[Grant Fidelity]

  Is Grant Fidelity the only reputable place to purchase the DA8? What about for people who live outside of the U.S. like Korea or Japan?

We offer free shipping worldwide - Yulong resellers have no territory restriction so you can choose whichever reseller you feel comfortable with for best service. 
 
Although we are in North America, we coordinate shipping and factory services worldwide. 

 

[Maven86]

It finally came, thanks for the help with the purchase Project86 and DarKen23, I'm enjoying it!  I was just wondering, in the review by Project86, it was mentioned that the built in amp was somewhere between the A100 and A18 in terms of quality, is it closer to the A100 or A18?  I'm curious as to how big of a sound upgrade I'll get by adding the A18.  To my ears, the built in amp quality sounds better than the modded m-stage, probably somewhere close to my old Burson HA-160 with some tradeoffs (e.g. slightly more detail & better soundstage in exchange for the more pronounced bass and airier treble on the Burson).  It definitely sounds more mid focused.

 

[DarKen23]

 
It finally came, thanks for the help with the purchase Project86 and DarKen23, I'm enjoying it!  I was just wondering, in the review by Project86, it was mentioned that the built in amp was somewhere between the A100 and A18 in terms of quality, is it closer to the A100 or A18?  I'm curious as to how big of a sound upgrade I'll get by adding the A18.  To my ears, the built in amp quality sounds better than the modded m-stage, probably somewhere close to my old Burson HA-160 with some tradeoffs (e.g. slightly more detail & better soundstage in exchange for the more pronounced bass and airier treble on the Burson).  It definitely sounds more mid focused.

Lol looks like youre exactly in the same shoes I was in about 4 weeks ago. Congrats, I hope you enjoy it. Remember to make sure the voltage switch is in the correct position, and make sure the unit does DSD.

 

[M-13]

So any more impressions of the DA8 vs. Concero? Worth the upgrade?

 

[Maven86]

  Lol looks like youre exactly in the same shoes I was in about 4 weeks ago. Congrats, I hope you enjoy it. Remember to make sure the voltage switch is in the correct position, and make sure the unit does DSD.

 
Thanks, I'm checking out the DSD playback right now.  It looks like I'll have to find a player for OSX.  Btw, there also seems to be a glitch when playing back sound effects like putting a file in the trash bin.  It's as if there's some latency to the sound, has anyone experienced this?

 

[DarKen23]

 

  Lol looks like youre exactly in the same shoes I was in about 4 weeks ago. Congrats, I hope you enjoy it. Remember to make sure the voltage switch is in the correct position, and make sure the unit does DSD.

 
Thanks, I'm checking out the DSD playback right now.  It looks like I'll have to find a player for OSX.  Btw, there also seems to be a glitch when playing back sound effects like putting a file in the trash bin.  It's as if there's some latency to the sound, has anyone experienced this?

uh, no I dont think so..
 
Did you install all the required drivers?

 

[DarKen23]

 
It finally came, thanks for the help with the purchase Project86 and DarKen23, I'm enjoying it!  I was just wondering, in the review by Project86, it was mentioned that the built in amp was somewhere between the A100 and A18 in terms of quality, is it closer to the A100 or A18?  I'm curious as to how big of a sound upgrade I'll get by adding the A18.  To my ears, the built in amp quality sounds better than the modded m-stage, probably somewhere close to my old Burson HA-160 with some tradeoffs (e.g. slightly more detail & better soundstage in exchange for the more pronounced bass and airier treble on the Burson).  It definitely sounds more mid focused.

Adding the A18 will give you more weight behind the mids. The midrange with the DA8 and A18 combined is absolutely perfect imo, best midrange Ive ever heard to date for sure. The A18 will also give you more slam, impact, texture, and physicality of bass--If you like electronica music, the DA8/A18 should end your search.

 

[Maven86]

  uh, no I dont think so..
 
Did you install all the required drivers?

 
I think the drivers are only for Windows, I use OSX.  Hopefully there's a fix somewhere.
 
 
 
Quote:

  Adding the A18 will give you more weight behind the mids. The midrange with the DA8 and A18 combined is absolutely perfect imo, best midrange Ive ever heard to date for sure. The A18 will also give you more slam, impact, texture, and physicality of bass--If you like electronica music, the DA8/A18 should end your search.

 
Ok, now THAT'S what I wanted to hear lol.  I thought that the bass on the integrated amplifier was a bit...lacking, especially for faster genres like electronica.  I'm still conflicted as to whether or not I should pick up the A18 now, or whether I should save a little more and get the HD800's first.  Ah, the unfortunate dilemma of choice

.

 

[[OverDrive]]

  Hello,
does anyone compare it with M-Dac? Differences?
 
Thx

Up.

 

[belisk]

As a windows user, i also experience short length sounds to be cut off half way, a easy way to test this is to left click the speaker icon on the bottom right and left click the volume slider every 3 seconds, you will notice cut off, but if you spam click it, you should receive the full sound, appears to be some kind of delay, happens with Tenor too(first experienced this with ODAC).

I've put it through some really heavy gaming applications, it does well handling a constant stream of sounds along with skype and music playing all at the same time, doing this with a Tenor would cause the chip to flip out. Anyway after putting the DA8 through the tests, it seems to exhibit a very very minor hiccup that causes a vinyl pop sound when playing back music every so often, restarting windows fixes it, or using WASAPI in your media player seems to fix it as well. 6.5/10 for USB implementation, could use some refinement.

My Concero HP has none of these issues, a perfect 10/10 USB implementation.

As for the DAC section of the DA8, pretty much 10/10, i see what people mean about its soundstage, its pretty wide, quite a significant jump.
I'm still not sure about the internal amp though, mids with weight behind it is very important to me, my V200 executes it with absolute precision.

 

[DarKen23]

As a windows user, i also experience short length sounds to be cut off half way, a easy way to test this is to left click the speaker icon on the bottom right and left click the volume slider every 3 seconds, you will notice cut off, but if you spam click it, you should receive the full sound, appears to be some kind of delay, happens with Tenor too(first experienced this with ODAC).

I've put it through some really heavy gaming applications, it does well handling a constant stream of sounds along with skype and music playing all at the same time, doing this with a Tenor would cause the chip to flip out. Anyway after putting the DA8 through the tests, it seems to exhibit a very very minor hiccup that causes a vinyl pop sound when playing back music every so often, restarting windows fixes it, or using WASAPI in your media player seems to fix it as well. 6.5/10 for USB implementation, could use some refinement.

My Concero HP has none of these issues, a perfect 10/10 USB implementation.

As for the DAC section of the DA8, pretty much 10/10, i see what people mean about its soundstage, its pretty wide, quite a significant jump.
I'm still not sure about the internal amp though, mids with weight behind it is very important to me, my V200 executes it with absolute precision.

Belisk, thats exactly how I felt about the mids--I couldnt feel the mids. Actually to be honest, I didnt realize it was lacking weight in that area until I started using the A18. The amp inside DA8 is a great amp, obviously its not perfect and does have its flaws.
 
Ive had no problems with DA8's usb. 10/10. Are you sure you've installed and checked all the settings?

 

[Jd007]

As a windows user, i also experience short length sounds to be cut off half way, a easy way to test this is to left click the speaker icon on the bottom right and left click the volume slider every 3 seconds, you will notice cut off, but if you spam click it, you should receive the full sound, appears to be some kind of delay, happens with Tenor too(first experienced this with ODAC).

I've put it through some really heavy gaming applications, it does well handling a constant stream of sounds along with skype and music playing all at the same time, doing this with a Tenor would cause the chip to flip out. Anyway after putting the DA8 through the tests, it seems to exhibit a very very minor hiccup that causes a vinyl pop sound when playing back music every so often, restarting windows fixes it, or using WASAPI in your media player seems to fix it as well. 6.5/10 for USB implementation, could use some refinement.

My Concero HP has none of these issues, a perfect 10/10 USB implementation.

As for the DAC section of the DA8, pretty much 10/10, i see what people mean about its soundstage, its pretty wide, quite a significant jump.
I'm still not sure about the internal amp though, mids with weight behind it is very important to me, my V200 executes it with absolute precision.

Short stutter/pop every once in a while during playback on windows is usually caused by a DPC latency spike due to poorly implemented device drivers (some other device on your computer or possibly though unlikely the DAC's). You can confirm this by using the DPC latency checker, leave it in background and wait for a stutter to happen then check the program, you should see a big spike in latency if it's the issue.

Usually intermittent DPC latency spikes are caused by some poorly implemented device driver on the PC, which is why the problem usually does not affect everyone. If it is not a commonly reported problem with a particular DAC then most likely the problematic driver is for some other device on the PC. Unfortunately finding out which one it is can be difficult, sometimes it may turn out to be an essential device that cannot be disabled (eg network adapter).

As for the short delay when you start to play something, are you referring to the signal clock lock delay? The DAC may need to re-lock onto the signal if the stream has been cut for a while (ie after a bit of time with no sound playing), and of course when you change the sample rate of the signal. I am not aware of any workaround to this and it is not a problem that only the DA8 has. If anybody knows how to resolve this minor issue I'd be happy to learn about it (perhaps forcing windows to never completely cut the audio stream over USB somehow?)

 

[DarKen23]

 

As a windows user, i also experience short length sounds to be cut off half way, a easy way to test this is to left click the speaker icon on the bottom right and left click the volume slider every 3 seconds, you will notice cut off, but if you spam click it, you should receive the full sound, appears to be some kind of delay, happens with Tenor too(first experienced this with ODAC).

I've put it through some really heavy gaming applications, it does well handling a constant stream of sounds along with skype and music playing all at the same time, doing this with a Tenor would cause the chip to flip out. Anyway after putting the DA8 through the tests, it seems to exhibit a very very minor hiccup that causes a vinyl pop sound when playing back music every so often, restarting windows fixes it, or using WASAPI in your media player seems to fix it as well. 6.5/10 for USB implementation, could use some refinement.

My Concero HP has none of these issues, a perfect 10/10 USB implementation.

As for the DAC section of the DA8, pretty much 10/10, i see what people mean about its soundstage, its pretty wide, quite a significant jump.
I'm still not sure about the internal amp though, mids with weight behind it is very important to me, my V200 executes it with absolute precision.

Short stutter/pop every once in a while during playback on windows is usually caused by a DPC latency spike due to poorly implemented device drivers (some other device on your computer or possibly though unlikely the DAC's). You can confirm this by using the DPC latency checker, leave it in background and wait for a stutter to happen then check the program, you should see a big spike in latency if it's the issue.

Usually intermittent DPC latency spikes are caused by some poorly implemented device driver on the PC, which is why the problem usually does not affect everyone. If it is not a commonly reported problem with a particular DAC then most likely the problematic driver is for some other device on the PC. Unfortunately finding out which one it is can be difficult, sometimes it may turn out to be an essential device that cannot be disabled (eg network adapter).
 

Thats a very good point and should be taken into account. A lot times there are problems within the pc's hardware and its driver. That said--anyone experiencing problems should go into device manager and check to make sure all your port drivers are up to date and that it is working properly.

 

[[OverDrive]]

It 'best to use linux for audio no windows (XP, Seven or 8)

 

[DarKen23]

  It 'best to use linux for audio no windows (XP, Seven or 8)

could you elaborate?