Hi all,

Well silly me purchased a Dac Ah a year ago after reading some of the reviews over on HeadFi. http://www.pacificvalve.us/LTDACAH2.html I sent the DAC over to Reference Audio Mods for their full gundie mods and the experience has been less than satisfactory to say the least. The modded Dac Ah sat in my home office system and never got any serious play until recently and basically IT SUCKS! Any piano like Bill Evans or Monk sound very shrill, there is a noticeable suck out in the upper mids and bass is muddied. As I complained to another Head Caser it is as if the soundboard in the piano was replaced with ceramic tiles.

Is there anyone out there who is willing to be hired to trouble shoot this Dac and correct this problem? That person whould have to make the corrections because I am completely incompetant with a soldering iron.

Thanks for the consideration.

Greg

I'm not sure what your timetable would be for this, but I might be able to get it in line. I've currently got two repair projects right now and two builds, but let's chat.

Could you describe what the RAM mods were to the unit? What did it sound like before the mods? Between the two, we might be able to come up with a fix. Difficult to say at this point...

Also, have you talked to RAM about your lack of satisfaction?

Brian

I just took a look at the ram upgrades for that unit. That's a serious amount of work for the money! They must work faster than me. The mods definitely seem to attempt to get the unit closer to "neutral" than anything else. But keep in mind that one man's neutral might be totally different on a different system. I think a majority of the mods could be left in place, and working with output caps might be able to tame some of what you are hearing (in spite of what they say are "the best" caps). Dunno. Might be worthy to bring a portion of this discussion into another area of the forum to pick some brains.

Okay, back to work for me!

The modded Dac Ah sat in my home office system and never got any serious play until recently and basically IT SUCKS!

Would you say you have at least 100 Hours burn-in? Big oil caps are a funky thing, and while I haven't personally tried their LeClanche NOS PIO, I'm positive it will take FOREVER for that cap to reach its final sound, which you may or may not like anyway.

After adequate burn-in and play time, if you are still not satisfied in a big way, I would talk to RAM about some other options.

Would you say you have at least 100 Hours burn-in?

I was thinking that same thing. I think it would really make a difference with this unit.