I tried the Deluxe preamp on the forum recommendations and it is not worth a good preamp for me. The sound was less tense with the Benchmark HPA4 and superbly natural with the Modwright LS300. A word of advice: use a good preamp to take full advantage of your DSDAC.
Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe - ending point in my search for a new reference
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geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
I am not 2 channel and have other things in my system that improve the Deluxe either way I use it.
I am not looking for the same sound as you.
Hi
Interesting ! The LS300 belongs to the preamp I am targeting presently. So it is a good match for you with the DeLuxe ?
The LS300 is a good match with all. Specially with good tubes.
That is the issue...The LS300 has 6922 and 5AR4 tubes, and that's exactly the ones I do not have in NOS/stock...I have all the others, pretty good NOS, but no 6922. Hence my hesitation (with an Aesthetix Calypso...)
geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
If you don't have NOS 5AR4's, there is a great seller on ebay who specializes in that tube. Ideally the F31 is the same structurally as the Metal Base Holy Grail, just for $250 or so. The F32 is also really good and was made right after and has great sound too. They will be better than any new stock 5AR4's. I call it the GZ-34. He also sells some 6922's. They can expensive depending on how many your amp needs.
Places I'd look for NOS of both of those tubes... Brent Jessee Tubes or Ap1278 seller on eBay, or Nova.76 (bullztubes). Both sell great tubes and will have these most times. I knnow that Brent will have both and will give you great advice based on your budget.
I’m currently searching for my next dac and this one is on the shortlist. Does anyone know of any Hifi dealers in the socal area that have units to demo?
geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
Power Holdings in NJ has exclusive rights in the US. Wish I could help, I can tell you as an owner of this DAC that it is sensational... The space between the notes is what makes it so wonderful. It just sounds like music, or more importantly lets everything else in your chain sound like music. I have it hooked to both a bipolar SS HPA and a Tube HPA and both are incredible paired with it. I don't use them at the same time, but I do have them both hooked up at the same time and have never had an issue with sound degrading. But I don't run both amps simultaneously.
I have a 2nd Roon endpoint with an R2R DAC and the Deluxe is the better DAC, although the Musician Taurus is amazing too... Better than any Denafrips I've heard up to the T-Plus, which has more resolution, but not better tone or timbre. However, it does have more top end resolution. But the amps I have hooked to it have that, so the mix is perfect for me.
I absolutely love my Deluxe.
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Ah okay I will keep that in mind. Right now I am deciding between either picking up a new DSDAC Deluxe or Hifirose RD160 / waiting for a Used Tambaqui or Rockna Wavedream to pop up. I find Dacs to be so much more difficult to demo as show impressions are pretty much worthless and Hifi dealers only keep so many on hand. I've read a ton of great things about the Deluxe, I'm just not really seeing it around anywhere.
geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
There are both a Tambaqui and Wavedream on audio mart. If you are waiting on here, you will wait forever as finding high value DACs on this website is nearly impossible. Very few come up for sale here as most people buying those DACs are buying them for 2 channel. And this is a personal audio website and most people are using lower to mid-fi DACs. You will find a lot of DACs under the $3000 tier on here, though and the odd Chord product. I would never shop for a DAC on head-fi. Amps and headphones are in abundance, but not source gear. How many personal audio users purchase $10,000 DACs? Very very few... Even high value amps are hard to find here. The vast majority of people in this hobby do not have your system. The vast majority of people don't have mine and mine pails to yours. Here you have Topping, SMSL, and the higher end folks go to Chord or the like. Sometimes you can find something of high value, but it isn't often and they will sit on here a long time. How often do you see a Trafomatic amp for sale on here? I haven't seen but one Eddie Current amp for sale in 2 yrs. I haven't seen a single Headonia 300B for sale on here. Viva Egoista products, etc. That isn't to knock this community, people buy to their budgets. Yours happen to be higher than the vast majority of people buying, selling and trading on head-fi. I wouldn't sell a high value DAC on this website as I wouldn't want to be low balled to high heaven and watch it sit on here forever. I would never sell my Deluxe on here. Selling really good DACs on Head-fi is futile. Sometimes you might find one, but it is rare.
You will have to find an audio store in SoCal that sells mostly to two channel to find a way to hear a lot of these DACs. I know of very few predominantly personal audio websites selling high end source gear. Some sell the Weiss stuff which is every bit as good, if not better. But none are stocked, they come directly from Switzerland or their main importer in Toronto. Audio Mart has the best collection of used DACs anywhere in the US. Source AV sells some, Upscale sells a bunch, but I don't think they demo. Most have return policies so you can demo in your home and return if you don't like it. However, they all charge a different restocking fee, which can be 5-20% and not all have the same 365 return policy of headphones.com. However, finding a high value DAC on their website is not easy. Many high value amps, but not a lot of high value DACs. And they are constantly out of stock. And then they will turn around and sell something 10 months old as open box and it is broken. I have had that happen twice and had to have it replaced as people take crappy care of their stuff.
I don't know how good the HifiRose is, but I know from friends that the Tambaqui is fantastic, and the Rockna Wavedream is wonderful and a special way of designing R2R. I owned a Wavelight and didn't love it. I found it grainy in the midrange. It is good, but there are better R2R DACs in that price range. Rockna is more a hybrid R2R/FPGA topology. The Wavedream is supposed to be stellar, but the XLR version can run up to double the price of the SE version.
Audio Mart has a ton of high value DACs for sale and seems to be the best place to DAC shop, in my opinion. It is really hard to demo anything as most brokers are not stocking products. TMR has a lot of DACs too, but I don't believe they demo. They just offer a 30 day return and 5% restocking, and will try to get you to turn your return into store credit before accepting the return and crediting back. They all mostly order them and then they are sent directly to you from the manufacturer. They don't want to carry the inventory any longer. TTVJaudio.com is a Luxman supplier and their new DA-07x is supposed to be fantastic. It will come straight from Luxman. They probably have one on hand that they get to try it and use for demos, but they are in Livingston, MT, so might be a little hard to get there. Outside of that, almost everything is under $5k in almost all audio stores for DACs. Audio46 sells the T+A stuff, but only certain models and all of it is mostly direct ship. Most sell Chord products, but very few stock the DAVE at its price. They might have the AIO HA200 in stock, but the DAC 200 is not. And they will have 1. I guess my point is that head-fi is not a great place to wait for those DACs when you can find them in abundance on audio mart. Maybe not 10-20 of them, but you will find them on there as it is mostly 2 channel folks who buy those DACs. With several dealers selling on there too... Headphone systems for the most part don't require $15,000 DACs. But you have an MK 465 and I would want to put a source of equal quality with that amp. I feel all of my amps are of equal quality to my DACs, which keeps my system in harmony. However, there are so few who sell, stock and demo these units. Cen.Grand products will mostly come from the manufacturer when ordered. Brokers just don't hold inventory like they used to.
Not trying to be a downer, but that seems to be the industry now having reviewed for a lot of folks. Everything comes to me from the manufacturer. I can't remember anything other than headphones that are stocked. Moon Audio stocks a lot of stuff, though and they have a pretty high end line up up to a point. They love the Bricasti stuff, and for good reason. It is really good. Plus, margins from brokers are really high, which is the reason a lot of companies sell direct, so they can offer better pricing and control the sale. Denafrips just took back to sell direct, Exasound, and then most find 1-3 audio stores or brokers in the US to sell for them and it is sent mostly direct from the manufacturer. Just too expensive to hold the inventory any longer from what they all tell me. Even the ones that say in stock means direct from the manufacturer in a lot of cases.
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One is available in the classifieds https://www.head-fi.org/classifieds/mola-mola-tambaqui.83825/
...And I have bought mine on this very site...So it is absolutely possible to buy a used DeLuxe
geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
I should clarify, I wasn't trying to be super mean or condescending, just saying that head-fi is a mixed bag for source gear. You can find the odd high end product, but it is not the norm and so when looking for those I go elsewhere. I love looking through the classifieds, but I am not a collector so I only keep the thingns I use and nothing else. Sorry if my message came across as super negative. Wasn't meant that way at all...
Wow. It's early days so my brain is still burning in, but this Superclock model is doing really interesting things. Quite a different presentation than the holo DACs. It has the i2s/POW card and so far I've been feeding it with an Ian Canada DDC via i2s.
For whatever reason, pictures of this thing always make it look smaller than it really is. It's a big ole hefty slab!
Edit: I was curious about the fuse.
Back of unit:
From the manual:
Also from the manual:
Edit 2:
So, in addition to brain burn-in it seems there's some actual burn-in happening too. This was bought in "like new" condition and I suspect it had very low hours on it. After about 25 hours of playing music through it, I'm finding myself quite taken with the sound.
Out of the gate it was very upper-mid-forward, to a sometimes fatiguing extent. The bass was also less solid/textured. So it had a way of sounding both soft (in the low end) and hard (in the upper mids) at the same time. The two parts of the spectrum seemed very disconnected from each other.
Now I'm finding it's doing pretty much everything I like. While the bass may not have that r2r quality, I do feel it's more true to the way actual bass sounds, for example when coming off a master tape. The upper mids have mellowed out. It's very liquid sounding and plenty fast.
For DSD I like non rising, for PCM, upsampled to DSD512. For whatever reason I keep coming back to digital filter 4. That one seems to sound best with dsd128. For the higher DSD rates it seems to make less of a difference which digital filter is chosen.
For whatever reason, pictures of this thing always make it look smaller than it really is. It's a big ole hefty slab!
Edit: I was curious about the fuse.
Back of unit:
From the manual:
Also from the manual:
Edit 2:
So, in addition to brain burn-in it seems there's some actual burn-in happening too. This was bought in "like new" condition and I suspect it had very low hours on it. After about 25 hours of playing music through it, I'm finding myself quite taken with the sound.
Out of the gate it was very upper-mid-forward, to a sometimes fatiguing extent. The bass was also less solid/textured. So it had a way of sounding both soft (in the low end) and hard (in the upper mids) at the same time. The two parts of the spectrum seemed very disconnected from each other.
Now I'm finding it's doing pretty much everything I like. While the bass may not have that r2r quality, I do feel it's more true to the way actual bass sounds, for example when coming off a master tape. The upper mids have mellowed out. It's very liquid sounding and plenty fast.
For DSD I like non rising, for PCM, upsampled to DSD512. For whatever reason I keep coming back to digital filter 4. That one seems to sound best with dsd128. For the higher DSD rates it seems to make less of a difference which digital filter is chosen.
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geoffalter11
Headphoneus Supremus
I don't understand James Joyce either. I don't like reading things where I have to re-read them several times to get all the examples, metaphors and things being said. Nabokov, Joyce, Borges are the hardest for me to read and truly comprehend all of what they are saying. I guess I am not smart enough to truly comprehend all of what they are writing. Lolita I understood, but it took a lot out of me.
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