General Information
Burson Audio and the Evolution of the Tianyun Zero DAC
The Tianyun Zero as he is today, FrankenZero … or just Frankie. The headphone amp section has been completely disconnected and all power goes only to the DAC.
Before I can start this review proper, I think some of the back story is required here for it to make any sense in the overall picture, so please bare with me for a short time.
A long time ago, way back in 2008, there appeared on the scene a fairly cheap Chinese DAC/preamp, with a built in headphone amp, called the Tianyun Zero. I think it was around $100US at the time, $130NZ for me as I was living in New Zealand caring for my mother for a couple of years. In those days it was remarkably good value, having a very nice Analogue Devices AD1852 DAC chip in it, many polyester bypass capacitors throughout the circuit, as well as a lot of ferrite anti-noise beads in various places and best of all the ability to roll the opamps in both the output stage and the headphone amp. I bought an earlier version without the later added USB input.
From memory, I believe it was Penchum who first caught my eye, writing about the Zero in glowing terms and something in me said, “Buy one!” So I did. It was when I connected with Prickely Pete on the forum, that things really took off, as he was developing an upgrade regime and I bought into it immediately, having already enjoyed the DAC as it was for a time and starting the upgrade process for the opamps, it was quite a ‘thing’ in Head-Fi back then. Prickely Pete and I communicated back and forth at length and after some months I had the upgrade parts carefully installed - not always easy as it was a through soldered board and great care was needed in desoldering so as to not break any on the tracks through overheating. Some of the on-line results I saw were NOT pretty! Pete and I could see some unskilled folks were having difficulties, so I wrote up a series of work notes and posted them in the forum, hoping to ease the pain for hopeful upgrade punters.
The green Russians, although these are a little larger in value than I remember, most are 0.1uF 160v.
Being a little adventurous at that time, Mr Pete had decided upon some rather nice, though not particularly small, ex Russian Airforce Paper In Oil non-polar capacitors to bypass all the various electrolytic capacitors in all critical areas of the circuit. That too required care in both soldering and layout, as many of them were quite close together in places. Along with the lovely Sanyo Oscon capacitors around the DAC, Elna Silmic II and Nichicon Muse capacitors were added to my own creation, using the excellent Burr Brown OPA627BP mono opamps on a Brown Dog adapter in the output stage, even at that time they were nearly 10 times the price of a standard opamp and significantly better than the already nice OPA2604 that was provided with the Zero.
For the rest of the FrankenZero story (as he became known) you can troll back through the pages of Head-Fi, if you are interested.
At the same time, another Chinese company called Audio-gd was making a name for itself with well made DACs and amplifiers, along with creating what we can call Discrete Opamps, or HDAMs (High Dynamic Audio Modules) in a series of three flavours, basically an opamp circuit built using all discrete full sized components (Yes, I know, Jason Stoddard of Schiit fame has done a recent post on what is and isn’t discrete recently, but I’m keeping this simple, alright!), I bought all of them in some numbers, though preferring the most neutral of the three, the Earth model. The results from using the Earth in the output stage was stunning, particularly once it had run in after hitting the 50 hour mark. Bigger, bolder, more open and dynamic, the Earth stayed in Frankie for years, even after returning to Australia in 2011. The Earth also featured in the hotrodded headphone amplifier I was using, along with an A-gd Class A adjustable power supply for it. I still have it, though it is not part of this review.
Onto today and the real subject of this review, I recently rediscovered Frankie, who had been packed away for nearly three years due to house movings etc. I have been using a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC for several years now, thoroughly enjoying music through this little gem for many hundreds of hours, running the signal through a pair of over 10 year old New Zealand made, 5 nines pure silver, Slinkylinks Interconnects, with the Telluride copper Bullet Plugs and into firstly a Magni 3 amplifier, (several years) then the latest incarnation of it, the Magni 3+, a significant upgrade in my book.
After rediscovering Frankie and wondering why the heck I’d shut him away for three years(!), I started describing the sheer joy of my findings in the “Wow! Sennheiser HD540 Reference Headphones are so good!” thread in the Head-Fi forums and out of the blue I receive a message from John Garcia, of Burson Electronics, asking me if I’d like to review one of their ‘Discrete Opamps’ in Frankie. I’ve been aware of Burson Audio’s Classic and Vivid series of Opamps for years and often wanted to try them and now I have the most welcome opportunity.
The mono version of the Vivid V6 modules.
I chose the Vivid V6, knowing that Frankie is already a touch on the warm side of neutral and the Classic version would be too warm and bassy in this circuit. The AD1852 DAC chip is no modern ESS bright/ultra clean and maybe lacking in a little body type of result that I’d heard on occasions and seen in many reviews, although I do understand this depends on how it is used in the various designs that use this ubiquitous chip and versions thereof.
The signature of this lovely DAC chip (the AD1852) is not unlike many NOS R2R DACs, a touch warm, never harsh, sharp or edgy, but in this incarnation is also extremely emotionally communicative, transparent, involving and rather 3D in it’s presentation. It has wonderful PRaT, to use this particular term (Pace, Rhythm and Timing, for those who haven’t heard it before). I much prefer it over the last R2R DAC I owned, it’s simply more transparent and well, alive. The AD1852 in the Zero is even rated in Category 1 by the creator of LampizatOr, to be used for Lampization as a ‘Very nice allrounder, I love it’. I’m with him, even in it’s modified stock form as I am using it today.
Before the arrival of the Vivid V6, I refreshed my memory of Frankie using both the OPA627BP opamps and the Earth HDAM, both are fabulous in this DAC, one of them is like listening to a great performance from a few rows back and the other is like walking onto the stage or into the recording studio right amongst the performers. The Earth is the latter experience. I was floored that this DAC had not seen service in my last home, THIS was why I rebuilt Frankie and had loved the results for several years in the first place!
Living now in a small cottage, I listen only through headphones, using the excellent Questyle QP1R DAP as a source, taking the signal via an Audioquest Carbon optical cable into the DAC, plus the Slinkylinks to the Magni 3+ and venerable 34 year old Sennheiser HD540 Reference headphones, using my preferred wang_yifei pleather pads and homemade Mogami #2893 headphone cable. This is a high resolution system that has wonderful communication skills with very natural instrument and voice timbre, something for which the HD540 Ref1s are prized and well known. There is no treble peak in this system, hardness and thin vocals don’t apply here.
My main listening set of Sennheiser HD540 Reference headphones
The Earth HDAM is big, bold, uncompressed dynamically and just draws me right into the performance, yet, is also a little rolled off in the very top end, though it never seems to lessen the ‘all of a piece’ joy of listening. And yet for some music, say Ricki Lee Jones’ wonderful Naked Songs live, is just a little too close for me. I prefer the pinpoint focus and stunning vocal expression of the OPA627s for female vocals. The beauty of Frankie is that I can mix and match to my heart’s content, especially since I cut a hole in the top of the case recently so that I have easy access to do just that.
Onto the scene comes the Vivid V6 module, nicely packaged, beautifully constructed and coming with a nice gold-plated opamp 8 pin socket, in this case ideal to add to the base of the Vivid V6 to bring a little more height above some poly bypass caps around the opamp socket, of which I’d used the same type soldered into the main board. Perfect fit.
Nice, the Vivid V6 Dual opamp module.
I like to hear what new electronics sound like fresh out of the box as a comparison for later hours of use and the normal slightly grey, 2D, cold and slightly hard sound was apparent for a while, so I left my iTunes folder on the QP1R playing for several hours and walked away, popping in occasionally to hear what might have happened to many very familiar tunes.
The hard coldness on vocals vanished within hours and slowly the whole sound opened out and relaxed and over the next few days came into more dynamic expression from top to bottom. Speaking of the bottom end, what may have been just a tad softer with the Earth HDAM (if extremely fluid and organic) was now taut, deep and focused, becoming more and more detailed in the skin tone of bass instruments and drum skins as it headed for the 50 hour mark, a run-in time that has featured for me as a shift into the true nature of a device, be it electronics, headphones or cables (apart from silver which seems to take a lot longer to really just open up and relax). I well remember my first Earth HDAM in Frankie hitting that 50 hour mark and it was if a subwoofer had kicked in, not in the home theatre boom and bang style, but a music based hifi sub that just opened up the bottom end with new ambient detail, dynamic contrasts, focused impact with kick drums and greater ease of expression all the way to the top. This is exactly what happened to the Vivid V6 just after 50 hours of music of all descriptions. Wow.
Not only had the bass filled out some more, but drum skin tone was (is!) superb, surrounded with it’s own ambience whether in a live performance or in a studio, now I really can hear that the drum kit was recorded in a separate booth and the vocals in a different space with some recordings, ambient detail of the booth making it quite clear that this is a separate track on the tape. The high frequencies too have become more extended than both the Earth HDAM and the OPA627s, with instrument, ambient detail and timbral qualities that I have never heard before, often jaw-dropped in delight with familiar tracks I’ve heard many many times over the years. A good example is Van Morrison’s Too Long In Exile, specifically the tracks, I’ll Take Care Of You and Tell Me What You Want. To hear Georgie Fame on the Hammond Organ is a joy, such great touch when matching licks with the vibraphone, so easy to hear his fingers lifting on and off the keys, making for a live and organic touch of human communication that is a joy to hear. What strikes me as obvious now (s’cuse the pun) is that when the vibraphone is struck there are different ambient and timbral details depending on which part of each key is played upon, some a touch duller and other notes ring out with harmonics floating out into space until they die out completely. Simply fabulous. I’m shown how an instrument is played and this is crucial in the emotional communication of any piece of music.
Kate Bush’s Aerial has now become a masterpiece that makes me want to really relax and listen in, the ’Somewhere In-between’ section some 20 minutes in is pure delight, with Kate and the Blackbird toning off together, followed by the duet with her brother (I think, I don’t have the album cover with me), the drum kit and bass creating a delightful lilting rhythm. I’ve never enjoyed this album like this before, it sounds like real people creating beautiful music, quirky at times. Occasionally quite dense, the Burson V6 allowed me to listen right into the music, and this became a theme for many albums to follow that I’d previously given little time to.
The soundstage expanded after 50 hours as well: a Rutter Requiem recorded in a church, complete with organ, orchestra and choir alongside the soprano, just opened out as if the church had expanded in size and the roof of the space had lifted significantly. The soprano’s voice went from damn fine, if a touch hard, to glorious and her voice just soared effortlessly up into the rafters with narry a trace of edge or hardness. Wow again. Great pillows of low frequency air just billowed out from the organ, though never smothering the orchestra or mixed choir, with all their individual voices singing in harmony. What a treat to hear this piece sound so expanded now.
I could site so many examples, but as per my notes, no matter the music, a veil has been lifted from the very top end. The effect on vocal placement, especially with multiple singers, each with it’s own unique tonality and then combined with the greater transparency to percussion instruments (and harmonics of vocals and instruments in the midrange), cymbals, bells (oh my, the clarity of individual tonal structure and harmonics!), triangles etc and into the ambient space around those instruments, has transformed into new heights of musical joy from what was and is really a very modest DAC on the surface, now some 15 years old, though you wouldn't think so to hear it.
Skunk Hour’s beautifully recorded, Up To Our Necks In It, is a fine example of a unique voice, with it’s clipped consonants and diction, rich and taut bass guitar that is sensational in it’s depth here, the high hat floating along at the rear of the stage, with great 3D space and fast dynamics on drums and percussion. Everything can be heard so clearly, yet, as per the signature of this DAC, it’s all ‘of a piece’ togetherness never wavers.
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis’ Two Men With The Blues has never sounded this good! Wiilie’s voice can often sound edgy with this album, but here his natural rasp is fully present without that edginess, the double bass is fantastic on Nightlife (especially) and as for Marsalis’ trumpet I wrote, “Scintillating aliveness”, uncompressed, with the high hat shimmering along in the background, all players in their own 3D space on stage, the wooden floor of the Carnegie Hall sometimes adding it’s own tone.
These aspects of tonality and 3D soundstage space apply to virtually all music that is recorded with those attributes, some music of course being as flat as a pancake, yet all players are still not blended together, it’s just that the layers are flattened.
Supertramp’s, School, is by far the best I’ve ever heard this track in many decades, better than any LP I’ve heard at any time. It’s literally like I’m hearing it for the very first time, right down to the sense of real menace in the bass strings of the intro, subtle cymbal details I’ve missed previously, the character and focus of Roger Hodgson’s voice, the music has space to breathe at last. Amazing.
It goes on, I hadn’t realised I’d written so many notes, so I’ll conclude with this: everything is an event, whether soft and gentle, punchy and wild or anything in between, from the Beethoven Violin Concerto to Children Collide. Frankie with the Burson Vivid V6 has a way of pulling threads of individual rhythms in a complex mix and making them visible, so to speak, even if subtle at times. That in itself has been a revelation for me with all sorts of music, instrument tone I’ve never heard the same way before; the big taut skin of the kettle drum in the Beethoven Violin Concerto, complete with its tonal impact and surrounding ambient air at the far back right of the soundstage, responding and duelling with the violin centre stage some 18 minutes into the piece just makes me smile.
The Burson Vivid V6 has brought more out of Frankie than I ever thought possible, the lovely organic nature of the DAC has been both preserved and opened up to allow more of the innate communicative nature to shine through and enhance the enjoyment of every piece of music that is introduced to the optical input port. Just as I found with the Supertramp track, all music has room to breathe and just be expressed as it was recorded.
In addition, I must say that I also unexpectedly received from Burson two of the mono Vivid V6 modules and they have gone into my Perreaux SP100 preamp (1977!) as replacements for the OPA627s in the Class A headphone amplifier. Not a lot of hours yet, as Frankie was the number one priority, but already the Vivid’s qualities are shining through, punchy and dynamic with good detail so far. Much more to look forward to here.
To John, and Burson Audio, many heartfelt thanks and appreciation for this musical gift! I can whole hearted recommend to anyone that has a CD player, DAC, amplifier or preamp that can use one or more of these HDAMs/Discrete Opamp modules to replace a stock opamp (the options are listed on the website) to look into getting one of these modules for an instant upgrade, provided the power supply can handle the juice, just some 14mA for a dual version. Suggestions and comprehensive advice galore is available from www.bursonaudio.com. Compared to the price of a genuine Burr Brown OPA627 these days, the Burson opamps I think are a good price and a fine step upwards for sheer sound quality over virtually everything else I’ve heard. I’ll be getting more of the Vivid V6s …. there’s a CD player that could do with an upgrade … my hotrodded headphone amp … another preamp … happy days.
Addendum: Several days later and moving up to and beyond the 100 hour mark, the V6 has both relaxed even further, while providing more apparent detail, especially in the top end. Even a well recorded Mp3 of the old hit song "Pump Up The Jam" by Technotronic has taken on a whole new level of clarity and especially transparency, backing vocals are evident both tonally and in their own space. Crystal clear.
My favourite version of the old Pulp song "Common People", by William Shatner and Joe Jackson is a revelation of cynical humour and the emotionally drawn tension between the rich and poor in England, complete with children's choir, Frankie + Vivid V6 allows the music to really breathe, the choir never gets edgy and blurred with Bill and Joe's vocals, the cymbals are crystal clear in the background and the music just Drives!
I'd call the latest improvements for a noticeable increase in transparency, well recorded drum kits are a joy!
The Tianyun Zero as he is today, FrankenZero … or just Frankie. The headphone amp section has been completely disconnected and all power goes only to the DAC.
Before I can start this review proper, I think some of the back story is required here for it to make any sense in the overall picture, so please bare with me for a short time.
A long time ago, way back in 2008, there appeared on the scene a fairly cheap Chinese DAC/preamp, with a built in headphone amp, called the Tianyun Zero. I think it was around $100US at the time, $130NZ for me as I was living in New Zealand caring for my mother for a couple of years. In those days it was remarkably good value, having a very nice Analogue Devices AD1852 DAC chip in it, many polyester bypass capacitors throughout the circuit, as well as a lot of ferrite anti-noise beads in various places and best of all the ability to roll the opamps in both the output stage and the headphone amp. I bought an earlier version without the later added USB input.
From memory, I believe it was Penchum who first caught my eye, writing about the Zero in glowing terms and something in me said, “Buy one!” So I did. It was when I connected with Prickely Pete on the forum, that things really took off, as he was developing an upgrade regime and I bought into it immediately, having already enjoyed the DAC as it was for a time and starting the upgrade process for the opamps, it was quite a ‘thing’ in Head-Fi back then. Prickely Pete and I communicated back and forth at length and after some months I had the upgrade parts carefully installed - not always easy as it was a through soldered board and great care was needed in desoldering so as to not break any on the tracks through overheating. Some of the on-line results I saw were NOT pretty! Pete and I could see some unskilled folks were having difficulties, so I wrote up a series of work notes and posted them in the forum, hoping to ease the pain for hopeful upgrade punters.
The green Russians, although these are a little larger in value than I remember, most are 0.1uF 160v.
Being a little adventurous at that time, Mr Pete had decided upon some rather nice, though not particularly small, ex Russian Airforce Paper In Oil non-polar capacitors to bypass all the various electrolytic capacitors in all critical areas of the circuit. That too required care in both soldering and layout, as many of them were quite close together in places. Along with the lovely Sanyo Oscon capacitors around the DAC, Elna Silmic II and Nichicon Muse capacitors were added to my own creation, using the excellent Burr Brown OPA627BP mono opamps on a Brown Dog adapter in the output stage, even at that time they were nearly 10 times the price of a standard opamp and significantly better than the already nice OPA2604 that was provided with the Zero.
For the rest of the FrankenZero story (as he became known) you can troll back through the pages of Head-Fi, if you are interested.
At the same time, another Chinese company called Audio-gd was making a name for itself with well made DACs and amplifiers, along with creating what we can call Discrete Opamps, or HDAMs (High Dynamic Audio Modules) in a series of three flavours, basically an opamp circuit built using all discrete full sized components (Yes, I know, Jason Stoddard of Schiit fame has done a recent post on what is and isn’t discrete recently, but I’m keeping this simple, alright!), I bought all of them in some numbers, though preferring the most neutral of the three, the Earth model. The results from using the Earth in the output stage was stunning, particularly once it had run in after hitting the 50 hour mark. Bigger, bolder, more open and dynamic, the Earth stayed in Frankie for years, even after returning to Australia in 2011. The Earth also featured in the hotrodded headphone amplifier I was using, along with an A-gd Class A adjustable power supply for it. I still have it, though it is not part of this review.
Onto today and the real subject of this review, I recently rediscovered Frankie, who had been packed away for nearly three years due to house movings etc. I have been using a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC for several years now, thoroughly enjoying music through this little gem for many hundreds of hours, running the signal through a pair of over 10 year old New Zealand made, 5 nines pure silver, Slinkylinks Interconnects, with the Telluride copper Bullet Plugs and into firstly a Magni 3 amplifier, (several years) then the latest incarnation of it, the Magni 3+, a significant upgrade in my book.
After rediscovering Frankie and wondering why the heck I’d shut him away for three years(!), I started describing the sheer joy of my findings in the “Wow! Sennheiser HD540 Reference Headphones are so good!” thread in the Head-Fi forums and out of the blue I receive a message from John Garcia, of Burson Electronics, asking me if I’d like to review one of their ‘Discrete Opamps’ in Frankie. I’ve been aware of Burson Audio’s Classic and Vivid series of Opamps for years and often wanted to try them and now I have the most welcome opportunity.
The mono version of the Vivid V6 modules.
I chose the Vivid V6, knowing that Frankie is already a touch on the warm side of neutral and the Classic version would be too warm and bassy in this circuit. The AD1852 DAC chip is no modern ESS bright/ultra clean and maybe lacking in a little body type of result that I’d heard on occasions and seen in many reviews, although I do understand this depends on how it is used in the various designs that use this ubiquitous chip and versions thereof.
The signature of this lovely DAC chip (the AD1852) is not unlike many NOS R2R DACs, a touch warm, never harsh, sharp or edgy, but in this incarnation is also extremely emotionally communicative, transparent, involving and rather 3D in it’s presentation. It has wonderful PRaT, to use this particular term (Pace, Rhythm and Timing, for those who haven’t heard it before). I much prefer it over the last R2R DAC I owned, it’s simply more transparent and well, alive. The AD1852 in the Zero is even rated in Category 1 by the creator of LampizatOr, to be used for Lampization as a ‘Very nice allrounder, I love it’. I’m with him, even in it’s modified stock form as I am using it today.
Before the arrival of the Vivid V6, I refreshed my memory of Frankie using both the OPA627BP opamps and the Earth HDAM, both are fabulous in this DAC, one of them is like listening to a great performance from a few rows back and the other is like walking onto the stage or into the recording studio right amongst the performers. The Earth is the latter experience. I was floored that this DAC had not seen service in my last home, THIS was why I rebuilt Frankie and had loved the results for several years in the first place!
Living now in a small cottage, I listen only through headphones, using the excellent Questyle QP1R DAP as a source, taking the signal via an Audioquest Carbon optical cable into the DAC, plus the Slinkylinks to the Magni 3+ and venerable 34 year old Sennheiser HD540 Reference headphones, using my preferred wang_yifei pleather pads and homemade Mogami #2893 headphone cable. This is a high resolution system that has wonderful communication skills with very natural instrument and voice timbre, something for which the HD540 Ref1s are prized and well known. There is no treble peak in this system, hardness and thin vocals don’t apply here.
My main listening set of Sennheiser HD540 Reference headphones
The Earth HDAM is big, bold, uncompressed dynamically and just draws me right into the performance, yet, is also a little rolled off in the very top end, though it never seems to lessen the ‘all of a piece’ joy of listening. And yet for some music, say Ricki Lee Jones’ wonderful Naked Songs live, is just a little too close for me. I prefer the pinpoint focus and stunning vocal expression of the OPA627s for female vocals. The beauty of Frankie is that I can mix and match to my heart’s content, especially since I cut a hole in the top of the case recently so that I have easy access to do just that.
Onto the scene comes the Vivid V6 module, nicely packaged, beautifully constructed and coming with a nice gold-plated opamp 8 pin socket, in this case ideal to add to the base of the Vivid V6 to bring a little more height above some poly bypass caps around the opamp socket, of which I’d used the same type soldered into the main board. Perfect fit.
Nice, the Vivid V6 Dual opamp module.
I like to hear what new electronics sound like fresh out of the box as a comparison for later hours of use and the normal slightly grey, 2D, cold and slightly hard sound was apparent for a while, so I left my iTunes folder on the QP1R playing for several hours and walked away, popping in occasionally to hear what might have happened to many very familiar tunes.
The hard coldness on vocals vanished within hours and slowly the whole sound opened out and relaxed and over the next few days came into more dynamic expression from top to bottom. Speaking of the bottom end, what may have been just a tad softer with the Earth HDAM (if extremely fluid and organic) was now taut, deep and focused, becoming more and more detailed in the skin tone of bass instruments and drum skins as it headed for the 50 hour mark, a run-in time that has featured for me as a shift into the true nature of a device, be it electronics, headphones or cables (apart from silver which seems to take a lot longer to really just open up and relax). I well remember my first Earth HDAM in Frankie hitting that 50 hour mark and it was if a subwoofer had kicked in, not in the home theatre boom and bang style, but a music based hifi sub that just opened up the bottom end with new ambient detail, dynamic contrasts, focused impact with kick drums and greater ease of expression all the way to the top. This is exactly what happened to the Vivid V6 just after 50 hours of music of all descriptions. Wow.
Not only had the bass filled out some more, but drum skin tone was (is!) superb, surrounded with it’s own ambience whether in a live performance or in a studio, now I really can hear that the drum kit was recorded in a separate booth and the vocals in a different space with some recordings, ambient detail of the booth making it quite clear that this is a separate track on the tape. The high frequencies too have become more extended than both the Earth HDAM and the OPA627s, with instrument, ambient detail and timbral qualities that I have never heard before, often jaw-dropped in delight with familiar tracks I’ve heard many many times over the years. A good example is Van Morrison’s Too Long In Exile, specifically the tracks, I’ll Take Care Of You and Tell Me What You Want. To hear Georgie Fame on the Hammond Organ is a joy, such great touch when matching licks with the vibraphone, so easy to hear his fingers lifting on and off the keys, making for a live and organic touch of human communication that is a joy to hear. What strikes me as obvious now (s’cuse the pun) is that when the vibraphone is struck there are different ambient and timbral details depending on which part of each key is played upon, some a touch duller and other notes ring out with harmonics floating out into space until they die out completely. Simply fabulous. I’m shown how an instrument is played and this is crucial in the emotional communication of any piece of music.
Kate Bush’s Aerial has now become a masterpiece that makes me want to really relax and listen in, the ’Somewhere In-between’ section some 20 minutes in is pure delight, with Kate and the Blackbird toning off together, followed by the duet with her brother (I think, I don’t have the album cover with me), the drum kit and bass creating a delightful lilting rhythm. I’ve never enjoyed this album like this before, it sounds like real people creating beautiful music, quirky at times. Occasionally quite dense, the Burson V6 allowed me to listen right into the music, and this became a theme for many albums to follow that I’d previously given little time to.
The soundstage expanded after 50 hours as well: a Rutter Requiem recorded in a church, complete with organ, orchestra and choir alongside the soprano, just opened out as if the church had expanded in size and the roof of the space had lifted significantly. The soprano’s voice went from damn fine, if a touch hard, to glorious and her voice just soared effortlessly up into the rafters with narry a trace of edge or hardness. Wow again. Great pillows of low frequency air just billowed out from the organ, though never smothering the orchestra or mixed choir, with all their individual voices singing in harmony. What a treat to hear this piece sound so expanded now.
I could site so many examples, but as per my notes, no matter the music, a veil has been lifted from the very top end. The effect on vocal placement, especially with multiple singers, each with it’s own unique tonality and then combined with the greater transparency to percussion instruments (and harmonics of vocals and instruments in the midrange), cymbals, bells (oh my, the clarity of individual tonal structure and harmonics!), triangles etc and into the ambient space around those instruments, has transformed into new heights of musical joy from what was and is really a very modest DAC on the surface, now some 15 years old, though you wouldn't think so to hear it.
Skunk Hour’s beautifully recorded, Up To Our Necks In It, is a fine example of a unique voice, with it’s clipped consonants and diction, rich and taut bass guitar that is sensational in it’s depth here, the high hat floating along at the rear of the stage, with great 3D space and fast dynamics on drums and percussion. Everything can be heard so clearly, yet, as per the signature of this DAC, it’s all ‘of a piece’ togetherness never wavers.
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis’ Two Men With The Blues has never sounded this good! Wiilie’s voice can often sound edgy with this album, but here his natural rasp is fully present without that edginess, the double bass is fantastic on Nightlife (especially) and as for Marsalis’ trumpet I wrote, “Scintillating aliveness”, uncompressed, with the high hat shimmering along in the background, all players in their own 3D space on stage, the wooden floor of the Carnegie Hall sometimes adding it’s own tone.
These aspects of tonality and 3D soundstage space apply to virtually all music that is recorded with those attributes, some music of course being as flat as a pancake, yet all players are still not blended together, it’s just that the layers are flattened.
Supertramp’s, School, is by far the best I’ve ever heard this track in many decades, better than any LP I’ve heard at any time. It’s literally like I’m hearing it for the very first time, right down to the sense of real menace in the bass strings of the intro, subtle cymbal details I’ve missed previously, the character and focus of Roger Hodgson’s voice, the music has space to breathe at last. Amazing.
It goes on, I hadn’t realised I’d written so many notes, so I’ll conclude with this: everything is an event, whether soft and gentle, punchy and wild or anything in between, from the Beethoven Violin Concerto to Children Collide. Frankie with the Burson Vivid V6 has a way of pulling threads of individual rhythms in a complex mix and making them visible, so to speak, even if subtle at times. That in itself has been a revelation for me with all sorts of music, instrument tone I’ve never heard the same way before; the big taut skin of the kettle drum in the Beethoven Violin Concerto, complete with its tonal impact and surrounding ambient air at the far back right of the soundstage, responding and duelling with the violin centre stage some 18 minutes into the piece just makes me smile.
The Burson Vivid V6 has brought more out of Frankie than I ever thought possible, the lovely organic nature of the DAC has been both preserved and opened up to allow more of the innate communicative nature to shine through and enhance the enjoyment of every piece of music that is introduced to the optical input port. Just as I found with the Supertramp track, all music has room to breathe and just be expressed as it was recorded.
In addition, I must say that I also unexpectedly received from Burson two of the mono Vivid V6 modules and they have gone into my Perreaux SP100 preamp (1977!) as replacements for the OPA627s in the Class A headphone amplifier. Not a lot of hours yet, as Frankie was the number one priority, but already the Vivid’s qualities are shining through, punchy and dynamic with good detail so far. Much more to look forward to here.
To John, and Burson Audio, many heartfelt thanks and appreciation for this musical gift! I can whole hearted recommend to anyone that has a CD player, DAC, amplifier or preamp that can use one or more of these HDAMs/Discrete Opamp modules to replace a stock opamp (the options are listed on the website) to look into getting one of these modules for an instant upgrade, provided the power supply can handle the juice, just some 14mA for a dual version. Suggestions and comprehensive advice galore is available from www.bursonaudio.com. Compared to the price of a genuine Burr Brown OPA627 these days, the Burson opamps I think are a good price and a fine step upwards for sheer sound quality over virtually everything else I’ve heard. I’ll be getting more of the Vivid V6s …. there’s a CD player that could do with an upgrade … my hotrodded headphone amp … another preamp … happy days.
Addendum: Several days later and moving up to and beyond the 100 hour mark, the V6 has both relaxed even further, while providing more apparent detail, especially in the top end. Even a well recorded Mp3 of the old hit song "Pump Up The Jam" by Technotronic has taken on a whole new level of clarity and especially transparency, backing vocals are evident both tonally and in their own space. Crystal clear.
My favourite version of the old Pulp song "Common People", by William Shatner and Joe Jackson is a revelation of cynical humour and the emotionally drawn tension between the rich and poor in England, complete with children's choir, Frankie + Vivid V6 allows the music to really breathe, the choir never gets edgy and blurred with Bill and Joe's vocals, the cymbals are crystal clear in the background and the music just Drives!
I'd call the latest improvements for a noticeable increase in transparency, well recorded drum kits are a joy!
