[Infoseeker]

Excess treble could come from anywhere in your system, or just your own ears. Have you tried other amps, cables or sources first?

I did indeed get an amp to compensate. Both my Bryston BHA-1 and my FluxLab Volot solid state amps don't have excess treble.

My real problem is the headphones. Planar headphones got less dynamics and need the A22 energy over r2r stuff to make them sound fun......Too bad so many planars have excess post-10khz frequencies.

The combo is still great with my dynamics stuff cause they don't extend that far into the treble (nor in excess)

Current generation planar headphones just suck.


Of course none of this is a problem using the dac with my speaker setup.

 

[bogi]

Yeah I wouldn’t use the 48k family and just stick with the 44.1k.

It does not bring sense not to use 48k based DSD rates if they are available and play correctly - particularly with HQPlayer and [x] Adaptive rate setting. It is easier for CPU to perform integer ratio upsampling, therefore enabling 48k based DSD rates makes it easier to play 48k based PCM content. Many HQPlayer users struggle to upsample 48k based source content to higher DSD rates when their DAC lacks 48k DSD support.

In HQPlayer I suggest to set [x] 48k DSD and [x] Adaptive rate with all DACs where 48k based DSD plays correctly without issues.

 

[SoftwireEngineer]

@Makovjan - In my case, compared to my Ifi Streamer, the LAN input is better. I even upsampled 4x to 176 or 192KHz using JRiver and the sound got a little bit more resolved. Some people might think it is a bit harsh when upsampled though. I am planning to put a simple tiny pc close by over ethernet and see if there is any improvement in playback quality.

 

[SoftwireEngineer]

Any Gustard A22 to A26 comparisons?

I love the A22, but would love to upgrade if there is like any custom filters on the A26 to make it a lil step darker without making it less dynamic.

R26 is not it.

Unless the upcoming Gustard H26 amp is forgiving in the Treble to compensate for d/s dac treble extension.

There are 6 filters and two modes - Listening and Measuring. I am using the Listening mode and the Super Slow/Sharp Roll-Off filter. I dont know what you are using to feed the DAC with the audio data. Jitter could be the reason you are seeing some treble sharpness. You can reduce jitter through a DDC.

 

[Makovjan]

Hi, I have been extensively emailing with gustard and tidal, they claim that tidal ignores their requests for some sort of final autorisation, whereas tidal is constantly repeating they can contact them. Stopped that, it was not even funny. Now I wonder whether the gustarender can be used through plex. It would mostly solve my problem, but I couldn't manage to get it work. Has anyone succeeded, or is that impossible?

 

[MiBog]

I just bought a new A26, FW version looks like this. DSD works perfectly through USB, I am very satisfied.

 

[milkdudd]

There are 6 filters and two modes - Listening and Measuring. I am using the Listening mode and the Super Slow/Sharp Roll-Off filter. I dont know what you are using to feed the DAC with the audio data. Jitter could be the reason you are seeing some treble sharpness. You can reduce jitter through a DDC.

I have the earlier (AKM) Gustard A22 with they C18 clock and U18 DDC in front of it. I find the LOW-d SHOT filter setting sounds (by far) the best to me. I think on the A26 that setting is called Low Distortion Short or something very close to that. I seem to remember it being something Gustard developed on their own. I highly suggest you give it a good listen before settling on one of the other filter settings. I know I'm glad I did

 

[netanio]

Hi,

has anyone been able to fix the LAN dropouts and multiple network device registrations ? I just got my A26 and am quite happy sound wise, but the streaming module is really ... crap. Like reported in multiple posts here, I suffer from occasional network dropouts. and the device re-appears with a different mac-adress on my router at each startup, I've never seen this behaviour on a network device before. For the moment I stream through a Raspeberry Pi with RoPiee that's connected via USB to the DAC, that works fine, but when I stream directly to the A26 the problems start. The device also takes a long time to be recognised in Roon (>30 secs). I'm on 1.43, that's how I bought it. What's the best way to get in contact with Gustard ? Thanks!

 

[terlino]

Unfortunately Gustard took a step too far for his capabilities. It was much better if he just kept making DACs.If you want to have a fixed IP and without problems with streaming you have to use firmware 1.42 which however does not accept direct DSD but DSD over PCM. In short, it's disgusting, they are not capable of issuing firmware without huge BUGS
For me in future Gustard closed

 

[milkdudd]

Unfortunately Gustard took a step too far for his capabilities. It was much better if he just kept making DACs.If you want to have a fixed IP and without problems with streaming you have to use firmware 1.42 which however does not accept direct DSD but DSD over PCM. In short, it's disgusting, they are not capable of issuing firmware without huge BUGS
For me in future Gustard closed

I also hope they will return to making standalone DACs without the built-in streamer, likely helping to keep the price down. Unless they can really get it right I think it's better to just leave it out or offer two versions, one with and one without

 

[m-i-c-k-e-y]

Or as separate streamer...

 

[camrector]

Unfortunately Gustard took a step too far for his capabilities. It was much better if he just kept making DACs.If you want to have a fixed IP and without problems with streaming you have to use firmware 1.42 which however does not accept direct DSD but DSD over PCM. In short, it's disgusting, they are not capable of issuing firmware without huge BUGS
For me in future Gustard closed

This isn’t true at all. There are two firmwares. One for the Dac and one for the streamer.
Streamer Firmware has nothing to do with DSD direct.
DSD direct was fixed with the DAC firmware.

Operates perfectly with Roon. Zero dropouts. Rock solid.

 

[camrector]

Hi,

has anyone been able to fix the LAN dropouts and multiple network device registrations ? I just got my A26 and am quite happy sound wise, but the streaming module is really ... crap. Like reported in multiple posts here, I suffer from occasional network dropouts. and the device re-appears with a different mac-adress on my router at each startup, I've never seen this behaviour on a network device before. For the moment I stream through a Raspeberry Pi with RoPiee that's connected via USB to the DAC, that works fine, but when I stream directly to the A26 the problems start. The device also takes a long time to be recognised in Roon (>30 secs). I'm on 1.43, that's how I bought it. What's the best way to get in contact with Gustard ? Thanks!

Fixed ip isn’t available, but I’ve never had an issue at all. I don’t turn the A26 off.

 

[kennyb123]

Unfortunately Gustard took a step too far for his capabilities. It was much better if he just kept making DACs.

At this price point, what Gustard likely did was incorporate a third party solution to provide this capability. Firmware would have to be provided by the third party.

Also at the very affordable price of this DAC, there wouldn’t have been much room for Gustard to pay much for this third party capability. I would be surprised if Gustard is dedicating more than $50 of the DAC’s bill of materials to this capability. Probably best to adjust expectations to align with that.

 

[camrector]

At this price point, what Gustard likely did was incorporate a third party solution to provide this capability. Firmware would have to be provided by the third party.

Also at the very affordable price of this DAC, there wouldn’t have been much room for Gustard to pay much for this third party capability. I would be surprised if Gustard is dedicating more than $50 of the DAC’s bill of materials to this capability. Probably best to adjust expectations to align with that.

Whatever Terlino is saying is just dead wrong.
The A26 uses the exact same renderer as the R26. We put it up againest many many different streamers and only started seeing a small improvement in sound quality once streamers started approaching the $2000 mark and above.