[ROBSCIX]

The different opamps (Earth,Sun or Moon) can be better matches for certain types of gear and headphones or speakers -not to mention personal taste.

 

[Telstar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif I meant "DAC" as a device

I quoted some commercial units in brackets. the ones which uses the ICs that listed should be true NOS, if they dont use a SRC.

Quote:

and anyway, OS improves the post-filtering and decreases aliasing....what could possibly be wrong w/ that.

Nothing on paper and on the scope. In practice, there are lot of issues, in particular metallic sound and HF harsness. The analog post-filtering instead create a nice veil on the sound.

 

[Ansh]

The ST is not arriving until 20/7
So depressing

 

[ROBSCIX]

..It is worth the wait.

 

[leeperry]

ok I got the board...finally

the HP out seems to snap 1/4" plugs perfectly fine.

I will be receiving the 7.1 daughter board next week, so I'll try that later on.

now I'm gonna put back my 49720HA, all kind of heatsinks, put back my big VGA cooler(that the STX was blocking)...and we're back on track baby

 

[The Oatman]

Question: Could this card be used for grabbing an analog 2 channel stream from an SACD player and backing it up to my computer? Would it result in decent quality?

 

[leeperry]

quite frankly, you wanna capture all the 6 channels from SACD...a friend of mine did it w/ a Lynx2C soundcard in 24/192, cool stuff!

and this card has NE5532 on the inputs, not the best choice...but yeah, the SQ would be good anyway

humm, the ST really seems to sound different from the STX....but well, it's brand new, will need a few days to settle in I guess

 

[Fantoon]

More impressions please

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif I will be receiving the 7.1 daughter board next week, so I'll try that later on.

Where?

 

[leeperry]

damn, the stereo image is drastically different from the STX...and yes, I've put back the STX in the meantime to be sure.

I was told that some ppl prefered the STX over the ST, I think I can understand why....it sounds clinical to the utmost. but well I like a sterile undistorted sound, my brain needs to get used to it I guess...and the card prolly needs some break-in as well

here's how it looks w/ heatsinks over the vital parts(DAC/HP amp/DSP/quartz PLL) and the three 49720(the 1ppm clock was too darn small to cover) :



the top left 49720 was poorly bent, I've done it a lot better afterwards

PS: I'm hearing some slight stereo glitches I didn't get before, these were most likely partly masked by jitter

 

[ROBSCIX]

You cannot hear Jitter. What you hear is the affects it has on the sound, such as distortion and artifacting.

 

[leeperry]

I think I start to understand what ppl mean when they say that a DAC sounds "liquid"...basically your brain doesn't have to cope w/ constant "turbulence", the sound simply flows

w/ the 49720HA, the sound is scarily transparent

so many more details, and so much less crossfeed that the STX at 44.1Khz....my ears are bleeding atm

I can only crave for the Asus Essence ST Super-Size Deluxe at this point

 

[ROBSCIX]

To those opamp swappers: I spent last night soldering up a bunch of new modules for testing. Ever unit required adapters as these were all surface mount chips, some required two units per module being single channel opamps.
I should be posting some tests results in a few days.

 

[e6600]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think I start to understand what ppl mean when they say that a DAC sounds "liquid"...basically your brain doesn't have to cope w/ constant "turbulence", the sound simply flows w/ the 49720HA, the sound is scarily transparent so many more details, and so much less crossfeed that the STX at 44.1Khz....my ears are bleeding atm I can only crave for the Asus Essence ST Super-Size Deluxe at this point

so would you say that a stock ST > STx by a big margin?
or even possibly worth a price increase ($200-280?)

 

[ROBSCIX]

Well the specificaitons for both cards are identical.
The difference being the new high precision clocking circuit which cuts down on alot of jitter.