Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe - ending point in my search for a new reference

[tedacura1]

Has anyone self-installed the POW interface card in the DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe? If yes, how difficult was the process and did you have to update the firmware? Is a firmware update a difficult process?

 

[Aibek]

Is a firmware update a difficult process?

Cen.Grand, JianHui Deng - "this is a very professional work; I can’t express it clearly in a few words, you should find an engineer who understands microcontrollers to help you".

 

[thingwfeathers]

Hi, I am toying with the idea of buying the SC version of this DAC. Is there any sort of processing delay with audio playback? I know that it converts PCM to DSD internally so I was curious if this is a problem.

 

[Tirandosaurus]

Hi, I am toying with the idea of buying the SC version of this DAC. Is there any sort of processing delay with audio playback? I know that it converts PCM to DSD internally so I was curious if this is a problem.

I second this. Need a unanimous consensus on the matter. Lip syncing while watching videos/movies is the easiest litmus test for this evaluation.

 

[centigrade]

Hi, I am toying with the idea of buying the SC version of this DAC. Is there any sort of processing delay with audio playback? I know that it converts PCM to DSD internally so I was curious if this is a problem.

I tested it with the deluxe version DSD1024 YouTube video and I did not notice any delay.

Since each environment is different, it would be nice to have tests from other people as well.

 

[Rasuti]

Hi, I am toying with the idea of buying the SC version of this DAC. Is there any sort of processing delay with audio playback? I know that it converts PCM to DSD internally so I was curious if this is a problem.

I second this. Need a unanimous consensus on the matter. Lip syncing while watching videos/movies is the easiest litmus test for this evaluation.

I have little to no delay on mine, I watch videos and livestreams quite often with no problems.
I am a deluxe user however, Super Clock may be different.

 

[Ateefi]

I have a SC and haven't experienced any delay.

 

[dingogyffe]

I'll be trying that upgrade myself soon and will document my thoughts once I am done.

From what I'm told it involves opening up the case (obviously), removing that rear blank panel via several screws, placing the POW card where it belongs, and plugging in a connector. Then there's a socketed FPGA chip on the Deluxe main board that needs to be swapped out, which shouldn't be much different than swapping an opamp. Lastly we connect a USB cable to a header on the Deluxe main board, run a windows program to upgrade the firmware, then close up the case and it's all done. So, not the simplest thing in the world but not rocket science either.

Supposedly flashing the firmware is not the most user friendly process. Maybe some command line strings or something? Still, seems like if instructions are given it should be easy enough to follow along.

I am told this firmware update process is the same one used by Benchmark, though I've never upgraded one of their DACs myself.

Any news regarding the new interface and the whole process of getting it running? Me and 3 friends has the Deluxe and are very interested in knowing more.

 

[project86]

Sorry I should have an update shortly, about the GLD in general but not the POW card yet. I'm still waiting for that to arrive.

 

[dingogyffe]

Sorry I should have an update shortly, about the GLD in general but not the POW card yet. I'm still waiting for that to arrive.

We will wait in patience

 

[project86]

Minor update - I have the GLD up and running but not fully set up yet.

My main audio rack is absolutely stuffed with too much gear, and I didn't want to clear anything out to make room. So I figured I would install the GLD in another small setup with the Cayin 888+2 stack. But I overlooked the fact that I am using wifi on the Cayin iDAP-8 because I don't have Ethernet anywhere near that spot. So, while the GLD does have wifi capabilities, it has to be configured to join the network. I had planned on doing remote desktop for control but obviously can't do that until I get on the network. I need to find my handy little wireless USB mini remote/keyboard controller and use that to get the GLD configured... or just clear a space in the main system and connect via Ethernet there instead.

So far the system boots into JPLAY and Cen.Grand included a handful of demo tracks for me. But it's all in other languages and not music I am familiar with, so I can't say much about it. I connected via coaxial SPDIF to the Cayin iDAC-8 and listened for a bit, using the Cayin HA-2A with a Meze Elite - beautiful sound, but obviously I can't go into a detailed evaluation based on just that alone.

I would say that if someone wasn't very tech savvy and just needed a plug and play solution, the GLD probably isn't a great match. It doesn't help that JPLAY seems to only have remote app for Apple and not Android. I guess I can steal an iPad from my kid and try that, but more likely I'll just install Roon and go that route instead.

 

[project86]

Another update - found my wireless keyboard/trackpad device and it works great with the GLD. Set up remote desktop, got connected to wifi, installed Roon, everything is running very well. Still using the Cayin mini components right now but even so I hear a ton of potential - can already tell this is a top caliber transport, but of course I'll need to use it in the big system to really give it a workout.

Once thing I can say for sure though - the GLD is a visually stunning device. It looks very similar to the Deluxe DAC but with the big screen and slightly different button layout (no volume knob as well). I haven't measured but it actually looks a little taller than the Deluxe, making it that much more imposing. Might just be a byproduct of that big screen though.

More to come as I spend time with it.

 

[irishnutter]

Hi, I joined the Cen.Grand club (DSDAC1.0 Deluxe and Silver Fox) in early January. I thought I would add some of my impressions. I decided to post this in the DSDAC thread but it's really a review of the Silver Fox and DSDAC1.0 Deluxe as a pair.

When I evaluate a new piece of gear, I really try to avoid comparing the typical audiophile parameters, such as low/mid/high FR, soundstage, transparency, etc., because I can drive myself nuts doing this, and in any event, I'm never 100% confident I could pass a DBT.

Instead, I try to answer more basic questions, such as...Does it reveal something new? Do I have a deeper emotional connection to the music? Does the musician's message come through stronger? I am a retired organist and still play organ, piano, trumpet and flugelhorn - and have been around virtually all orchestral instruments so the first thing that either turns me on or off is whether the timbre is authentic. I also tend to listen to a wide variety of genres with the exception of country music and EDM. Folk/acoustic/singer-songwriter stuff is probably where I spend most of my time.

Because I received both of these pieces at the same time, I did not spend time evaluating them individually, but between the EXICON lateral MOSFETs in the SF, and the DSD processing in the DSDAC, I can probably guess at where each piece is contributing to the overall sonic presentation.

I am coming from a T+A HA 200 DAC/amp which itself is an outstanding piece of gear. My initial thought was to move into tubes. The Devil on my left shoulder kept whispering (while frantically waving his wallet)..."let's go hog wild with 300Bs and exotic tubes for the input stage, it'll be fun they said"....while the angel on the other side said "haven't we done the tube thing enough times over the past 40+ years to avoid that rabbit hole?". But I knew the potential improvements that I was looking for, and I thought the Cen.Grand pair would check the most boxes while staying with SS, and I've been very happy with the results..

So, some general impressions, listed in no particular order:

• The CG units sound very balanced and full even at low volumes, as if a slight loudness compensation circuit was at play (but there is not).
• I have well over 400 hours on them now, and break-in was quite linear. Out of the box, vocals were a hair recessed, dynamics a bit blunted, etc. But things started to quickly improve after the initial 50 hours and progressively continued past the 300 hour mark. During the latter part of the break-in, is when I really heard the resolution blossom (but it was also quite good straight away)..
• Build quality is excellent overall. Although I would like to see a few changes:
  • Use double boxing for the packaging - this isn't just a matter of extra protection - it's also just nice to keep the main manufacturer box in pristine condition while allowing the outer box to be sacrificial to shipping vagaries and easily replaced. On both units, the cord doesn't even fit into the accessory box - it sticks out on one end. When you see what a company like LAiV can do in terms of the unboxing experience at 1/2 the price, CG really should spend a few $$$ more to improve theirs to something more befitting of the price tag.
  • I'm not a huge fan of the chicklet buttons on the DSDAC. I'd prefer a firmer, beefier feel. Same with the buttons on the remote - they feel cheap.
  • And a warranty card that was not 100% written in Mandarin would be appreciated, LOL!
  • I get it - all of these things are total nits, but there's little to criticize on sound quality, so these things stick out.
• So what are the best ways to summarize the sound quality? It's all been said before, but....sounds more like analogue/vinyl than digital, warm but with excellent clarity and resolution, fantastic imaging and separation. It's almost as if it slows the music down ever so slightly, so that you can distinctly hear the attack, then the fundamental, then the harmonics/overtones finally followed by the delay and room reverb tails. Not to say that this comes off as a decrease in PRaT either. This is just IMHO, but I also find PRaT to be overrated in regard to audio equipment. Most of the components I've ever owned that got high marks in PRaT, didn't seem to last long in my systems. I can't remember ever listening to live music and going..."wow, what great PRaT". Although it's not unusual for at least 1 band member to be acting like a bit of a prat so there's that..
• As a piano player, this is usually one of my first tests. I have to say that the CG combo (with credit also to the Charybdis) allows for the best piano reproduction I've heard. From the lowest to the highest octaves, the timbre sounds correct. You can almost sense the vibration that you feel as a player and things never get muddled, nor does any part of the FR get peaky. Nor does it dampen any of the hammer attack in order to achieve some type of artificial smoothness. It just sounds like you are in the room listening to a live acoustic piano (assuming the recording is excellent and the headphones are equally proficient).
• These are also a great combo for those that like to follow bass lines. I've never heard such detail and yet natural timbre, even compared to some very expensive 2-channel rigs I've owned. And even in old recordings, I've heard bass information that never really popped out of the mix as well before.
• PCM/streaming really sounds great. Poor recordings never get harsh or peaky, they just tend to flatten out and become compressed, much like a poor recording does on a vinyl/TT rig. So if it's a particularly bad recording, you tend to skip past it because you find it boring and not because it's painful.
• 44kHz/16-bit tracks tend to sound better than on my previous head-fi systems while you can still appreciate the improvements brought by hi-rez 96-192/24 bit material.
• Even with my highly sensitive Erzetich Charybdis, I find the background to be extremely black with zero noise. Note though, that the majority of my listening was done using the variable output capability of the DSDAC...I tried to leverage the experience of others in the forum that found this mode to actually improve the SQ, while it also serves to remove any issues with highly sensitive cans. Although right out of the box, I ran the DSDAC in fixed/max output mode for a short time and can't remember any notable background noise there either.
• Palpability and presence (across the frequency spectrum) also get extremely high marks. Everything is very tangible and present.
• I think one of the hardest tricks to pull off is to maintain the natural warmth of real music while still extracting detail retrieval and natural instrumental resolution. I like to use background vocals to check this. Analytical devices where you can readily hear the background vocals, can often make the voices a bit harsh, small, artificially distant or overly separated. "Warm" devices can make them sound muddy, blur the vibrato nuances, etc. The CG units do great with this - background vocals sound lush and real, yet full of detail and expression.
• I also really like the soundstage. I don't know that I would classify it as extraordinarily wide, layered or deep, although I think it is certainly competitive with the T+A HA 200 in all of those dimensions. But, it's the way the CGs handle space that stands out. It has the right balance of what I call vacuum vs air. I'll use an analogy with headphones. And of course, this is all just IMO. I find both Hifiman and the Meze planars do space very well but I've found them to do it differently. Hifiman seems to inject air between the musicians which leads to great separation (and of course, an "airy" sound) but at times they can almost generate a type of unnatural haze. Meze, on the other hand, seems to almost create the separation by creating a vacuum between the musicians. So it tends to be more "black" but at the same time, it can tend to cut off the natural instrumental flow of the music that should slowly blend into and across the adjacent instruments and spaces. To me, neither of these are exactly what you experience listening to a live band, let alone performing as a player within the band. I'm obviously exaggerating a bit here to attempt to explain my interpretation. The CG pair seem to "split the difference" here and so you feel that you are hearing the music with all of the beautiful instrument separation but in a natural and authentic manner - you hear the instrumental separation yet hear the entire acoustic space/venue also as a whole.
• Just a quick comparison directly with the T+A HA 200. I didn't spend a ton of time here and when I did compare them, the CG units were not 100% broken in.
  • The T+A is an extraordinary piece of gear. Build quality, functionality, and sonic quality are all top notch.
  • Although only rated at 1.25-1.75 watts, it has a lot of current reserve.
  • The thing that made me get the itch to try something else..I only have a handful of DSD files, but the T+A has a totally different DAC path for PCM and DSD, and I was shocked by how good the DSD tracks sounded. It took me back to an EMM Labs DSD DAC I had in my 2-channel system 20 years ago. Almost everyone will tell you the DSD processing from T+A is SOTA. There is real debate though on their PCM processing.
  • My replacement/improvement options were to 1) try to use HQPlayer to convert PCM streaming files to DSD, 2) try to incorporate tubes in either the DAC and/or amp, 3) move to an R2R DAC or to a DSD DAC. I had played with HQPlayer a bit on my gaming laptop but constantly had issues. Plus I had already moved off the laptop to an Eversolo streamer. The tube gear pros/cons debate is well-known and not worth going over again. So that left moving to an R2R DAC or a DSD DAC. Since I would need to also find a suitable amp, I became very interested in either going tube/hybrid or with an amp using the EXICONs. I looked at virtually every dac and amp combo out there within a reasonable price range. Ultimately, it came down to either the LaIV Harmony/HP2A or the Cen.Grand SF/DSDAC Deluxe. Thanks to some discussions with some other head-fiers, and multiple discussions with Arthur at Power Holdings, I ended up choosing the CG path.
  • In terms of the SQ differences between the HA200 and CG pair, they are clearly in the same league if you can use the DSD side of the HA200 via HQP. In terms of native PCM source streaming, I definitely think the CG with the onboard DSD conversion pulls ahead. Everything is just a richer and more analogue sounding. The CGs are slightly more elevated throughout the bass range (of course the HA200 does have a bass control if desired), and a bit more palpable across the entire FR. I was also surprised that the T+A sounded a slight bit rolled off (or just less open) in the treble region as well. I have a feeling this is very system dependent. I never noticed this on the HA200 with a silver or hybrid headphone cable but I also noticed the slight high freq rolloff when I went with an all-copper cable. At my age, I also have my own onboard high frequency rolloff to deal with.
  • But overall, the HA200 sounds fantastic, has some great features like tone controls and crossfeed, digital filters that are very useful and clearly sound different...all in a single, compact well-built chassis. There are no losers in this comparison. Both CG and T+A are highly recommended!

Thanks to Arthur at Power Holdings and the head-fiers which graciously offered their experience with some of the many options I considered.

And a shoutout to Blaz at Erzetich (don't think he's on head-fi?)...but I really encourage people to try the Charybdis. In many ways, they have the same positive attributes as the Cen.Grand gear - they just offer a very high blend of technicality and musicality and are the best planars I've heard.

I've not said anything about the different modes available on either the amp or DAC. Honestly, I need to spend some time really comparing those, but this post has already gotten a bit long. I'll post any opinions I have formed on these different modes later, but from a very quick listening comparison, I'm guessing they might be similar to those that have already been previously posted.

Hopefully this wasn't totally repetitive of other posts or reviews. And another special shout out here to John @project86 for his extraordinary review of the DSDAC1.0 Deluxe that kicked off this thread - nothing can match that one . I do have the POW card on my DSDAC and I know John is currently evaluating the GLS1.0 streamer - I'm looking forward to his review (although my wallet is praying that the GLS sounds horrible, frequently crashes, pops a fuse every time you turn it on, smokes every time you turn it off and is in general completely unusable).

If anyone has any questions, let me know.

 

[Lucus]

Hi all
I know this has probably been already discussed, but I would like to know your experience/feedback in replacing (meaning feeding directly) the preamplifier of the DeLuxe with a high level proamp (think of Accuphase C-2800, Mark Levinson 326S, this kind of gears...): Does it really make a difference ?
From my point of view the preamp in the DeLuxe is not utterly transparent, but add a kind of warmth/musicality which is quite beguilling....Other experiences ?

 

[geoffalter11]

I love the preamp. The muses volume solution is top notch and I think it makes the DAC sound better. I always have it engaged and find as someone else above gave me the idea to try it that way, you get more tonal density (which would explain that sense of warmth and timbre), liquidity and ultimately smoother playback. It is my dynamic and more neutral without it. I love it both ways...