Welcome aboard Wil. It will definitely get better with proper burn in. I was greatly encouraged when I first listened to it cold out of the box because it sounded pretty darn good. It went from pretty good to outstanding in about 50 to 75 hours. Then in the next 50 hours it settled right into Wow.
I got mine two days ago. Sound stage and imaging are the first things that I noticed that were better. Center image and sense of space is excellent. The bass hits surprisingly hard for me.
Thanks Stuartmc. Looking forward to listening to some DSD files tonight.
Xymordos, surprisingly, the soundstage was also the first improvement that i noticed. It's huge compared to my iDSD. Imaging, as you have noted, is much improved as well.
If by aggressive you mean great macro-dynamics, then yes, that is something I continue to hear with my X20. If you mean a little forward soundstage and a a slightly hot treble, then that should be ameliorated with burn in. At least it was for me.
That's odd - I do not feel that the X20 is in anyway aggresive (In my setup anyway) - But i understand where you could be coming from, the X20 will not sugarcoat hot or badly recorded material. It shows it as it is.
Treble is realistic, with nice air and timbre (it feels like wood on metal).
Bass is surely more delineated than my iDSD (less wooliness if you may, perhaps this can be attributed to it being a powered unit as compared to the iDSD's usb power) - By no means am i putting down the iDSD, which is supremely capable and versatile unit for the pricing.
But again, i am floored by the imaging and soundstage. There is alot less bleeding between instruments in the soundstage. It feels like i have crossfeed on but without the weird out of head experience that some units tend to impart.
If by aggressive you mean great macro-dynamics, then yes, that is something I continue to hear with my X20. If you mean a little forward soundstage and a a slightly hot treble, then that should be ameliorated with burn in. At least it was for me.
After more listening what I am hearing between the SLOW and SHARP settings are the slow setting slightly rounds off those micro dynamics. The detail is still there it sounds like the music has less "air" and spaciousness. Does anyone else hear this in their system when making the change?
in my (rather limited, yet) experience with the x-20, with the sharp setting the sound actually verges on the aggressive..maybe it's the yet insufficient burn-in, but for now I'm keeping it on slow and love it.
By aggressive I mean everything sounds more "in your face", despite the better air and noticeably large soundstage. This is possibly also due to the huge amount of details it can bring out. Love the sound overall and it really does improve with burn-in over time.
hello guys, I'm still new to quality audio and am already in love after hearing my friend's system.
I am currently using a sony xb900 headphone(bassy , bit veiled and congested compared to other cans I tried on) and have a fiio E09K amplifier fed directly from my pc out, was content with what I had until the said incident and now have my mind set on building a good rig.
would getting the Gustard X20 DAC be a good idea(feed it to the fiio temporarily) until I get either the Gustard H10 or the inevitable matching amp for the X20 from Gustard later on or even just get a used speaker amp and a used HE-6 like the ones my friend has(the wait depends on whether my listening experience is enhanced by adding the dac or whether I couldn't really tell until a good amp is hooked up).
would really appreciate if anyone could chime in and tell me whether this would be a good path or if it's not a good idea to start with the dac and should replace the headphone or amp first, can't really audition and don't want to throw money on experiments :S
hello guys, I'm still new to quality audio and am already in love after hearing my friend's system.
I am currently using a sony xb900 headphone(bassy , bit veiled and congested compared to other cans I tried on) and have a fiio E09K amplifier fed directly from my pc out, was content with what I had until the said incident and now have my mind set on building a good rig.
would getting the Gustard X20 DAC be a good idea(feed it to the fiio temporarily) until I get either the Gustard H10 or the inevitable matching amp for the X20 from Gustard later on or even just get a used speaker amp and a used HE-6 like the ones my friend has(the wait depends on whether my listening experience is enhanced by adding the dac or whether I couldn't really tell until a good amp is hooked up).
would really appreciate if anyone could chime in and tell me whether this would be a good path or if it's not a good idea to start with the dac and should replace the headphone or amp first, can't really audition and don't want to throw money on experiments :S
The biggest change will be the headphones. I would start with those. Then the DAC. Since you already have a passable amp, depending on your choice of headphones you can upgrade that the last.
Hello all! I have been reading this thread for a long while, but I am new here... I am an audiophile from Geneva region, Switzerland...Thanks to Stuart especially, and all of you for sharing the info...
I am almost ready to order the X20U, as it seems quite a beast...
I was wondering if I could use the I2s output of an MSB Universal Player to get the DSD of SACD natively into the Gustard's I2s input?
Will Sony copy protection prevent that?
I could alternatively rip all my SACDs with my PS3, but what a bore...
Did anybody manage to play SACDs DSD streams with the Gustard, or is that mission impossible?
Hello all! I have been reading this thread for a long while, but I am new here... I am an audiophile from Geneva region, Switzerland...Thanks to Stuart especially, and all of you for sharing the info...
I am almost ready to order the X20U, as it seems quite a beast...
I was wondering if I could use the I2s output of an MSB Universal Player to get the DSD of SACD natively into the Gustard's I2s input?
Will Sony copy protection prevent that?
I could alternatively rip all my SACDs with my PS3, but what a bore...
Did anybody manage to play SACDs DSD streams with the Gustard, or is that mission impossible?
Greetings Thurax. I'm no expert on the Sony lockdown of Sacd, but as far as I know every sacd player that has a digital output will convert from DSD to PCM. I'm fairly certain that your MSB player does that. I share your frustration because I have in my collection nearly every Chesky SACD release.
If you can get a dsd signal to the X20, it will handle it just fine. I have played quite a few DSD files and I have yet to have a problem.
Because of this problem, and also because of the great sound I'm getting from my tablet with a Regen and the Tanly USB-DDC, I no longer use my massive Sony sacd player or my Rega Apollo-R.
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