[vegan]

On a Mac, the C-Media board doesn't need third party drivers. The 'Speaker' moniker on your audio output settings is the Conductor - as you discovered

Upsampling

I'm using Audirvana's Izotope upsampling. Most settings I found made little or no difference that I could hear. But found these settings on Computer Audiophile to make a marked improvement.



What upsampling settings are people using?
It seems to be rather system dependent, but I'd like to experiment.

DSD?

I've been really digging DSD files being down sampled into PCM through A+. So wonder just how amazing they might be with a DSD DAC.

I would love to see Burson make a DAC board that could play both PCM and DSD. That is, a board that could be swapped into the Conductor (like the Burr Brown board).

Given their loathing of ICs, how about a R2R ladder DAC?

 

[mscott58]

Has anyone here put the Burson Conductor's amp section up against one of the Bakoon SATRI headphone amps? Curious to see what people's thoughts are that have deep experience with the Conductor. Would be pairing this with my LCD-3F's.
 
Reason I'm asking is that the group purchasing site that some people love and others hate has the Bakoon HPA-01 up right now for 600 off list price, which is surprising seeing that this model was just released. I'm tempted to try it at this price (around 1.2k and two more days to go on the offer) but am looking for more data from my trusted crew here. Any and all input appreciated! 
 
Thanks all and happy listening!
 
PS - Anyone going to RMAF/CJ this year?

 

[citraian]

Both me and my friend Dan from headmania didn't prefer the HPA-21 over the amp in the Conductor.
See his review here:
http://headmania.org/2013/06/06/bakoon-hpa-21-review/

 

[mscott58]

Citraian - Thanks so much for pointing me to that review. Very useful information and good points to consider.
 
I might just try the Bakoon HPA-01 and then decide in a face-to-face comparison in my own system, although the bar will be high as I love my Conductor. Plus for a price tag 1/3rd off retail I'm sure I could resell the HPA for nearly what I bought it for if the Conductor wins the battle.
 
Thanks again!

 

[WALL-E]

Hey guys,
finally decide to buy second pair of headphones to pair with my Burson Conductor the HE-500 I only have mostly using with my LF339 tube amp and Conductor as a DAC section that combo make the sound of my Hifiman phones almost divine, cannot say the same when Burson is amplifying HE-500 alone is still do his work very well but "the spell was gone" same feeling and big happy smile on my face when I tried friend SS class A head amp SHA 1.0 in my system the HE-500 sing again and "the spell was back" I come to the conclusion that the Conductor & HE 500 is not a perfect match so I decided to give him a chance with different type of cans, when I saw on Friday special deal for Sennheiser HD800 on CustomCable.uk I didn't think twice and pull the trigger, now have to wait I hope I get them before the end of the week... I am very excited and curious how the Conductor & HD800 combo will sound?

 

[mscott58]

Was about to chuck my Conductor out the window tonight, but then I remembered my engineering trouble-shooting logic and greatness has been re-achieved in the land of Conductor/LCD-3F. 
 
So I finally got around to installing the CM3361A module I got from Australia a number of months back and the surgery was successful (or so I thought). Then when I went to listen to it there were intermittent/periodic pops/clicks in the music. Doh! Super distracting and fatal from a hi-fi point of view. Was also very frustrating since in swapping out a component that was supposed to make it sound better and remove artifacts I had done just the opposite!
 
Then it hit me - "hey idiot, update the driver!". Oh yeah, forgot to check that. Sure enough I was trying to drive the CM3361A with the old Tenor driver. Whoops! So downloaded the proper driver, installed it successfully, rebooted the old ThinkPad and now all is good in the world again. Ah, sweet music. 
 
So if any of you are having issues with the Conductor making pops and clicks (other than when turning the volume knob of course) look to make sure you have the correct driver in place. 

Also now having listened to the Conductor with the CM3361A in place for a while I do think it sounds incrementally but noticeably better than it did with the Tenor module. Little more clarity/transparency, longer-lasting harmonics, etc. Solid upgrade for only $65! Thanks for listening to me rant.

 

[goldendarko]

Mscott, glad to hear you finally upgraded to the CM Module and that it ended up working out for you. Is the improvement noticable right away or does it take some time to notice the improvements?

 

[mscott58]

To me the difference was noticeable right away, but I was sure to play some of my reference music that both had good resolution and that I knew very well. 
 
While I was just typing this I hit an audiophile artifact in a song (a big dog barks somewhere outside the studio right at the end of the song when everything is quiet). The sound of the bark used to be not only noticeable on a high-res set-up, but it was also rather indistinct, like a dog barking through a lot of layers of wall/door/etc. Now with the CM module you can make out the bark more clearly, like it is closer to the studio and has more shape to it. So there's an illustrative example that happened to occur at the right time!

 

[aamer23]

On a Mac, the C-Media board doesn't need third party drivers. The 'Speaker' moniker on your audio output settings is the Conductor - as you discovered

Upsampling

I'm using Audirvana's Izotope upsampling. Most settings I found made little or no difference that I could hear. But found these settings on Computer Audiophile to make a marked improvement.



What upsampling settings are people using?
It seems to be rather system dependent, but I'd like to experiment.

DSD?

I've been really digging DSD files being down sampled into PCM through A+. So wonder just how amazing they might be with a DSD DAC.

I would love to see Burson make a DAC board that could play both PCM and DSD. That is, a board that could be swapped into the Conductor (like the Burr Brown board).

Given their loathing of ICs, how about a R2R ladder DAC?

I have recently tested the Burson Conductor and would love to have one however, for me DSD DAC is missing. They are using 9018 DAC chip set from what I understand this should be able to do DSD with some software. Or is this view a little too simplistic. I did like the my current set up more as it was more involving and dynamic. The Burson was super smooth and refined.  PC win 8.1 > JRiver > Loki > Nuforce HA 200 Mr Speaker AD

 

[vegan]

Interesting to read about your comparison with the Loki.

I've been curious to try a DSD DAC. It would be good to know how the Conductor compares to cheap DACs like the Loki. Could you say more on the differences - especially for DSD material.

Was the Conductor burnt in for more than 150 hours?

Since hearing how awesome DSD can be converted into PCM, I've been wishing Burson would make a board that could do both... That might be quite the challenge, though. I'm a a complete ignoramus, but from what I gather, very different implementations of the DAC chip is needed. Although, as Burson only use two of the chip's eight channels, the same chip could be potentially be used for both. But correct me if I'm wrong.

Upsampling
I'm using very different Izotope settings now. I've pushed the cut-off frequency (Nyquist) up to 2.0 and really digging the results. As everyone seem to keep it between 0.90-1.10, I'm curious if there is something peculiar about the Conductor ... or I've just got some messed up hearing...

 

[Sioban]

The Conductor is a nice clean looking amp but on the pictures I have seen on the Internet I cannot see any on/off/standby switch. Could anyone here please enlighten me where this switch is located?
 
Thanks.

 

[montanari]

In The back

 

[Sioban]

Ok, so there is no standby button? It's just on/off through a main switch in the back? Would this risk the life of the amp? I am guessing that turning the amp on and off through a power switch  puts more strain on the Conductor compared to a standby button?
 
Am I wrong?

 

[mscott58]

The Conductor is a solid-state amp so there should not be any wear-and-tear in turning it on and off (other than wearing out the switch itself, but I'm guessing the switch would be rated for 10's of thousands of cycles). Also you can just leave it on all the time (that's what I do) as the main issue with turning it on and off is the time it takes to warm back up and get to its peak SQ (about an hour in my experience). 
 
If you had a tube amp it would be a different story, as tubes have definite lives that you have to worry about in how long you use them and how you turn them on and off (depending on the amp). 
 
So no worries for the Conductor! 

 

[aamer23]

I would say it better for SS equipment to be left on rather turning things on and off. Heating and cooling cycles is where the damage may occur