Well, it came, I saw, and it's kicking ass. I have to say, I was fairly skeptical about this thing, but wanted to satisfy my curiosity anyway. I'd read a lot about it, and the usual hyperbolic statements that are used about a lot of tweaks also applied here - "massive upgrade", "amazing improvements", "must have", etc. I wasn't really worried about the effects of jitter in my system, but as the DIP also reclocks the signal with precision Fox clocks, upsamples, offers ground isolation, and boosts the signal fed to the DAC, it sounded like it was worth a shot...I mean, SOMETHING positive should come out of it, right?
I listened to a few tracks to get my head in the game, swapped in my new digital cable, and listened again for a bit. The Tributaries cable does a great job - more bass impact, clean highs, slightly more low level details, much better shielding and RCA connectors. Considering I got these retail $330 cables for $30, I'm very pleased
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Next step was to drop in the DIP. A little sticker on the back told me it was set to 96khz, but the paperwork says the default setting is 44.1khz. Ok, opened it yp and verified the jumpers were set at 96. Spent some time admiring the soldering and huge caps. The layout and build quality is very clean and tidy. The only reason the case is so big is because of the power supply and caps, but it pairs perfectly with my OMZ on top of my cd player. Anyway, connected it up (coax out on cdp > DIP > DAC) with the other Trib cable, and used my last Parasound power cable I'd been saving for just this day. The Belden cable it came with is better than most power cables included with components, but the big Parasounds just look and feel so beefy...anyway...there's no power switch, just a "lock" led on the front, and jacks for coax, optical, xlr, and a little selector switch on the back. Powered on, it does nothing until the source is on, then the lock lights, and that's it.
At first, it didn't seem like it's doing anything. I A/B'd for a while, but wasn't expecting anything "dramatic", "extraordinary", or "must have(!)" until it had at least a couple of hours of burn-in. Let it rock some Eminem for a few hours, and came back. Popped the 650's on, and...wow...
Hate to leave a cliffhanger, but I gotta do some stuff around the house for a bit. It's garbage night. More impressions to come...