[Quicken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Herandu /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's obviously not using muting transistors at the outputs, which I would guess are not DC coupled as well. Muting transistors can distort the sound even when they are on the OFF state. Many of us quite happily whip out the old soldering iron and physically remove muting transistors from any audio outputs just to make sure the sound is not distorted by a final hurdle at the output. I suppose they could have used a relay instead, not taking cost into consideration. But from my experience with relays in small signal audio paths such as was found on the more expensive tape decks, they can cause their own sets of problems. I have come to accept it as part of the quirk design of the TC-7510. If you do mainly headphone listening then it might not be the best choice for you. Have you emailed them to ask if there is a mod, or if they ever come up with a solution in the future you can get them to do it for you? If the DAC sounds good other than that, then it is worthwhile considering that option. I had my MKI upgraded to MKII free of charge once I actually asked. So it won't hurt to try your luck .

Thanks Herandu,

I've had emails from Stanley this morning confirming basically what you have said here (Sunday morning service - can't beat that). So it's a design decision made for sound quality reasons. Personally, I don't like it, as I bought the DAC primarily to improve my PC head-fi experience.

Cheers,

Q

 

[Quicken]

Apparently the faint 'switched on' tone I heard is the crystal oscillator in the DAC (probably interacting with the squeezebox that was sitting on top of it and connecting to the wireless router at the time). I should clarify that I don't think this is a fault of the DAC, but may be worth bearing in mind in terms of positioning.

Cheers,

Q

 

[hortiholic]

You can get the same dac in North America from phonopreamps.com. It's the same unit but with a TEC nameplate, not Beresford.

Russell

I just ordered one from homehifi.co.uk. Any idea how long delivery takes to North America?

 

[thubble]

According to the manufacturer of the Beresford version:

---------------
I use laser trimmed surface mount components, whilst the TCC uses standard production line surface mount parts. Even the chips I use are the close tolerance versions.
---------------

I've only read one comparison of the 2 versions, but it apparently confirmed that the Beresford version sounded better. Of course I take all of this with a grain of salt, but the Beresford wasn't much more expensive.

The Beresford also comes with a high-quality Toslink cable. I'm a little wary of the whole "designed specifically to be bundled with this product" quote, but I'm sure it's at least decent, and my source (RME Digi96 PST) is fairly unusual in that its Toslink output has much lower jitter than the coax.

 

[john_ops]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hortiholic /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can get the same dac in North America from phonopreamps.com. It's the same unit but with a TEC nameplate, not Beresford. Russell

Actually, Stanley says his rig is different, with different component lay-out. Haven't heard either rig, but have read elsewhere that the chip layout is different (and Stanley rubs off the id codes on top of the chipset, so for all we know it is a different chipset). He also makes efforts to keep upgrading his products and appears to continue tweaking the "Beresford Mod TEC 7510 DAC" to a Mk II version, and has mentioned that there are other mods he might include in the Mk III (I am far too obtuse, technophobic and respectful of his privacy to even imagine I understand what those mods might be).

Hope this helps.

J

EDIT: Looks like thubble also confirmed that Stanley says they're different... Guess I should read to the end of threads before posting!

 

[hortiholic]

I'm still confused about this. At the bottom of this post is a quote from Stanley Beresford (from his post on page four of this thread), which I interpreted as saying that the Beresford nameplate dac is the same as the TEC-7510 sold by phonopreamps.com.

So out of curiosity I slid open the case of my TEC-7510 from phonopreamps.com. Guess what. The id numbers on the chips are obliterated just as on the Beresford. The layout, as compared to the photos of the Beresford on page one of this thread, is absolutely identical. The components appear identical, except that two or three resistors on my unit are of somewhat lower resistance than the ones pictured in the photos.

In short, this appears to be the same unit, with at most trivial differences.

Unless someone summons more convincing evidence, I see no reason to assume the TEC-7510 sold by phonopreamps.com and the Beresford 7510 MK-whatever are not one and the same.

Russell
________

"The TC-7510 has been developed by Translink (TCC) and me. The owner is a good friend of mine.I used to have a close relationship with his daughter when she was studying at university in the UK. When she went back to Taiwan she became the MD of her dad's company. I developed many products with them when working for another company.Those products were sold in Maplin, by B-TECH, CPC etc. Now that I have decided to go it alone, I have cut an agreement whereby we do the R&D together. They sell a cheaper version of the product, and I sell a more refined version.
The original DAC is the TC-7500. We changed the switches and added a headphone socket, the TC-7500 circuit and some ICs were obviously upgraded.

"The seller in the US is Phonopreamp, who also sells other products found on my site."

Stanley[/QUOTE]

 

[Quicken]

Hortiholic, they are not the same I'm afraid. Other posts on page 4 of the thread make this clear. Check post #72. Relevant part copied in below:


Quote:

I use laser trimmed surface mount components, whilst the TCC uses standard production line surface mount parts. Even the chips I use are the close tolerance versions. And once I switch the bigger caps to better ones, things might take off. I have a TCC version you can borrow and compare if the guys on head-fi think I am talking BS and that the two boards are in fact the same. They are not, and you only have to listen to the two to hear the difference.

Incidentally, the Mark III version is due out in February. I don't know that much about it, but it will feature upgraded components, notably low ESR caps. Stanley is also looking into relay solutions to the switch off tone I complained about earlier in the thread. In his words:

Quote:

The sound you hear on switch-on and switch off is due to us not having a set of muting transistors on the output, which is also not DC coupled. Muting transistors affect the sound on any piece of equipment, and we wanted to get as much sound quality as possible out of the package, without asking buyers to break the bank. We are trying out a relay solution in a slightly more expensive version out soon, and this will include many features requested by customers.

Hope this helps,

Q

 

[hortiholic]

I find Stanley's statements on page 4 somewhat unclear, including the one I quoted above -- "The seller in the US is Phonopreamp, who also sells other products found on my site." Case in point: Stanley appears to say that the Beresford dac has a different layout from the "standard" unit. Yet, the layout of the Beresford is absolutely identical with that of the unit from phonopreamps.com. How do we explain this? If the unit sold by phonopreamps is the "standard" unit, then the two do not have a different layout, contrary to what Stanley appears to say. Or perhaps the standard and the Beresford DO have a different layout, which would strongly suggest that the unit sold by phonopreamps.com is in fact the upgraded unit sold in Europe with the Beresford nameplate. Or is Stanley referring to something other than the 7510 when he speaks of changing the layout?

In addition, the components in my unit appear to be exactly the same as those in the Beresford (is there any way I can tell whether the components in my dac are laser-trimmed)? The Beresford units are famous for having the chip id numbers obliterated. My unit also has the numbers deleted. Why? And finally there's the experience of Bruce108 (see pages 4 and 5 of this thread), who ordered a black-case Beresford from Beresford and instead was shipped a unit with a TEC nameplate, which he was told was identical to the Beresford. When he enquired he was told that a TEC case was substituted for the Beresford case because the Beresford cases were out of stock. Bruce108's interpretation was that a TEC TC-7510 case had been slipped onto a Beresford body. Another interpretation is that Beresford knew that the two units are identical, and so simply shipped Bruce108 a TEC.

I read the same posts you do, and look at the innards of my dac, and reach a very different conclusion! It does not appear clear to me at all from the available evidence that the Beresford TC-7510 is different from the unit sold by photopreamps.com. My impression is that they're the same upgrade of another TEC product.

Russell, who's a professional editor and maybe TOO adept at parsing!

 

[Quicken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hortiholic /img/forum/go_quote.gif I read the same posts you do, and look at the innards of my dac, and reach a very different conclusion! It does not appear clear to me at all from the available evidence that the Beresford TC-7510 is different from the unit sold by photopreamps.com. My impression is that they're the same upgrade of another TEC product.

With respect, I am not speaking purely from having read posts. I have spoken to Stanley on the phone, and exchanged quite a few emails with him. He's made it clear personally to me that the TCC and Beresford models are not identical. From what he's said to me, some of the components are upgraded on the Beresford, and that is why it is more expensive than the TCC model. I haven't looked at the innards of the DAC, but I can't see a motivation for the designer to lie on this issue.

Cheers,

Q

 

[hortiholic]

Have you specifically asked Stanley if his dac is different from the one sold by phonopreamps.com? Which TCC dac is he talking about when he says his is an upgraded version of said dac? Is it the model sold by phonopreamps.com or is it another model? Is phonopreamps.com lying when they assert that their dac is the same as the Beresford? Why hasn't Stanley challenged this fabrication if it's a fabrication? Why, if one is an upgrade and reconfiguration of the other, do the innards of the phonopreamps.com unit (configuration and components) look exactly like the innards of the Beresford unit? These are all questions to be resolved, and communications from Stanley, direct or reported, have not resolved them. I'm not accusing anyone of lying. I'd just like to know what the facts are here.

Russell

 

[Herandu]

I think one of us should ask Phonopreamp if he knows of any upgrade that the TC-7510 is likely to have soon, irrespective of if it has TCC or Beresford on it. Stanley is reported to have told various people what the next upgrade is going to be. Now let's then compare notes and see what comes out. Anyone in the US who wants to take on the task of asking Phonopreamp for that info?

I happen to have a TCC version as well, and I too noticed the differences in component values. As an engineer myself it is quite clear to me that using different opamps etc with the same pin layout but differing specifications, you may find yourself having to use different component values in order to obtain a properly working circuit.
Either way, the TC-7510 is still indecently cheap, irrespective of which version you have.

 

[hortiholic]

I've been thinking I need to talk to them at phonopreamps. I'm not that far from them -- 80 miles or so. I'll try to email them tonight (they don't list a phone number).

Speaking of the differences in component values: the one difference I see between my unit and the "MK1" pictured on the first page of this thread is that three or four of the resistors have different resistance values. In fact, phonopreamps says that the upgrade that distinguishes their dac (and by extension the Beresford) from the "standard" model is that "the factory has tweaked a few resistor values to improve performance". What I find in my dac would accord with that.

Russell

I think one of us should ask Phonopreamp if he knows of any upgrade that the TC-7510 is likely to have soon, irrespective of if it has TCC or Beresford on it.

I happen to have a TCC version as well, and I too noticed the differences in component values.

 

[Herandu]

Which one is the standard version? I happened to have bought the previous DAC from home hifi called the TC-7500. When they announced that it was going to get replaced by the TC-7510, no other company mentioned the sale of that DAC. Now that there is a mention of the MKIII it would be interesting to see if Phonopreamp is also going to be getting stock of the MKIII, be it under a different upgrade number. Looking at the fact that the PCB version from Phonopreamp tends to be similar to the previous version of every Beresford release, we could be looking at the MKII board slowly and finally reaching Phonopreamp? It's a good dumping method to clear old or excess stock.

 

[john_ops]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Herandu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Which one is the standard version?

Man, the plot is thickening... If you look at the ebay listing from PhonoPreAmps, it now says:

Quote:

This is the exact same product being sold elsewhere house-labeled with the Beresford brand. Unlike our British competitor, we didn't add a MK2 designation to the model number just because the factory has tweaked a few resistor values to improve performance; nonetheless ours is the current and most recent version available from the manufacturer.

So, Stanley, whom (full disclosure) I like, says he has a different product. PhonoPreAmps says it is EXACTLY THE SAME. Wierd. I love it. A true internet mystery.

J

 

[hortiholic]

Which one is the standard version?

A possible answer is that the standard version to which Stanley refers is the "MK 1" depicted on the first page of this thread. The phonopreamps.com model, with the several resistor swaps, is the upgrade, as is the Beresford model.

I bought the phonopreamps.com dac based on their assurance that it is the same as the Beresford dac, and on Stanley's rather ambiguous statement that "the seller in the US is Phonopreamp" (whether he's talking about the seller of the upgraded version or the standard version is unclear to me, but I took it to mean the former since it coincides with what phonopreamps.com says).

Whatever -- I'm very happy with the phonopreamps model, which for $159 shipped gives me performance that would probably cost three times the price if I bought a new cdp.

Russell