks. Perhaps it’s a bit like saying your IEM has more drivers than the others do. It must reproduce sound more accurately then, right?Good questions. I'm not sure where I fully stand on it myself. All I know is my 384kHz Cambridge 840c sounds good.
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I wasn't sure of the connector on the GS-X, and you can have it re-terminated into 2 x 3-pin XLRs if you want the most straight-forward option. But I still like the convenience of the 4-pin XLR as the termination, and then use adapters as needed for whatever amp you have at the time. I have pretty much any kind of connector covered with various adapters, some going in each direction (M to F and F to M, etc). It is still too bad that Headroom went with the 2 x 3-pin as standard for their early balanced amps, when they could easily have chosen 4-pin and made all of our lives easier.
That's one of many things that have been educational for me in this thread. That 4-pin concept is neat.
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I was gonna suggest the same. Once "doing it" a couple of times you will lose the reterm anxiety syndrome. Isn't the 800 supposed to have a pretty jam up cable on it anyway?
You can pull it out. First time isn't terribly easy. Not as easy as the older Sennheisers but essentially about the same.
No, you got it right the first time with that butchered descriptive most likely.this. I've done it twice using the old trs to make an adapter. I won't lie you and say it's a piece of cake the first time, but since you're mulling over the idea of butchering modding a cheapo pair then there's plenty of opportunity to ask questions and get some good pointers before the real deal.
Might be.If the GS was active ground capable you could hear benefits even when using an unbalanced source. Maybe that will be available in that new amp Justin is working on.
You plug one of these (or similar) into the 4 pin sockethttp://www.wyvernaudio.com/images/HeadphoneCable/K1000/K1000_2.JPG
4 pin gives you 4 connectors (2 independent wires per ear, which can be connected as required) . you can also wire this to a 3 pin trs (shared ground/return) - but you can't do this the other way round. which was the whole point in re-terminating the stock cable, which is already 4 conductor for its whole length up to the stock end.
Terminate with a 4 pin xlr + then you can add which ever end termination / adaption you want, rather than have to get a new single function terminated cable for each configuration. Make sense?
It does now. Pictures help.
I tend to be that way myself. 
it doesn't matter all that much.
Wyred 4 Sound (ESS Sabre) DAC
in Home Source Components
Posted
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3689[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3698[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3697[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3696[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3695[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3694[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3693[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3692[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3691[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3690[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]3699[/ATTACH]
I apologize for the amateur shots. Hopefully they're at least good enough where you start getting an idea.
I'll use the language from a few posts ago: IMO at least, I think this is " totally fucking hardcore" gear myself.
Even the power cable is basically industrial grade. Industrial is probably as good of a one word summary as any for the entire piece.