[Currawong]

When I tried it in the Fun, the sound was marginally less harsh with the TE7022 than with the PCM2706/7, so yes.

 

[muad]

I wonder if the Fun/sparrow does bit perfect 16bit 44k over the PCM2706/7?

 

[anoobis]

 
1st July or 1st August? Just don't remember seeing mention of it in July.
 
Anyway, it's getting a little too confusing now, as it seems the same chip has been used but the sound from it has been tweaked.

 
Quote:

Just ordered version A with the WM8741. I asked kingwa about the AD1852 since haloxt said that it was more detailed than the WM8740, and he replied that he made it that way on purpose so that users would have option for detailed or warm. But as of July 1st, you can get the WM8740/1 both in the detailed dynamic version. so i went ahead and just got the WM8741. and had him lower the gain to 3dB for the JH-13's, but i asked him if he could put a 1/8th inch jack on the front so i wouldnt need an adaptor, but he said the hole was to big.
 
cant wait to hear my 13's on the ACSS amp.

 

[anoobis]

As a follow up to my previous post (struggling with the multiquote), I think the answer from Currawong is the best we're going to get. If I've understood correctly, the DA chips themselves don't particularly influence the sound (all the options in the Sparrow are decent) but Kingwa has tweaked the sound differently using the different chips. Only the WM8740 has been tweaked in two different ways...
 

So, the difference is in technical specs only (unlikely to have an audible difference) and other components will make a larger difference anyway. Is that a fair assessment?
 
Quote:

Now, the USB chip. Is the TE7022 really better than the original USB chip(PCM2706/7 I'd assume)?Same for the DA chip, is the WM8741 really better than AD1852?  If I only have 16/44.1 files, is the extra cost of the A version really worthwhile?
 
Thanks

Quote:

miyinan: I think you've got the wrong idea when you say you "only have 16/44.1 files".  Most gear can't get the best out of those, and the benefits of 24/96 arguably only manifest when they are the digital masters, as the only technical benefit is a lower noise floor.  I wouldn't about the DAC chip to be honest, as everything else in the Sparrow or Fun will have considerably more of an effect on the sound.  The WM8741 is the superior design which measures much better than the more common WM8740, but most people will be straining to hear a lot of difference in the Sparrow, excepting any tuning Kingwa has done to the sound. It's nice to have the better option when it's available though. 

 

[miyinan]

Quote:

As a follow up to my previous post (struggling with the multiquote), I think the answer from Currawong is the best we're going to get. If I've understood correctly, the DA chips themselves don't particularly influence the sound (all the options in the Sparrow are decent) but Kingwa has tweaked the sound differently using the different chips. Only the WM8740 has been tweaked in two different ways...
 

So, the difference is in technical specs only (unlikely to have an audible difference) and other components will make a larger difference anyway. Is that a fair assessment?
 





 

Thanks anoobis. Can I conclude that the basic version is good enough and most people can hardly here difference between basic and A versions with 16/44.1 files but it is nice to have the A version for good components and future upgrades?
 

 

[haloxt]

B can take all the upgrade modules that A can. B uses good quality parts, A uses certain premium parts, which have premium pricetags. Although there's no option for it written on their website, you could probably get a wm8741 installed in B when purchasing.

 

[miyinan]

Quote:

B can take all the upgrade modules that A can. B uses good quality parts, A uses certain premium parts, which have premium pricetags. Although there's no option for it written on their website, you could probably get a wm8741 installed in B when purchasing.

Thanks haloxt. Yes, I asked Kingwa about this. He said that he could install the wm8741 to B but they had to solder one more wire becasue B's power supply design was for AD1852 and wm8740. Not sure if this will affect the performance. But yes, they are extremely flexible.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

So i got my sparrow in the mail today. The box was a little beat up, but it was just fine inside with copious protection in the form of foam.
 
So first thing i did obviously was plug it in running optical out of my Macbook Pro and start listening with my jh-13's.
 
I got the gain lowered to 3dB, but i guess i should have done a little but more, because i dont have as much volume control with louder modern recordings as i would like. i can barely get above 9 o'clock on the dial. but with some of my needle drops ive got plenty of room up to about 10:30 or so.
 
Now onto impressions. right off the bat the first thing i noticed was how incredibly clean it sounded. I was definitely gonna have to watch the volume with this, you can just turn it up and have no problems. the second was how black the background is, i dont get hiss till about 1:30, which would blow my ears with even the quietist of musics. Second was the dynamics! holy cow dynamics! ive seriously never heard dynamics like this out of my jh-13's, its amazing. now there were a couple things that i was a little disappointed in on the first listen, the bass didnt go as deep as i had hoped, and there was just the slightest harshness to the high end. But i left it running for the next 4 hours ish, playing Origin, which is technical death metal. Came back and the bass had improved in depth dramatically  
 
now maybe i fell in love with the ACSS gain because i was expecting it to be awesome. But i dont think ive ever heard an amp this dynamic and fast, its a revelation is what it is. If the bass continues to get better over the next week, which i think it might, then this will hands down be the best ive heard my 13's sound. besting the protector, toucan and slim for portables, and besting the sonett at canjam.
 
the only gripe i have still is that i wish i could use more of my volume knob, im not sure that the gain was lowered?? AVU, i know you ahd yours lowered to 3dB as well, how much play did you get with your knob with the 13's?

 

[les_garten]

 
Quote:

So i got my sparrow in the mail today. The box was a little beat up, but it was just fine inside with copious protection in the form of foam.
 
So first thing i did obviously was plug it in running optical out of my Macbook Pro and start listening with my jh-13's.
 
I got the gain lowered to 3dB, but i guess i should have done a little but more, because i dont have as much volume control with louder modern recordings as i would like. i can barely get above 9 o'clock on the dial. but with some of my needle drops ive got plenty of room up to about 10:30 or so.
 
Now onto impressions. right off the bat the first thing i noticed was how incredibly clean it sounded. I was definitely gonna have to watch the volume with this, you can just turn it up and have no problems. the second was how black the background is, i dont get hiss till about 1:30, which would blow my ears with even the quietist of musics. Second was the dynamics! holy cow dynamics! ive seriously never heard dynamics like this out of my jh-13's, its amazing. now there were a couple things that i was a little disappointed in on the first listen, the bass didnt go as deep as i had hoped, and there was just the slightest harshness to the high end. But i left it running for the next 4 hours ish, playing Origin, which is technical death metal. Came back and the bass had improved in depth dramatically  
 
now maybe i fell in love with the ACSS gain because i was expecting it to be awesome. But i dont think ive ever heard an amp this dynamic and fast, its a revelation is what it is. If the bass continues to get better over the next week, which i think it might, then this will hands down be the best ive heard my 13's sound. besting the protector, toucan and slim for portables, and besting the sonett at canjam.
 
the only gripe i have still is that i wish i could use more of my volume knob, im not sure that the gain was lowered?? AVU, i know you ahd yours lowered to 3dB as well, how much play did you get with your knob with the 13's?

I wouldn't fret about where the POT is at.  I have some amps that are like that with Senn 650's (DV-337SE).
 
If you lower it too much, you'll have issues if you try to upgrade and sell it later.  Like when the Sparrow 2 comes out!  J/King!
 
Sparrow is Pound for Pound a winner for sure. I'm jealous you have the 8740 in yours!  I need to round up some Ducks and order that DAC board for my FUN and Sparrow!

 

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Quote:

 
I wouldn't fret about where the POT is at.  I have some amps that are like that with Senn 650's (DV-337SE).
 
If you lower it too much, you'll have issues if you try to upgrade and sell it later.  Like when the Sparrow 2 comes out!  J/King!
 
Sparrow is Pound for Pound a winner for sure. I'm jealous you have the 8740 in yours!  I need to round up some Ducks and order that DAC board for my FUN and Sparrow!

 

its just that with some of the louder modern music, i cant make it out of the inbalance region of the pot, or just barely.
 
Oh and its the WM8741 

 
i jsut wish i had a large enough allen wrench so i could open it up and see the inards, cause it didnt come with one like my dac19. But overall i think the sparrow sounds better than my dac19 feeding my protector.
 
its just so easy to turn it up!
 

 

[haloxt]

I am pretty sure if you can actually use the JH13 on the sparrow, it has had its gain adjusted lol.
 
I often turn the volume too high, I have to adjust volume according to volume peaks instead of overall volume when using gear with dynamic sound signature or headphones with reduced mids like ultrasones.

 

[AVU]

Yeah, that sounds about right.  When I ordered the Sparrow B originally, I discussed this with Kingwa and he said that first, the gain should be lowered to +3 (what is it ordinarily, +6?  I don't know) and that the Pot should be upgraded to the A version since it had less channel imbalance at the bottom and he implied I'd be using the bottom a good bit  I asked him whether the gain should be even lower, and first he replied that +3 was best and when I pressed him with the technical specs of the JH13s, he replied that +3 was the lowest he could make without compromising the audio quality.  Apparently he didn't have access to whatever was needed to get the gain lower without relying on (his words) "cheap chinese parts" that weren't of the same quality he was using in the B model (let alone the A model).  So, yeah, I got the +3, and when I ran it out of the powerbook pro, I experimented with turning down the master volume in Pure Music, since I had had to do with when I had an ibasso D4 b/c of the clipping that amp has.  But, whether or not it was my imagination, I could swear that I always liked the sound better when it was set to 100% rather than anything else coming out of the computer, so I just learned to deal with minute changes in volume - basically 7:30 to 9:30, sometimes to 10 or 11 on softer pieces.  But I felt like after the very first touch, when the channels came into alignment, it was gorgeous, and as long as you were delicate, you could get a good range.  But not ideal, I agree.   
 
The amp improved with burn in.  I burned mine in for like 2 weeks straight, and really noticed it opening up in the low end.  
 
But when I broke down and ordered the new Sparrow A, I asked Kingwa again what we could do and he said that he could modify the ACSS to produce a unity gain.  Yes, resale value goes down, and who knows what it will sound like, but I trust Kingwa to tell me the truth, and if he think's it's a good solution, I'm willing to take the chance.  Will post impressions when it arrives! 
 
Quote:

So first thing i did obviously was plug it in running optical out of my Macbook Pro and start listening with my jh-13's.
 
I got the gain lowered to 3dB, but i guess i should have done a little but more, because i dont have as much volume control with louder modern recordings as i would like. i can barely get above 9 o'clock on the dial. but with some of my needle drops ive got plenty of room up to about 10:30 or so.
...
 
the only gripe i have still is that i wish i could use more of my volume knob, im not sure that the gain was lowered?? AVU, i know you ahd yours lowered to 3dB as well, how much play did you get with your knob with the 13's?

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Quote:

Yeah, that sounds about right.  When I ordered the Sparrow B originally, I discussed this with Kingwa and he said that first, the gain should be lowered to +3 (what is it ordinarily, +6?  I don't know) and that the Pot should be upgraded to the A version since it had less channel imbalance at the bottom and he implied I'd be using the bottom a good bit  I asked him whether the gain should be even lower, and first he replied that +3 was best and when I pressed him with the technical specs of the JH13s, he replied that +3 was the lowest he could make without compromising the audio quality.  Apparently he didn't have access to whatever was needed to get the gain lower without relying on (his words) "cheap chinese parts" that weren't of the same quality he was using in the B model (let alone the A model).  So, yeah, I got the +3, and when I ran it out of the powerbook pro, I experimented with turning down the master volume in Pure Music, since I had had to do with when I had an ibasso D4 b/c of the clipping that amp has.  But, whether or not it was my imagination, I could swear that I always liked the sound better when it was set to 100% rather than anything else coming out of the computer, so I just learned to deal with minute changes in volume - basically 7:30 to 9:30, sometimes to 10 or 11 on softer pieces.  But I felt like after the very first touch, when the channels came into alignment, it was gorgeous, and as long as you were delicate, you could get a good range.  But not ideal, I agree.   
 
The amp improved with burn in.  I burned mine in for like 2 weeks straight, and really noticed it opening up in the low end.  
 
But when I broke down and ordered the new Sparrow A, I asked Kingwa again what we could do and he said that he could modify the ACSS to produce a unity gain.  Yes, resale value goes down, and who knows what it will sound like, but I trust Kingwa to tell me the truth, and if he think's it's a good solution, I'm willing to take the chance.  Will post impressions when it arrives! 
 

 

Grr, i wish that hed mentioned that i could have gotten the gain even lower...cause on some of the loudest recordings i have it have to turn it up just a smidgen further than i would like too in order to get passed the inbalance zone....
 
mines been burning in since i got it, and i have heard improvements as i listen as well. Though i turn it off while im sleeping, itd keep me up, but all day while im at work its running, and im listening while im at home. Its so dynamic! i dont know if its the amp or the DAC but its awesome. the dac19 through the protector wasnt this dynamic. and its still blowing me away at how fast it is 

 

 

[haloxt]

The software player cplay (and cmp) is supposed to have a very good digital volume control. I couldn't level match test digital volume control vs normal volume control, so I never seriously tried to hear the difference, so no comment on whether or not it will improve your sound quality.
 
notes about the player: you can only use flac and wav files, and you have to use the cuecreator program on its site to create cue sheets to play whole cd's or playlists instead of single tracks.

 

[mythless]

Anyone install the new WM8741 on their older Version A or B yet?