Mdht Stockholm - New Dac w/Asynch USB Input - Page 5

No love for Stockholm?

I might have a review sample soon. 

Still waiting to hear back from Jiun...

Will update here if it happens.

Rock.

.j

Quote:

Originally Posted by korzena 

s1rrah,
This would be great! I am waiting for one since the first day Stockholm was announced.
I really wonder why there is so little information about the DAC that is successor of the famous DAC-Havana.

Needs more time... once a few reviews are out, things will likely change.

Unless it sucks or something and I honestly don't think that team could design anything that sounds bad. Call it a hunch... ;-) ...

When I was talking with Jiun, he was "on vacation" in China so haven't heard anything back from them. 

Can't wait to hear your thoughts.

Best.

.j

Good news!

My roommate just called me at work to tell me that a Stockholm DAC was just delivered today.

Jiun and his crew were nice enough to send me a review sample and so in the next few weeks I'll be putting together a careful review/comparison (using my trustee Havana as counterpoint)...

Having owned the Paradisea DAC as well as the Havana ... I'm really not expecting to be let down. It *will* be interesting testing the higher bit depth capability, though ... 

Anyway ... more later.

Rock.

.j

s1rrah,

thanks for the update.

that's great news! finally...someone...will get it

and please days, not weeks;)

I've had a loaner Stockholm for a while now but am just now getting around to listening to it...

So far, I've only listened through optical and coaxial (will be demoing the synchronous and asynchronous USB once I've burnt the unit in for at least 200 hours....

But regarding coax/optical? And doing side by side A/B tests with my Havana (both DACS using JW396A tubes)? When fed to my Ray Sam Raptor amp (which thankfully has dual RCA inputs making A/B listening quite easy) and with Grado GS1000's... I can tell absolutely ZERO difference sonically...

Which is to say, the Stockholm (albiet expectedly as it shares the main architectural qualities of the Havana) sounds every bit as good as my Havana. 

I will be doing a proper review in a month or so which will most likely focus on the USB listening aspects of the Stockholm since, as mentioned already, it sounds identical to my Havana.

I'm personally very curious to try the Asynchronous USB mode (set via firmware) as I've read many good things online about this technology.

More later...

Thank you for sharing the first impressions. It was a long wait with this Stockholm to get an opinion from anybody, so it's great you are doing this now!

Well, Stockholm was supposed to be more detailed according to the manufacturer's words...
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by s1rrah 

I've had a loaner Stockholm for a while now but am just now getting around to listening to it...

 

So far, I've only listened through optical and coaxial (will be demoing the synchronous and asynchronous USB once I've burnt the unit in for at least 200 hours....

 

But regarding coax/optical? And doing side by side A/B tests with my Havana (both DACS using JW396A tubes)? When fed to my Ray Sam Raptor amp (which thankfully has dual RCA inputs making A/B listening quite easy) and with Grado GS1000's... I can tell absolutely ZERO difference sonically...

 

Which is to say, the Stockholm (albiet expectedly as it shares the main architectural qualities of the Havana) sounds every bit as good as my Havana. 

 

I will be doing a proper review in a month or so which will most likely focus on the USB listening aspects of the Stockholm since, as mentioned already, it sounds identical to my Havana.

 

I'm personally very curious to try the Asynchronous USB mode (set via firmware) as I've read many good things online about this technology.

 

More later...

 

I've only listened for a little bit as it burns in; it has about 50 hours on it so far.

I'll be writing up some sort of review in the next month or so.

More later!

.joel

Just today spent a good deal of time listening to some 96khz/24bit .flacs (Marta Gomez's record, "Entre Cada Palabra") with the Stockholm and Havana...

And without a doubt, at least with the high def files, the Stockholm is far and away more detailed, 3 dimensional and just toe curling in it's sonics when compared to the Havana's rendering of the same file. Night and day...

If I had a large collection of high def/bit rate tracks, I would be putting the Havana up for sale immediately in favor of purchasing the Stockholm but the above is the only album I have that is hi res an the other 200 gig of .flacs are all standard resolution files...

But really, I was floored at how much better the Stockholm sounds with the high res files; truly HUGE difference. So, barring any further review (which I later aim to do), if your planning on listening to high res sound files and are trying to decide between the Havana and the Stockholm...then by all means...go with the Stockholm. Absolutely brilliant sounding compared to the Havana (which I'm sure drops off the extra data that it's DACs can't interpret) when listening to high res files.

With standard resolution files, though? So far, I am having a hard time discerning the difference between the two; they sound identical to my ear (using JW 396A's in both DACs, btw).

More later...

.joel

Hi,

I'm back with my Stockholm and my bad English

My Stockholm is being upgraded: 

Elna Tonerex, Silmic and some BlackGate to replace the Nichicon.

The white mhdt capacitors replaced by Auricap.

The best upgrade is the replacement of output capacitors by Mundorf Silver / Gold of course. Really impressive.

I wait the tantalum resistors and R-Core transformer.

is there a burson type upgrade for the opamps? i realise the bursons are 8pin and the ones in the stockholm 20 or so?

There are no stand alone OPAMPS in the Stockholm DAC. The PCM56 monolithic DAC chips in the Stockholm have a sort of built in OPAMP circuit but it's inherent to the DAC chip, itself and not a seperate chip (others could probably explain it better); so, long story short, you can't really replace the OPAMP as there are no stand alone OPAMPS in the DAC (such as is the case with most sound cards and even MHDT's Constantine and Paradisea DACs).

I read earlier in this thread that the pcm56p's are 16bit?

Yes, the PCM56 DAC chips are limited to 16 bit input.

However, the Stockholm utilizes a new "digital receive" which is capable of rendering 24bit/192khz audio; I've tested/compared the new Stockholm with my Havana and the difference is night and day when using hi res flacs...after processing, the analogue output is handled via the typical PCM56 DACs...

Best...

.joel