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New Lavry DA11 DAC


riceboy

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The DA11 pakage includes a couple of good XLR female to RCA female adapters. I say "good" because the quality of such adapters ranges from poor to good. The specifications of the unit are met with the adapters in place. The DA11 lets you set unbalanced Pin 2 hot, unbalanced Pin 3 hot or balanced operation. The settings are controlled from the front pannel, so there is not need to open the chassis and set jumpers.

Other headphone related improvments (relative to DA10) are:

1. One can turn off the rear pannel signals, so the only active analog outout is the headphone. This is also controlled from the front panel.

2. There is a circuit that eliminates the "loud clicks" that take place during power up and power down (turnning the unit on and off). The DA10 has a power up "click protection", but not power down. The DA11 has both power up and power down protection.

The idea is to protect the ears. At very high volume, one can still hear a tiny power down click, but at much lower volume then the music. Without any protection, the click is huge. I am in the habit of removing the headphones prior to power down...

And of course, the >PiC< (Playback image control) is very much oriented to headphone. Almost all of the music material is

produced by monitoring through speakers, and the PiC enables the headphone listen to a stereo image closer to what was intended by the mixing and mastering people.

Regards

Dan Lavry

I appreciate the response, but it still doesn't solve the problem of using the same DAC for two amps - the balanced dynamic rig and SE electrostatic rig without using RCA loop out on the balanced amp. I can use the XLR out of my Apogee into the balanced amp, and the 1/8" line out with mini-RCA into the electrostatic rig at the same time.

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Hi Voltron,

Thanks for your comments. I will look up the date for the big meet. The next few month are very busy for me, some of it is about meetings and conventions, but I will try to make it. It is not too far from Seattle...

Regards

Dan Lavry

Wait, you're in Seattle? Oh, just looked it up, Bainbridge island. I'm just down near Boeing field.

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Seems nice, but I don't think I'm ready to upgrade from the DA10 yet.

Now, if it was a newer version Gold DA2002...

I heard the Lavry Gold once, and I remember it as a supremely sublime experience. Amp was a Graham Slee Solo and headphones was HD650 with stock cable (!). The sound was superb.

I've never gotten the HD650 to sound quite like that experience, with a Zana Deux or Lehmann BCL, Equinox cable, and my Accuphase or Esoteric sources. Either the Graham Slee Solo is an extra special amp or the Gold is a special source. :)

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Seems nice, but I don't think I'm ready to upgrade from the DA10 yet.

Now, if it was a newer version Gold DA2002...

I heard the Lavry Gold once, and I remember it as a supremely sublime experience.... :)

The DA11 has a new feature - the >PiC< - which stands for Playback image control

You can see a description of what it is at my Lavry Engineering site:

Lavry Engineering :: View topic - DA11 >PiC< : Playback Input Control - a new featur

Regards

Dan Lavry

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The DA11 has a new feature - the >PiC< - which stands for Playback image control

You can see a description of what it is at my Lavry Engineering site:

Lavry Engineering :: View topic - DA11 >PiC< : Playback Input Control - a new featur

Regards

Dan Lavry

Hey Dan, how would you like to trade a Lavry DA11 review sample for my mint condition Ultrasone Edition 9 #440 with 6-foot APS V3 cable with 1/8" plug and extra pair of chrome housings, with flight case and Ultrasone CD and 1/4 adapter? :P kinda serious here, although I don't expect you to do it but I just had to ask anyways, because one never knows what might happen.

Then I can do a review of it before I set my Apogee mini-DAC off to the side as a spare. I've already posted that I liked the DA10 better than the Apogee, but I only spent one afternoon with it when plaidplatypus brought it over to play.

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So, you are saying that if I trade my stuff for a DA11 then I am not an impartial party and I am working for the company to hawk the product while claiming that I have no financial interest in the product. But if I sell my stuff and buy a DA11 that changes everything? It's not like he could take take the DA11 back once it's mine, so I could say any bad thing I wanted about it if it were true. Besides, I said I didn't seriously expect to be taken up on the offer.

Anyways, I'll likely sell the Edition 9 and then use the money for my HD800 in 2 weeks, so it's moot point anyways. The DA11 will probably be next in line to purchase, unless I am really hurting for money and have to get a Stello DA100 Signature instead. But I'd rather wait as the DA11's "PIC" appeals to me, and I liked the HP out of the DA10 a lot too. For feeding multiple amps I would just have to get an XLR switch box or distribution center, or feed the XLR into my SP amp and use the RCA to loop out into my Woo GES.

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Then I can do a review of it before I set my Apogee mini-DAC off to the side as a spare. I've already posted that I liked the DA10 better than the Apogee, but I only spent one afternoon with it when plaidplatypus brought it over to play.

What?

I think Grawk was getting at the fact that no matter what you do and when you do it, you've already really injured your credibility by making the statement above directly to the vendor which you'd be reviewing.

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I wrote these positive comments back in November 2008, without being a Shill.

11/9/08 - mini-meet with plaidplatypus at my crib - MD5000DE, Stax - Koss ESP950 - HE60, ATH-A900 vs D2000 - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

I think one of the first things that we discovered was that my Apogee mini-DAC was contributing to the excessively forward mids of the Stax O2 Mk2. I've never felt the Apogee had that problem with any other headphones or amps, but the forward mids are a known problem with the Stax O2 Mk2. I have done the ear-pad spring mod which helps pull back the honky mids a bit, but we found that switching to the Lavry DA10 as the source pulled them back slightly more and made them less fatiguing. I was truly enjoying the O2 Mk2 more than I had previously. I also felt the Lavry DA10 gave them slightly more extended bass, which is the second problem with the O2 Mk2 since Stax introduced the anti-fart bass port in that version. Lastly, the Lavry has a very nice headphone out, but I thought the Apogee was slightly better, and the EF1 was another notch above that. Still, if no headphone amp is available, it's great to be able to use the Lavry or Apogee as a headphone amp that is still better than that in most audio video receivers.

Now, the DA10 only has XLR out but not RCA out, so we used the Single Power XLR input and RCA loop out to then feed the GES which has single ended RCA inputs. In previous testing I have found the Single Power to have minimal impact on the sound quality of the RCA loop out. So, we left the Lavry hooked up for most of the meet, except for a brief stint with the CD transport and DAC-AH.

I had NO financial interest or obligations to Lavry back then, and what I said about the DA10 in this thread were documented as being my thoughts long ago. I was not making things up in my recent posts just to get favors from Dan 3 months later. I was telling the truth about what I thought about it.

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