Musical Fidelity V-DAC Owners? - Page 26

agreed

I was wondering if anyone had abx the v-dac against a Musical Fidelity xdac v3. I just abx it against my dacmagic and the xdac killed, but that being said the xdac with separate power supply cost more than three times as much originally. So curious if comparisons had been made to it out here.

Please do! I mean that with some sugar on the top. Keeping well in mind that the V-DAC can use some time, impressions would be interesting to read.

I gave up last week, went and bought V-DAC it has now been burning in for approx 100 hours. The rig I am testing it with: Corda Headfive -> HD595. Before V-DAC, H5 was connected to computer's integrated soundcard. Now V-DAC is connected via USB. I am using the wall wart PSU, UK model with adapter for Finnish (eur) socket.

I tested V-DAC briefly last week, it has approx 30 hours burn in. It added detail and richness to the sound. I cannot tell more since I only listened briefly. Now, after the weekend and non stop pink noise, I have been listening Kari Bremnes - Över en by.

Bear in mind that English is not my native tongue and I cannot describe all the details (instruments, audiophile vocabulary, etc) as accurate as I would want to.

Highs: V-DAC added a lot of detail. klings and klangs have more body, hihat has lively sound. the sound does not die so fast and it has more details in it. I can hear harmonics and can identify instruments better.

Mids: Mids are a bit more forward. so far i haven't detected major audible changes or differences. vocals are bit more richer and fluid (liquid?) in a good way. Acoustic and electric guitars sound livelier and (again) are more detailed.

Lows: I got a bit more extension and detail. Formerly bass was more like one-note boom. very rounded and a bit rolled off. no more one-note bass. it is still a bit rolled off and rounded, still missing a bit of THUMP(tm).This could also be a charateristic of Headfive, not V-DAC. Anyway very smooth sounding lows.

Overall, I am quite happy with V-DAC so far. These comments are quite quickly written and lack hours and hours of careful listening when I have time I will also put V-DAC to my home rig: Squeezebox Duet -> (V-DAC) -> Trigon Energy -> Dynaudio Focus 110.

I have similar findings and call it enhancement.

With a couple days on my unit. I can describe the v-dac as fairly dynamic, with a warm seductive tonality. If you take it for what it is, you should have no problem enjoying plenty of tunes. I'm not so sure a direct comparison to my Havana dac fits well, and I say this in the sense that differences are as much upsampling versus non-oversampling, tube versus solid state, than between the two dacs. Apples to oranges so to speak, though not quite. The v-dac sounds a bit artificially enhanced in direct comparison, while the Havana would sound a bit subdued. The former is light and agile while the latter is thick and weighty. It all comes down to preference in a given system. Keeping in mind the v-dac is still breaking in, the Havana renders a much more natural timbre of instruments and a more believable soundstage - everything seems to be in perfect perspective - where you expect the instruments to be, and how they sound as you know it. The v-dac takes this perspective and magnifies it, even stretching it, thus the bigger, more enhanced presentation. Because of this stretching of notes, they sound at times unreal, too exagerrated. In listening to a piano solo of "Variations of the Kanon" the notes are bigger, decay longer, and float up higher than you would expect (either from your own personal experience or listening to live or recorded music). Because of the enhancement, the note can become fuzzy and difficult to follow at times. Think of a piano key stroke as throwing a small ripe plum at a wall and the expected splash. Now, think of the same scenario with a ripe tomato, with an even bigger splash. The v-dac tends to have a lot of big splashes to the point where music can get a bit fuzzy, nicely enhanced, but a bit bloated, and tiring on the ears. The Havana dac renders every instrument as you would expect, no more or less. The decay, bite, sweep, and placement of instruments/singer are legible, easy to follow, and naturally displayed. You feel a certain rightness overall and your ears that don't fatigue confirms it. But in all fairness, on some lackluster recordings, the Havana may sound boring, while the v-dac adds a welcomed character to the sound. Sometimes "real" is boring:-)

Wish I had a dac with the best of both worlds. Meantime I'll put a few more hours on the v-dac and see where it takes me.

That's a great question - I'd love to hear how the vdac stacks up against the xdac v3 as you can get them for pretty good prices on agon these days. If I could guess, I'd bet on it being pretty close without the x psu, but xdac over vdac with xpsu.

When is the vdac psu coming out? Also, has anyone used the vdac headphone amp?

Thanks for your impressions vs the tube DAC. You may find that improvements from burn-in will keep marching on for weeks with the V-DAC; mine has 1100 hours on it and it may well be that my ears are just tuned in on it now, but I can't say otherwise than it's been sounding mature after 800-900 compared to before 350.

I just thought I would update everyone now that I have had my V-DAC for a few weeks. As I mentioned earlier, I run it from an aftermarket 0.8 amp regulated power supply rather than the stock supply. It has had well over 100 hours use thus far (obviously not all with me actually listening to it).

I continue to be extremely impressed with this unit - even more so than when I first bought it (and I was pretty enthusiastic then). It continues to be non-fatiguing, very smooth and detailed, warm and rich sounding. It seems to have sound that reminds me more of tube than solid state.

I would go so far as to say that I prefer the sound of my Sony D50 / V-DAC combination than I did my previous Project RPM5 turntable with Ortofon Rondo Red cartridge and tube phono stage. It has all the best attributes of that combination but of course does not suffer from inner groove problems or background noise

I have found the V-DAC to work very nicely with Van Den Hul D300 III interconnects. These seem to preserve the best attributes of the V-DAC whilst helping the V-DAC with it's one minor shortcoming - bass weight, definition and drive. Not that the VdH interconnect is bassy as say a monster cable might be - more that because it is so balanced it probably gives a more honest account of what is actually coming out of the V-DAC outputs.

In summary, this little black box now enables me to enjoy digital in much the same way a really good turntable could enable me to enjoy the best of vinyl. There is no doubt in my mind it is one of the best hi fi buys in existence. Perhaps it might be appreciated more in years to come - when they don't make it anymore!

I'm on the same track with ADD, I've very pleased with V-DAC and it has been very good purchase. I just found out that local (car and stuff) part shop sells sealed lead batteries, similar tuo Kingrex SLAP! power supply. for 40eur you get 12V 7.2AH battery and a smart charger (intelligent or whatever, which only charges the battery if needed). With this I could get rid of AC problems, if there is any. Just trying to find out if I even could here the difference. electrics in this office are very good quality and I am not sure (even though 40e isn't that much of a investement) if it's worth it. Not to mention the lost table space

Is that with classical only, or rock and what else as well?

Well said ADD. I also find this dac to be very non-fatiguing, yet still very detailed. I've never used Van Den Hul interconnects - I'd be interested to hear how they compare to Kimber Kable sound.

BTW, since you like tube sound, have you thought of adding a tube output stage to the equation? I have my VDAC connected to my X-10 v3 tube buffer with excellent results - tonality is richer and there's a certain airiness to the sound (decay is a bit longer).

Probably 90% classical and 10% Jazz and popular golden oldies (circa late 40s, early 50s).

I feel adding a tube stage to the existing XCan V3 might just take things to far and instead of moving the sound in the direction I want, it will get to the point where I start to find the distortion irritating and the colouration excessive rather than beneficial.

I mucked around with tubes in the XCan and finally - after lots of tube rolling - settled for Amperex 7308. Expensive, but very nice. I feel that the combo of the V-DAC, Amperex 7308 in the XCan and the VdH interconnects strikes a balance that I am not keen to sway away from. It's all at the point now where - if and when things don't sound right - I just blame the recording.

PS: Have never heard Kimber cable - I chose VdH based on English reviews and an almost universal agreement amongst owners that their sound signature was on the neutral side, whilst remaining warm and without sibilance at the top end.

Hi all,

I sucumbed to temptation and got a V-DAC too. Mine is ex-Anadin (around here) so already burn-in

After checking it was working I opened to "see". I have not read the entire thread, so my excuses in advance if others have commented on all this.

MF made nice laid-out internals (not much space anyway) with a DSD1792 DAC: this chip has balanced I outs, so it does need a (relatively) complex analog stage to have I/V conversion, analog filtering and output buffering. Here we seem to have a quad-opamp for the I/V stage, and a dual opamp (regular 5532) for filtering and out. Everything seems to be as designed on the chip database, so good but not extraordinary (at this price I was not expecting anything else).

One bad point is that there are coupling caps (crappy 47mF-16V non polar electrolitics). Good points is everything tweakeable is non-smd, and as all you know the PS is just 12V DC so one can easily use battery power: I measured just 280-300mA, so a cheap 7Ah gel can last almost 24hours of continuous use. Inside V-DAC there are many (five?) regulators btw.

As for subjective impressions... right now I just plugged it: it seemed to me maybe a bit nicer than my usual (modded) Yulong DAH Mark I use on this rig (computer-USB source, Rudistor RPX33 amplifier, HD600 or W5000 headphones), definitely not worse anyway. To me this is very good news right now, I think there is potential for nice performances here...

Regards

Josep

Hi Josep

I have to confess that I do not understand a word you are saying, neither in English nor in Spanish!!!

But seriously, it seems to be a good candidate for experimenting, please keep us posted!

Saludos