[jinp6301]

Got my gamma lite today.

Damn, its good. Cant really do straight comparisons due to the fact that I dont have anything to compare it to besides the stock soundcard and an ipod (it kicks both its butts) but through memory, it beats both the lite dac and the entech that I used to have and its not as good as the Denon dac I just sold.

 

[Cankin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jinp6301 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Got my gamma lite today. Damn, its good. Cant really do straight comparisons due to the fact that I dont have anything to compare it to besides the stock soundcard and an ipod (it kicks both its butts) but through memory, it beats both the lite dac and the entech that I used to have and its not as good as the Denon dac I just sold.

If I remember correctly, you have a modded 640c right? Can you please compare y1 to it please. I'm interested in getting a y1. Thanks

 

[jinp6301]

Theyre not that different. The 640c is more detailed with better imaging but thats mostly it. They both have a cold-ish sound but it isint bright or anything

 

[smeggy]

Congrats Jin
I love mine, sitting here listening to it with the mini3... bliss

 

[jinp6301]

heh, I've got it on a very similar rig to yours. Instead of the mini^3, I have the XP amp, an upgraded pint-ish amp that MisterX made.

I have a complete misterx stack now!

 

[strid3r]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jinp6301 /img/forum/go_quote.gif heh, I've got it on a very similar rig to yours. Instead of the mini^3, I have the XP amp, an upgraded pint-ish amp that MisterX made. I have a complete misterx stack now!

That's a mini tower-of-power right there. I'm still enjoying mine through the PPAv2.

 

[jinp6301]

Anyone running high Z phones off the gamma directly?

 

[strid3r]

I've tried it with a pair of HD600s and it actually sounds pretty decent. Be careful of plugging in lower Z phones though, cause it gets LOUD.

 

[linuxworks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Beefy /img/forum/go_quote.gif Even if that is the case, which I very much doubt, you don't see many BantamDAC's with optical and coax input.......

to me, THAT is the essential difference that would have me pick one over the other.

audibly, they sound 'great' to me, both of them. but I use the bantam much less since its only usb and I tend to use spdif a *lot* more.

you just cannot convert the bantam to anything but usb-input. the y1 'takes everything'

heck, it could possibly even be hacked to have an i2s input (bunch of wires) for things that speak the same i2s dialect.

I also was running a single board y1 in a DIY preamp for a while. I found that to be a nice config (but I needed the room in the box for other things, so the y1 got moved back into a box on its own).

to me it was about choice of i/o more than sound diffs. I'm not a golden ears, so don't take 'listening advice' from me

but feature wise, I'm not sure why you'd choose a usb-only dac over one that can 'do everything'.

 

[linuxworks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by julius_the_cat /img/forum/go_quote.gif To my ears, the Gamma is a significant improvement over the E-mu 0404 USB.

and see, this is where things get strange...

I was *using* the 0404 usb to *test* the y1.

the test theory goes, you use the device with better known specs to test the other device.

did I pick wrong?

should I have used the y1 to test the 0404?

regarding the 0404usb, other than the annoyance of it NOT wanting to auto-lock on different sample rates (it needs a reboot with the new signal already present on its jack for it to lock-on to external spdif) - its sound quality seems perfectly fine to me. its supposed to have that miracle dac (lol) chip, right? isn't that supposed to be good?

at any rate, the specs on the 0404-usb are pretty stellar. for its price, at least. my m-audio superdac 2496 is one generation behind (I think) from that 0404 dac chip and I quite like the m-audio, too.

like I said before, beyond a certain level, I can't tell any diff. once you get a competant dac, its hard to tell beyond that point (for me, anyway).

 

[linuxworks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by amb /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't think those results look entirely sane. I don't know linuxworks' test setup and methodology, but I refer you to the "Specifications" section of the official γ1 websitė, which contains RMAA test results, oscillograms, and other information.

there were problems getting the levels matched using RMAA and the 2 dacs. I may have used the soundcards volume control (via the pc) to match the 2 dac's levels on the tests.

I tried both the 0404-usb and m-audio firewire audiophile boxes. I think for the m-audio firewire box, I had to use digital atten. since its analog input always runs at full and there is no real input-trim like the 0404-usb has.

I can re-run the tests if you want. but I thought that green (bantam) midrange hump was a known 'property' of the burr-brown pcm chip. so the graph looks ok to me, overall. there may have been some level matching innaccuracies but overall, the graph seems to make sense to me. what do you see that is wrong with it?

 

[jinp6301]

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxworks /img/forum/go_quote.gif to me, THAT is the essential difference that would have me pick one over the other. audibly, they sound 'great' to me, both of them. but I use the bantam much less since its only usb and I tend to use spdif a *lot* more. you just cannot convert the bantam to anything but usb-input. the y1 'takes everything' heck, it could possibly even be hacked to have an i2s input (bunch of wires) for things that speak the same i2s dialect. I also was running a single board y1 in a DIY preamp for a while. I found that to be a nice config (but I needed the room in the box for other things, so the y1 got moved back into a box on its own). to me it was about choice of i/o more than sound diffs. I'm not a golden ears, so don't take 'listening advice' from me but feature wise, I'm not sure why you'd choose a usb-only dac over one that can 'do everything'.

cost?

someone want to loan me a bantam dac so I can do some listening tests?

 

[linuxworks]

I just re-ran my tests and here's the link to my results:

Flickr: linux-works' stuff tagged with rmaa19feb2009

(if that link does not show a group of graphs, please let me know)

test setup was the emu 0404usb as the analog 'listener' and since both dacs speak usb natively, I used usb audio on windows-xp via the 'direct-sound' interface (sorry, no asio on RMAA). I did a gamma1 test first, then exited RMAA, removed the y1, plugged in the bantam, made the bantam the direct-sound default device and re-ran RMAA again for the bantam test.

I did not rescale any of the graphs and note that the sliders hide some of the lower frequency data (fwiw). but I did not want to change the graph size since that seems to bother some people.

HTH.

 

[julius_the_cat]

The frequency response graph for the Bantam looks like rolled off treble compared with the Gamma1. Do you hear that when you compare the two, linuxworks?

 

[linuxworks]

sorry, my ears don't even go to 20k anymore ;(

I think there's a characteristic bump on the wolfson chip that isn't there on the burr-brown. the wolfson has a slight treble boost, as I understand it.

also, the cabling was not the same on both tests since my bantam has 2 rca outs but the y1 has a single walkman style jack, only. for the y1 test I used my 'best' walkman to rca-male cable (from a sony DAT-man, actually) whereas the bantam used much thicker and better rca cables from it to the 0404usb. this might also explain why the test graphs show slightly better separation on the bantam - its probably all based on how my units were wired.