scs999
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2010
- Posts
- 22
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- 10
Quote:
Those 3 interfaces are A/D, D/A and firewire based. The Duet and 828mkII are 96/24bit and have their own proprietary drivers which are very solid while the FA66 uses the generic Core audio firewire driver which is also rock solid with this unit -- it also supports 192/24 bit recording and playback. All of these devices are really intended for recording use and vary widely in their input/output features. The Duet is a 2 channel device with pristine mic preamps and an excellent digital converter which is perfect for vinyl LP rips. The 828 and FA66 are good but not in the same class recording quality-wise because of their mic preamps and A/D converters.
Sonically the Duet has the most transparent DAC of the lot, and the built-in headphone amp is very neutral and transparent which is as it should be for monitoring your own recordings but I prefer the warmer sound of the uDac2 for general playback of commercial recordings. When using the Duet for general listening, I bypass it's built-in amp with the Asgard which gives a much fuller, slightly warmer and 3-dimensional sound and seems ideally matched to HD600's or Grado GS-1000i's. The 828 mk2 is very good but not as musical or dimensional on playback as the Duet or uDAC2 while the headphone amp on the FA66 is mediocre and useful only for monitoring live recordings.
The bottom line is that I like both the Duet and uDAC2 for different reasons - the Duet makes phenomenally clean recordings while the uDAC2 plays them back beautifully - either thru it's own amp [for portable use] or via the Asgard. You'd be amazed at what is really on some older vinyl LP records if digitized with the Duet and a good turntable-arm-cartridge-phono preamp setup.
The uDAC2 is an amazing device for headphone listening [textured, 3-dimensional, transparent and dirt-cheap] and makes an awesome preamp for even a high-end stereo audio system. When friends come over for a listening session, I love driving an Audio Research VT130 [a 70 lb 110 watt/channel tube amp] with this matchbox sized device and watching the looks on their faces when the music starts. There may be better DAC's out there but this one rocks and puts much more costly DAC's to shame.
). any fix?
