I have been following this thread for a while but I don't believe I have read any comparison for those who are using the usb input (or a usb transport) between upsampling and no-upsampling with the Schiit Yggdrasil.    As an owner of the NOS (non-oversampling) Metrum Octave MKII, I have found...

  Indeed, Glenn makes the amps one by one and all of them are Special :)   As for the tube rolling, I should be getting the following in the coming weeks : - A Sophia 6SN7 (grade A) - A set of GE 6BL7s - A 5AR4 rectifier tube - A 5AU4 rectifier tube   I have yet to try the 6336As. Is...

  Hi punit, I suspect that price / performance ratio of Glenn's amplifier is exceptionally good. Though, given that I did not have amplifiers costing more, I could not attest about that.   Also, whenever I am reviewing a piece of gear, I try to forget about the price and try to describe it...

Thanks guys for the nice comments!

  Thanks for the kind words! I just hope it did justice to Glenn's fantastic amplifier.

  I forgot about stair-stepped issue... However, it seems that (some of) our ears are able to smooth out those sine waves very efficiently :)   As for the PCM1704uk, I tried 0x oversampling (NOS) vs. 8x oversampling on the audio-gd dac19DSP and I preferred the sound with oversampling. At...

Hello everyone,   I have just posted a review of Glenn's amplifier here: http://www.tweak-fi.com/apps/blog/show/42754587-building-a-reference-system-part-2-glenn-s-headphone-amplifier   The version of the amplifier I have is the one that allows the use of six-6BL7s as output tubes.   Below...

  Thanks for clarifying the upsampling point.    With regards to DSD vs. PCM, I think that it might be easier overall to construct a DSD   Below is supposed to be a comparison of impulse responses of various formats:      It is clear, from comparing different impulse responses, that...

  Hi Mike,   I am glad you enjoyed reading the review. It also seems that we share a pretty similar view on how the Octave MKII sounds :)   What I have learned these past few years that it can take a very long time to get a complete understanding of how a component sound as you have...

For those who are interested, I have just post a full review of the Metrum Octave MKII here: http://www.tweak-fi.com/apps/blog/show/42726063-building-a-reference-system-part-1-metrum-octave-mkii-nos-dac   When using the Octave MKII in combination with the Audiophilleo 2, Glenn's OTL amplifier...

      My favorite quote from him : "Everything in Audio is sublte and not worth it"

The silver painted disc is a herbie's audiolab stabilizer - it is supposed to help tame vibration. I didn't do any A/B testing for sound quality but I have found it to be somewhat effective at reducing microphonics (?). When I put the amp on top of the marble tile, anything that would touch the...

Hi everyone,   I received Glenn's OTL amplifier a few weeks ago (see picture below) and I have been enjoying it very much... so much that I didn't have time to write much lately :)     I posted some preliminary impressions on my blog (tweak-fi), but here is a copy of what I wrote using...

Happy thanksgiving to you, Stavros and all the tube addicts !

  The amplifier looks fantastic! I am very thankful to Glenn for accepting to build me such an amplifier.    Also, many thanks to Stavros who has been pointing me to some very interesting 6SN7 tubes while waiting for the amp to be finished. So far, I have ordered a Sylvania 6SNGT VT231 and...

I have ordered a Metrum Octave MKII : I am eager to hear how it compares to my existing oversampling converters (I never owner a NOS converter before).   I will post a detailed review once I receive it.   BTW, could any Foobar user point me to a better sample rate converter than SoX ? In my...

Quote: Yes, from a technical point of view sigma delta DACs are more susceptible to incoming jitter due to their design architecture and to the fact that they have to work at much higher frequencies than R2R/multibit DACs have to.   From a listening point of view, many A-gd users of...

Quote: Indeed, the dac19dsp did have a very impressive price to performance ratio. However, it is rather sensitive to external factors (power supply, support platform); so in a sense, one can consider that the bigger DACs (such as the Ref 7.1) offer better "repeatable performance" due...

Quote:   First of all, I do totally agree with your statement about the "last 10%". Once you have heard it and got used to it, it starts weighing a lot more than just 10%. As an example, once I heard how natural sounding were  the Audio-gd DACs based on the PCM1704uk, it was difficult to...

Quote: I am glad you are having such a nice time with the DAC19DSP!   For those looking to an even more natural sound, they can try the -90db and -50db stopband settings. Both settings are far more relaxed and natural sounding than the stock -130db setting: they not only seem to allow...

Quote: Your last point is very interesting. In my system, I have the possibility to connect the DAC with the headphone amp either through regular RCA or through ACSS/current mode (those who have audio-gd gear should be familiar with these terms). After spending many months with my...

The interactions between the transport and the DAC are indeed far more complex than many people imagine.   As an example, one can read stereophile's measurement of the Empirical Audio OR4 here: http://www.stereophile.com/content/empirical-audio-ramp-4-usb-format-converter-measurements The...

Regarding the V Link, it seems like a reasonably well built usb device; however, I have never listened to that device on my system, so I can't give any helpful comment about it.     As for the point of "diminishing returns", when using transports, it is not something that is...

Quote: If I remember correctly, the "core qualities" were already there at the 200 hours mark, yet there was still subtle improvement until the 400 hour mark... so you are getting close!   However, as it has been indicated (probably many times) the DAC19DSP is highly sensitive to...

Quote: Quote:   In my personal set-up, one of the interesting things I found about the AP2 is that it is far less sensitive to the quality of the digital cable than did my previous transports. When using BNC to BNC cables (i.e proper 75 ohms terminations), I find that the...