Hi Everyone
New here & just joined. Noticed this thread so thought to contribute. I have some really top new toys
- here is a review
John
Review of the Ultra Turbo Mod on the Benchmark DAC-1 by Steve Nugent at Empirical Audio + Esoteric VRDS transport
This review has been edited quite a few times to correct preliminary observations which later proved to be untrue. Jumping to conclusions is a dangerous trap and one I fell into because of not allowing the newly installed gear long enough to bed in. I initially made the incorrect assumption that because the Esoteric UX1 LE
http://www.teac.com/esoteric/UX-1LTD.html player was used, it was ready to judge after only a short warm up time. The Esoteric reviews stated how a minimum of 200 hours burn in time was required but my feeling now it should be changed to “warm up time” and I guess the same applies to the newly modded Benchmark DAC1 from Empirical Audio.
http://www.empiricalaudio.com/ The quality of the musical sound coming from this combo has improved heaps over the last 2 weeks.
Players discussed here are:
1.Esoteric UX-1 Limited Edition with much admired VRDS transport – a universal player but the video circuitry can be turned off;
2.Marantz SA-17 SACD player - highly modded with new clocks, black gate caps etc by James at Soundlabsgroup in Melbourne Australia.
The DAC under discussion has been modded 2X by Steve Nugent at Empirical Audio, first with the turbomod available in 2006 and now with a further upgrade which involved a rewiring & removal of an opamp stage. I use a Meridian 861 for processing surround sound and for feeding synthesised surround from 2 CH into the non stereo channels.
All L/R analog feeds discussed in this article go direct to a McIntosh C200 preamp -> Halcro DM68 amps -> Sound Labs “Majestic” full range electrostatic speakers. Connection between players and the DAC is via high quality RCA S/PDIF cabling (DH labs Silver sonic
http://www.audioc.com/accessories1/dhlabs/d75.htm ) while the analog feed out from the Benchmark is via Kimber balanced. The stereo feed out from the players to the preamp (using their internal DACs) is via Siltec cabling. I feel the electronics coupled to those magnificent Sound Labs speakers [amps immediately behind them] are a first class test bed to demonstrate how good (or bad) the front end player/DAC gear is.
The Benchmark DAC-1 has received high praise in its factory form by the guys at Stereophile but Steve Nugent’s modifications take it to a much higher level of excellence. I have lived happily with the earlier turbomod in the system here for some time. It was very good and was slightly preferred to the analog out of the Marantz but the latest mod takes digital to analog conversion (total cost of this mod around $USD2850) up to another level.
I should emphasise a number points about all this:
1.The items under review must be left powered on long enough to settle down or false conclusions can be drawn;
2.Preliminary thoughts were that observed differences were subtle and might not be so clearly observed on less resolving systems – the “weakest link” in the chain syndrome applying with a vengeance, but after the items had been left on for more than a week my mind has been changed and the differences involved with the Esoteric and newly modded DAC1 are very obvious and positive;
3.The weakest link in the chain here is the software – huge differences in resolution etc are evident;
4.Auditory memory is most unreliable and this makes subtle differences less easy to detect;
5.Small differences in volume make comparisons difficult and can skew conclusions.
The musical quality from the modded Marantz coupled to the earlier Benchmark turbomodded DAC-1 was very good, if a little clinical and that turbomodded DAC-1 was slightly preferred to the output from the internal DAC of the Marantz. Not so now, the latest mod by Steve Nugent blows his earlier effort away completely. The side to side, front to back and soundstage resolution is stunning and far exceeds anything I ever expected to hear from CDs. It has “life” to it. Yes, some of that can be thanked to the Esoteric player, but not all because reverti to the direct analog out (direct to preamp and speakers) from the player using its internal DAC and the sound is relatively flat and a lot less involving. It is good, but lacks the life and space around the music that is wrought with the latest Empirical Audio modded DAC-1. Both are streets ahead of the Meridian 861 processor with the sound using it as the4 DAC coming out as very woolly and ill defined.
Now to try to get the Esoteric into perspective. Reading all the hype about the VRDS transport mechanism would have one believing it is the best thing invented since sliced bread. Well, one cannot help but admire the engineering of it but the bottom line is how it affects the audio quality and here my initial conclusion was that there was no dramatic chalk and cheese difference between it and the Marantz. I happen to have inadvertently purchased two identical CDs so, a day after getting the Esoteric both were played simultaneously in the Esoteric and the Marantz. Steve Nugent has rebuilt an Inday digital switcher (he was horrified at the original design) so it was very simple to switch between these two sources with both fed into the updated DAC-1. The beauty of this arrangement was that levels were identical and A/B comparison was a simple button switching affair. My wife and I listened very intently and she ultimately decided (without knowing which was playing) that the Esoteric was better, but not dramatically so.
However, a few days later, a friend with younger and more critical ears, compared the two players and his verdict was the sound from the Marantz was muddy and ill defined in comparison. He looked to see what major change had been made to the system and was surprised it was only the player which had been altered. He labelled the Marantz as “faulty” by comparison! In tandem with this I have altered my previous appraisal that the sound quality between the two players is similar. It obviously is not and the first comparison reported above reflects the mediocre quality of the CD used + there has been more time for the Esoteric to settle in to the system - it has been left permanently switched on since arrival. Traps for young and old players (pun intended)!!
So yes, the improvement, on good software, is very evident. Digital sources are frequently and justifiably criticised as sounding edgy but the latest mod has removed that. The harpsichord is a particularly difficult instrument to reproduce well and often comes through with a raspy twang to it. Not so via the Esoteric/Empirical Audio modded Benchmark. Comparing that sound to Esoteric’s own internal DAC there is no twanginess there either but the sound was more recessed and less open and not as musically appealing as with the modded Benchmark. One CD my wife loves is that which has Neil Diamond singing “Song Sung Blue” (I guess Mozart lost any claim on copyright for the plagiarism involved). Previously his voice had a slight rasp to it but that has now gone. Similarly, the excellent “Cantus Let Your Voice be Heard” engineered by John Atkinson, previously had an edge to it. It is now gone and the illusion of the singers being in the room is thrilling. Every instrument and every voice is clearly and clearly defined. Having collected most of the standard classical repertoire (and repeated a lot of it) I like to purchase unknown (to me) works. In the last batch of acquisitions is an EMI classics “Panufnik conducts Panufnik” [0946 3 52289 2 2] and the audio quality on this is hair raising. When I looked at the sleeve notes it was amazing to see it was originally released in 1967 and 1975. So, I guess it was a simple recording without the forest of microphones going into 30+ channel mixers that have been the delight of engineers in more recent times.
In a word the audio is now more musical with quite incredible front to back and side to side soundstaging which makes multichannel SACD less appealing as it relies more on 6 speakers to give the same sort of life to the music. So, now both units have settled down I find 2CH CD via the modded DAC-1 exceeds the resolution and clarity of SACD on good software. And that is the rub with CDs. IMHO there is more care spent on engineering SACDs than on most CDs so it is unsurprising SACDS generally sound better in systems. But, this is no longer the case here. Maybe hard for people to believe, but the Steve Nugent modded Benchmark DAC-1 makes CDs sound better than SACDs!!!!
Bottom line – it is only after 20 years that the potential of the CD format is being realised. So folks, if you want to tap into this potential and have a big enough budget for it, purchase a Benchmark DAC-1 and send it to Steve Nugent for the ultimate massage. IMO, given a reasonable input (which could mean a clock etc upgrade on the player), the quality of the DAC is critical to the quality of the signal emerging in analog form, and the Empirical Audio modded Benchmark DAC-1 yields that quality in spades. I was starting to feel it was time to abandon CDs and only collect SACDs in future. With the caveat that the engineering on CDs varies a lot, I’ll continue to buy them as the library is so huge. But no system can turn an audio pigs ear piece of software into silk ear, on the contrary, a revealing system reveals the flaws just as much as it can reveal hidden glories.
I can forsee some reading this will mutter about me being just another kid, happy with his new toys and will not accept that (some) CDs sound better here than SACDs. Maybe the sound is “different” but that does not make it better etc etc. Well yes, I am happy with the latest upgrades and yes, it does sound different, but that difference is an improvement is by a wide and very obvious margin and is not the shift sideways that I will admit I have been guilty of in the past. Full marks to Steve Nugent at Empirical Audio for his latest upgrade and yes, hats off to TEAC for a very good player in the UX-1 LE. And my feeling is that SACDs could sound much, much better with better processing than I’m getting from the Esoteric (and I got from the Marantz) but with the paranoia about copy protection that is presently in place, modding of the digital SACD stream does not seem to have been attempted yet, or has it? That is a challenge for Steve Nugent!!!
So, have I come to the end of the audio upgrade lunacy? I would like to think so, but then I proclaimed that last year .
John
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