My thoughts on its sequel, the NFB-1.32 w/USB32 and TXCO clocks from a sister thread : http://www.head-fi.org/t/625945/audio-gd-nfb-1-32/15
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Well i have it hooked up, listening through my speakers, took me all bout 2 minutes to get it going to install the usb driver, and get sound. Instantly noticed the increased depth and I do mean lots of it, details, and airyness, and a slight warmth, easily outclasses the modded soundcard. I'm gonna get to listening with more material throughout the day and will be chiming in a bit later
Will be doing comparisons between this and my vinyl setup, i have a couple vinyl records that I have digitally that ill be able to flip back and forth to compare with. Will also be hooking it up to my Lisa3 headamp in a few. More fun thoughts later.
Edited by xtreme4099 - 9/17/12 at 2:59pm
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Testing all the connections,
USB sonics are better than the toslink optical, that much was immediate when flicking between connections.
I haven't been able to coax working with the auzentech internal soundcard, foobar gives a device in use error, and none of the windows sounds appear to work either, where as the opposite is true when using toslink or usb. Setting the SPDIF to DIR mode didn't help. Coax works fine with the receiver so either the 1.32 is picky or I have driver problem and or it simply doesn't like the sound card which is more likely the case.
The coax is working fine however, i had to pull out an old dvd player with a coaxial out, and throw in a cd to test and it played fine. However since most of my music is digital i wont be able to play with it on sound card tsk tsk. I have a nice coax Oyaide DIR-510 pure silver cable that would of been nice to compare against the usb functionality. Oh well at least i know every portion of the DAC is working. I'm just musing
Looks like I can play 24/352k files just fine in KS mode via foobar, and I imagine i can also play 384k files once I grab some
2L has some sample 24/352k DXD files here : http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html - they're big as you can imagine, tracks range from a couple hundred megs to over a gig in size.
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Originally Posted by xing3ds
Hi xtreme,
Looks promising..
Looking forward for more review.
Have you heard any audio-gd DAC with PCM1740UK chip? Such as Reference 5?
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Not yet, I'd be curious to listen to either the 5.32 or the SA 1.32, it would be a fairer comparison to the 1.32 I have now.
In regards to a review I'll be in the process of matching it up with different gear so I get can overarching picture of the capabilities of the DAC, I have a couple friends in the area that have an assortment of sources that I'd be able to directly compare against. My immediate impressions are overwhelming positive, it's airy, detailed, and is absolutely wonderful with live recordings. Also your source music will have to be very well recorded otherwise you will be hear everything warts n all, this could be what some people attribute to some of the etchiness or hardness to some of the low bit recordings, which is not the case at all with well recorded material at any resolution above 44.1. The 352khz samples are phenomenal to listen to, even over their 192khz counterparts, I may just look at grabbing a couple of those in different genre's from an audiophile sites to wrap my head around at what is soon to become the future format of audiophilia considering hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper. The samples I've heard have either been piano or classical and 1 with vocals which sounded just about perfect to my ears. I look forward to matching it up and comparing it with other gear to give more level headed description of its capabilities, considering this is my one and only external dac at the moment, my immediate impressions may be newness bias, time will tell.
I'm also looking forward to allyl's thoughts, since he appears to have an EE minimax plus in his inventory.
Edited by xtreme4099 - 9/19/12 at 9:31am
