ARRIVED: new Rega DAC - Page 31

+1. The REGA DAC is not bright at all. It is warm and smooth, with the ability to still bring out nice detail.

 

Okay, I'll bite.

 

In guitars, NOS would be new old stock, and the same would apply to valves for guitar amplifiers.  

But for DACs?  What on earth is NOS for a DAC?

NOS = Non-OverSampling

Thank you!

Just purchased a Rega after a nice audition with a Socal vendor in Venice beach... Got to hang out in his audition room with $20k plus of speakers and a small army of $5k amps... We auditioned Music Hall, Peachtree, Bel Canto, M2Tech Young, Human Audio, W4S DAC2, and Monarchy ... Some had some amazing imaging qualities and some were detail monsters but everytime we switched back to the Rega the strings and horns had this rich timbre... You could feel a more full bodied bass in drums and rhythmn instruments. Still waiting for mine to show up but thought I would at least post this hat tip... It was a serious reference system and we were playing with some units that were double the price and the Rega had that full weighty live sound. It was obvious to both of us that the Rega was the star.

I went in thinking I was coming out with a Sabre dac and walked out with an order for the Rega... and a W4S uLink so I can run to the Regas Coaxial inputs.

Will arrive on Monday and will hopefully have some impressions late next week... I really want to see what the uLink brings since I am a tad skeptical. My own logic would inform me that another link in the chain is just a longer pathway but we'll see.. Also purchased a Pangea USB... Not sure about the USB cable having a great effect but for $30 it'll at least look sharp and I won't fret about the possibility.... Read the end of this thread and my own thinking is that I'm not going to use a $500 cable with a $900 device.. But something under a hundred that looks good and could help... It won't hurt.

Hopefully wifey will patiently serve as my switcher for some blind auditions... We shall see.

I would be interested to hear your impressions of the ulink and maybe even do a blind test if possible... I am thinking of getting a rega dac and I know the USB is not great so maybe one of those converters is neccessary although I am sceptical also!

I'm interested in your impressions of the ulink with the Rega DAC. Been wanting to add a USB converter to the Rega DAC for a while now and the uLink is on the radar.

I am going to spend the early part of this week breaking in the Rega.... hopefully I can do some listening this coming weekend.

 

If I romance up my wife this week she'll probably concede to doing the switching for me so I can do these comparisons blind.

I'll circle back around this weekend with an update on what I've found.

Would be very interesting to hear the results of blind testing between either rega and other dacs or with the USB > SPDIF adaptor vs the coaxial out....

Imo, Rega Dac has a smooth and analog sound. Soundstage depth is not as good as audio-gd ref7, but turn it on 24/7 help this issue to my ears Pairing with a transparant amp is a must as well.

No comparison's just yet as we are only dealing with a scant few hours of run time but I was weak and plugged in for a little while last night to hear the new toy.

 

All I can say is.... you know when you get that stupid grin on your face that you can't get rid of because you realize you just scored something that is way better than you ever expected it to be? That was me last night. kinda like the first time I heard the HD650.

 

Songs sound full bodied... dense, and there is texture aplenty.... but what trips me out is this "effortless?" quality... Can't really describe it other than effortless and smooth. My experience has always been if you want density, weight and slam you have to surrender something on the detail and upper register dynamics.... and likewise if you want detail... you get a truncated low end....not so with this one... Its got that robust analog quality to lower mid range and low end stuff but also pours in loads of detail... The DB Audio Tranquility gives the same effortless speed to upper register detail and dynamics but you end up with a much shallower and less potent low end in the process. 

 

The only knock I could give it is that its imaging was not locked down... things did seem to move a bit from time to time.... but I knew that going in from my audition.... and this was a headphone session... it's a little unfair to take points away for imaging when I haven't run it through speakers.

 

All in all I am stupid happy with this.

FWIW - My Rega DAC connected via Audiophilleo 1 & PurePower has exceeded my expectations. I've done A/B/A comparisons against my Analog rig (Scoutmaster / ZYX Yatra) and I have to say, it's very good. Even with Redbook material it's very good and musical. In fact, it was so good now I have to upgrade my Phonostage. I highly recommend the combination. Also the support from Audiophilleo is top notch.

@ No Disc.... When you first started using the Audiophilleo did you experience any sort of break in period on it? Plenty of opinions on break in with amps/ dacs but not much mention of it in the SPDIF Converter world.

 

Just curious.... did some switching between Rega USB and uLink to Rega Coax last night on my own and felt like the USB direct was a bit lifeless but didn't really feel like I got much of an improvement through the uLink.... leaving them both running for the rest of today. 

It's possible, but probably impossible for me to state. The USB cable and Rega were also very new as well. No way I can say which, or all components improved over time.

Fair enough... I suppose those are the types of things that are near unmeasureable. I actually did some tweaking of my JRiver settings and have to withdraw the knock on imaging... I had a spatial crossfeed in play... Cant say it was the Regas fault that things were moving. ... Also once I got everything off the Windows KMixer, the lifeless sound is gone.

It is all good.... Really frickin good.. Really really frickin good.
The blind battle goes down tomorrow.