REVIEW: Keces DA-151 DAC 800+ hours burn-in

[spacemanspliff]

Originally Posted by Screamager

I received notification from the post office yesterday, will be picking up my 131 after work today. Will be pairing it with a HAGUsb, Excited!

um the 131 only has a usb input. the hag usb does not have a usb output? so how the heck will that work?

[Maniac]

Originally Posted by spacemanspliff

um the 131 only has a usb input. the hag usb does not have a usb output? so how the heck will that work?

Sorry, our numbering scheme is a bit confusing, actually 151 is the USB input one while 131 is the one with SPDIF input.


Thanks.

[VeipaCray]

The 131 with the LME chip upgrade sounds incredible.

[HDen]

Originally Posted by VeipaCray

The 131 with the LME chip upgrade sounds incredible.

upgrade? are there any for the 151?

[VeipaCray]

The 131 is older and the LME "upgrade" for it is actually the chip that is shipping in the 151. So if you own a 151, you already have the LME chip. The 131 ships with a burr brown by default.

[Screamager]

Originally Posted by VeipaCray

The 131 with the LME chip upgrade sounds incredible.

Thats what I have waiting for me at the post office.

[glitch39]

very very happy with my Da-151 as well. big soundstage and indeed matches better with tube amp than SS.

[VeipaCray]

It was hard to do a A / B comparison between the burr brown 131 and the LME 131 due to the amount of time elapsed during the chip replacement. You would honestly need two 131's side by side with the respective chips installed to do a fair A / B comparison. I listened to the burr brown 131, wrote down some thoughts on paper did the chip upgrade and wrote down some thoughts.

To me the 131 with the LME chip had much deeper fuller richer sounding bass. My RS-1's are still fairly new and were a little bright sounding. The Keces DAC gave them a fuller more complete sound. The LME chip took that one step further... definitely worth the $10 for the upgrade. The mids are clean, the highs are very prominent without being harsh or annoying. The bass is nice and punchy... a great DAC if you ask me.

A friend of mine was over during the comparison. He is just in the "curiosity" stages of head-fi (his wallet hasn't flown open and began leaking yet). I asked him his initial impressions and thoughts of the sound from the Keces 131. He described to me in his own words the soundstage being very nice. As he put it you could hear separation between the various instruments as if you could walk through the band.

[HDen]

Originally Posted by VeipaCray

The 131 is older and the LME "upgrade" for it is actually the chip that is shipping in the 151. So if you own a 151, you already have the LME chip. The 131 ships with a burr brown by default.

ah ok I see

[G.Kennedy]

My 151 showed up today ... fast shipping, excellent packaging .... outta the box and into the system in 5 mins ... plug and play.

First impressions ... with zero hours on the unit ... clear tight highs ... and plenty of bass ... great separation.

Playing Apple Lossless from G3 Laptop>DAC>Vestax mixer>300B tubes>Klipsch La Scalas.

I have not tried it with headphone system yet.

The 151 is replacing a Imic .... which ... with 5 mins of having a "real" DAC ... there is no comparison. The Imic was chopping off the highs and lows.

I will post back when I get some more time on it and run some of my standard tracks.

[mojolo]

for those who can read Chinese, is this a BIN auction on taobao.com?

Price is only 998 RMB or about US$ 143 for the Keces 151.

[Maniac]

Originally Posted by mojolo

for those who can read Chinese, is this a BIN auction on taobao.com?

Price is only 998 RMB or about US$ 143 for the Keces 151.

Thanks for the info, I have gotten into contact with KECES owner regarding this auction, as my cost alone is higher than the price that they are selling. They have informed me that the item was listed by a reseller with no actual stock at all, to prevent further chaos, they have ask the reseller to end the auction unless they it actually in stock. The price post was not the actual price, but the reseller's guess of how it would cost him and how much he would like to sell it at. Since he never got it in stock, he never got the actual cost figure worked out either.

Hope this clears up the confusion.

Thanks.

David Wei

[mojolo]

lol. that was pretty presumptuous of him to list an item he didn't actually have at a best guesstimate price.

[Maniac]

Originally Posted by mojolo

lol. that was pretty presumptuous of him to list an item he didn't actually have at a best guesstimate price.

I'm not quite sure what they were thinking about by doing this, since AFAIK they never actually sold even one single unit of DA-151.

[Screamager]

I got the DA-131 on Friday and Saturday afternoon finally got a chance to try it out.

I was using a Ubuntu linux laptop with a HAGUSB connected to the keces via a heavy duty 3m 75Ohm screeened interconnect (I read somewhere that there was potential issues with short coaxial cables transmitting digital sound, wanted 2m but in the end I had to go with 3m if I wanted it pre-made).

When I started using it, it sounded very good but a every 10 seconds or so I heard some horrible jitter. I went crazy looking for settings to adjust thinking it must be something to do with the HAgUSB, but found nothing. I was very dissapointed. However, out of nowhere, after 15 minutes or so, jitter vanished and I was left with nice clean, clear sound. I dont really understand it.

I loved the sound, but I will wait to comment on it untill I get more time with it and I can do an A/B cmparison with my old source which was the analog out on a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 on my desktop. So in the next few days. But my first impressions are very good.