Meier Audio StageDAC - Page 33

From 6moons review, where they have compared it to stello, stage dac was on pair and  additional features like filters and crossfeed were a bonus over stello. I would like to see too how does it stacks with other dacs but it seams like a great design.

Just received my black StagedDac + Concerto + T1.

Great sound i.e. better than my Lehmann audio BCL USB.

My preferred setting on the StageDac for now:

- Pulse = Top

- Over sampling = Bottom

- Crossfeed delay / intensity for a listening room feeling = bottom / up

- Crossfeed delay / intensity for a live feeling = top / bottom

(cusiouly these "crossed" top vs bottom combinations sound better to me than the more leveled options mentioned by other posters)

- Tonal balance = bottom (or middle) particularly selecting top for pulse

Quote:

Originally Posted by perer 

Looking at the StageDAC + Concerto for a pair of HD 800.

I guess this is superior to matching those cans with the Symphony.2?

 

Any experience here on using this combo with the HD800?

I have been using Concerto and StageDAC with HD800. This combo is transparent, vivid with great bass performance and huge music scene. Now I use Concerto and StageDAC with Denon D7000 and this is (for this moment) my favorite combination, scene is not as big as it was with hd800 but sound is "heavier" with full body.

I am using my Stagedac + Concerto with basic IXOS cables and thinking of upgrade.

Any suggestions of Interconnects to match this system?

Thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by littletree76 

 

I suppose the extra USD 220 dollars is worthwhile and I am leaning toward StageDAC.

 

Correct me if I am wrong.

The cross-feed in the StageDAC is imho a truly superb thing to have.

I use the StageDAC for listening to music at present but soon it will also be used a lot for listening to radio (spoken word BBC Radio 4) in particular radio dramas. The reason this isn't happening is that I've yet to connect up my Mac Pro to the StageDAC. When I do have the whole thing set up I'm very interested to see how the cross-feed works with radio dramas. My experience with radio dramas may inform a bit about how the StageDAC will be with TV, I don't know

I have not used any of the other forms of cross-feed that are available, only the one on the StageDAC. I will say that when I bought the StageDAC I thought the cross-feed would be a nice "extra" but now I always use it. For me it represents a very great improvement.

I have written a large-ish post here about cross-feed so you may like to check it out as well as the other comments in that thread.

Not comparing the cross feed, anyone has tried Eastern Electric Minimax DAC compared with this?  how's the sound different like?

I'd like to know in terms of imaging, timbre and bass impact.  Thanks.

For a 30-ish pages thread, the comparisons to other DACs in the same price range are very rare and I'm not even sure how the StageDAC itself sounds like. 

it sounds warm compared to the AudioGD 19 dsp.

^ you tried both?  how's the bass performance comparison look like?  I heard people impressions Audio-Gd DACs the bass is a 'little' light, I like a little bit more than that, but not boomy.

Has anyone bypassed the volume knob so there are two fixed outputs? I might need to do it soon but have very little experience in this type of thing. 

Does anyone know what is the difference between the last two switch positions on the StageDAC for the "Mode" switch? Also, it is not very clear from the manual what the "Tonal Balance" switch does, other than the mention that it slightly increases the amplitude of frequencies near 2KHz.

Quote:

Originally Posted by akart 

Does anyone know what is the difference between the last two switch positions on the StageDAC for the "Mode" switch? Also, it is not very clear from the manual what the "Tonal Balance" switch does, other than the mention that it slightly increases the amplitude of frequencies near 2KHz.

For mode switch, the top position is headphone, middle position is stereo and bottom position is loudspeakers. They are the adjustment setting for cross feed. Tonal balance is some kind of frequency compensation to be used when in headphone mode. You can just play around that to see which setting you like.

On the other hand? How do you guys open up the chasis? The screws seemed to be drilled right in and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't unscrew any of them. Wanted to try deactivating the volume pot to see what SQ improvement it will bring. Meh!

Well, I don't think you'll hear any difference in SQ. I got the M2Tech HiFace and I could not find any SQ difference over the optical out coming from my Macbook Pro. Either the optical jitter is too little or the StageDAC does a good job rejecting the jitter. So, I doubt tweaking a jumper is going to do any good to the SQ.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by uelover 

Quote:

Originally Posted by akart 

Does anyone know what is the difference between the last two switch positions on the StageDAC for the "Mode" switch? Also, it is not very clear from the manual what the "Tonal Balance" switch does, other than the mention that it slightly increases the amplitude of frequencies near 2KHz.

For mode switch, the top position is headphone, middle position is stereo and bottom position is loudspeakers. They are the adjustment setting for cross feed. Tonal balance is some kind of frequency compensation to be used when in headphone mode. You can just play around that to see which setting you like.

 

 

On the other hand? How do you guys open up the chasis? The screws seemed to be drilled right in and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't unscrew any of them. Wanted to try deactivating the volume pot to see what SQ improvement it will bring. Meh!

Thanks Akart for the confirmation about the M2Tech. I nearly bought one from Jan Meier few months ago hoping it will improve the sound but  Jan very honestly admitted it was unlikely to make a difference in my set up. The Stagedac, which uses the W8804 receiver, seems to do a remarkable job with jitter. My iPod Touch +Onkyo NDS1 dock ( with jitter specs of just 10ps) sound identical to the coax out of my STX (measured at 1.48ns by Stereophile). Make you wonders about all the jitter malarky on this forum!....

haha yes i was looking at the m2tech hiface, evo, off ramp and audio gd digital interface to get coax output from my macbook pro but have since put that thought on hold.

I have tried running a monoprice and van den hul optical from my macbook pro with default 44.1khz and 16/24bit midi audio setting. Then, i ran the stock usb cable that Jan gave. The usb cable sounded fuller at the expense of clarity. I have heard others claiming that Digital Interface from Audio-GD did make an audible improvement for their setup. I am kinda sitting on the fence now.

Only bad thing about USB is that it will produce some weird noise when I power up my macbook pro. I guess it is due to the fact that my mac is releasing some electronic signal to all its usb port to detect what is connected to it but sadly that signal has been processed and turned into a noise.

As of now, I am feeding 44.1khz/16bit of data into StageDAC and letting the DAC does the 8-fold upsampling. =)
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by zenpunk 

Thanks Akart for the confirmation about the M2Tech. I nearly bought one from Jan Meier few months ago hoping it will improve the sound but  Jan very honestly admitted it was unlikely to make a difference in my set up. The Stagedac, which uses the W8804 receiver, seems to do a remarkable job with jitter. My iPod Touch +Onkyo NDS1 dock ( with jitter specs of just 10ps) sound identical to the coax out of my STX (measured at 1.48ns by Stereophile). Make you wonders about all the jitter malarky on this forum!....