[nepherte]

Quote:

bmichels:
When swapping out your Hugo for DAVE or Totaldac Dual, what differences did you hear with your BHSE/SR009?

 
When going from the Hugo to DAVE / TotalDAC, the four of us heard a small difference in favor of the DAVE / TotalDAC. While the difference was not a night and day (hence the word small), it was consistent enough to spot the differences in our blind tests 100% of the time.
 
For me personally, I would qualify the DAVE better than the Hugo on all acounts. The word that comes to mind is fuller. See next paragraph for comparison with TotalDAC.
 
When switching back and forth between the DAVE and TotalDAC, we were all rather baffled: we could not spot any difference at all in our blind tests (not for a lack of trying or our test environment by the way). That being said, I had the impression that the DAVE had better resolution and a blacker background, while the TotalDAC was more natural / smooth and more pleasant to listen too. I wouldn't necessarily call the TotalDAC warm though.

 

[astrostar59]

  When switching back and forth between the DAVE and TotalDAC, we were all rather baffled: we could not spot any difference at all in our blind tests (not for a lack of trying or our test environment by the way). That being said, I had the impression that the DAVE had better resolution and a blacker background, while the TotalDAC was more natural / smooth and more pleasant to listen too. I wouldn't necessarily call the TotalDAC warm though.

Fascinating indeed. Did you try a track that had full good dynamics and vocals, so you got a handle on the signature of the 2 DACs? And listen at loud levels and the 009 really opens up then (and gives a true rendition of the treble quality) i.e if there is an issue it will be more obvious.
 
On tube NOS DACs I have found a reasonable difference or flavour. The TotalDAC is SS but has discrete conversion, the DAVE FPGA like dCS type of DACs, so very different.
 
This subject is huge, maybe it should have it's own thread?
 
IMO the treble character and realism of the treble region is the big test for digital. Oversampling tends to muddle the treble and give it an edge or coarseness but not in all oversampling DACs. Also NOS DACs can sound rolled of and get confused in complex music. But again, not all NOS DACs. This is a huge generalisation by me as the output stage and power supplies possibly have even more impact on the sound. Many top amplifier designers claim for example the power supply is 80% of the sound quality you end up getting or that can be realised no matter how good the line stage.

 

[sensui123]

That's an interesting comparison between the HUGO and DAVE (and TotalDAC).  I own the HUGO but am not extremely convinced by the unit....I mean it's a great to go unit and fairly capable in terms of output power but the DAC quality doesn't blow me away like all the people that rave about it.  Compariing HUGO to the likes of the Meturm DACs I own like the Pavane and Hex is night and day without a doubt in almost all aspects.  Can't wait till I get the BHSE to see how it'll pair with the Pavane.  Works great with the KGSSHV Carbon currently.

 

[nepherte]

Originally Posted by astrostar59 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
On tube NOS DACs I have found a reasonable difference or flavour. The TotalDAC is SS but has discrete conversion, the DAVE FPGA like dCS type of DACs, so very different.

 
As an engineer, the approach taken to make a DAC is indeed something I factor in when making a purchase. I don't like manufacturers that come up with "yet another technology <x> dac", or if they do, it should be very well implemented. That being said, they attempt to reproduce the same digital file. So if everything goes right, differences should be minimal.
 
One possible reason you hear differences between tube NOS DAC is because they impart their own sound signature on the signal. This is not necessarily an "accurate" representation of the sound, but also not a bad thing per se. With certain tubes, certain instruments may sound too warm for example.
 

  Fascinating indeed. Did you try a track that had full good dynamics and vocals, so you got a handle on the signature of the 2 DACs? And listen at loud levels and the 009 really opens up then (and gives a true rendition of the treble quality) i.e if there is an issue it will be more obvious.

 
We tried various tracks from various genres: classical music, pop, rock, vocals, ... As mentioned earlier, I could not spot differences consistently, but had an "impression" / gut feeling that there in fact are differences. Note that i'm not denying there aren't any differences. There are various reasons why I couldn't hear them: the setups we used, my ears, the songs we used, ...

 

[nepherte]

  That's an interesting comparison between the HUGO and DAVE (and TotalDAC).  I own the HUGO but am not extremely convinced by the unit....I mean it's a great to go unit and fairly capable in terms of output power but the DAC quality doesn't blow me away like all the people that rave about it.  Compariing HUGO to the likes of the Meturm DACs I own like the Pavane and Hex is night and day without a doubt in almost all aspects.  Can't wait till I get the BHSE to see how it'll pair with the Pavane.  Works great with the KGSSHV Carbon currently.

 
I wasn't blown away by the HUGO either but it performs solid on all levels. For me personally, the difference between a HUGO and DAVE / TotalDAC is small but worth it. I would be happy with both the DAVE and TotalDAC. Already owning a TotalDAC, I don't see a reason to switch at the moment (same story if I owned the DAVE instead).

 

[astrostar59]

   
As an engineer, the approach taken to make a DAC is indeed something I factor in when making a purchase. I don't like manufacturers that come up with "yet another technology <x> dac", or if they do, it should be very well implemented. That being said, they attempt to reproduce the same digital file. So if everything goes right, differences should be minimal.
 
One possible reason you hear differences between tube NOS DAC is because they impart their own sound signature on the signal. This is not necessarily an "accurate" representation of the sound, but also not a bad thing per se. With certain tubes, certain instruments may sound too warm for example.
 

My taste of DACs with the brick wall filter thrown out seems to make the sound more 'real' and organic, smoother. Zanden and Audio Note are two that have moved the digital filtering into the analogue domain and keep to bit perfect resident sample rates, so Redbook at 44.1.
 
This and DACs that have a tube regulated power supply seems to have fast dynamics and a more real sound somehow. I can't go further into technicalities, only what I hear. The Zanden I heard next to a dCS stack was very different, and I preferred the Zanden by a long way. My current Audio Note DAC 5 is similar to the Zanden. 
 
But I would love to hear a TotalDAC. Anyone in the UK Midlands with one I can pop over to hear (with my Carbon and 009s)?

 

[arnaud]

  little meeting yesterday to try the BHSE/SR009 with various DACs :  HUGO, DAVE & TotalDAC D1 Dual.
 
Winner:....BHSE + SR009    Everybody was impress by it, even our host, a "HE-1000 + DAVE" fan who prefered the electrostatic combo..
 
In term of DACs :  DAVE = TotalDAC !
 

 
Very brief but thank you nevertheless. About your question on D1 tube version, I would try the solid state first as I can only say good things about the dual (or the six for that matter) with BHSE/SR009. In regards to the tubes, with them getting running beyond 50h, I get harder and harder time to distinguish between DD/OO, XF2/XF4 variants I own. The source is way way more important imo even though I recommend to go NOS rather than new production.
 
cheers,
arnaud

 

[bmichels]

   
Very brief but thank you nevertheless. About your question on D1 tube version, I would try the solid state first as I can only say good things about the dual (or the six for that matter) with BHSE/SR009. In regards to the tubes, with them getting running beyond 50h, I get harder and harder time to distinguish between DD/OO, XF2/XF4 variants I own. The source is way way more important imo even though I recommend to go NOS rather than new production.
 
cheers,
arnaud

 
Thanks a lot arnaud for your suggestion about the NOS tubes & TotalDAC six. Regarding the NOS tubes for the BHSE, which one will you finally recommend ?  The Philips Holland Metal base 1955...IF I can find a quad set ? 
 
 
 
And since my initial report was quite 'brief' indeed, here are more details

 :
 
First part was exclusively with my BHSE+SR009. results are surprising. 
 
   - Of course HUGO is inferior to DAVE and TotalDAC, but... not by a wide margin as most head-fiers here pretend. This shows that despite it's small size, HUGO is still a very good DAC, but ... I have to admit that it is brighter than the 2 "big" DACs.
 
  - Then...here is the surprise: we could not tell the difference between TotalDAC and DAVE, booth connected by RCA to the BHSE, and us switching between the input 1 or 3 of the BHSE.  We used the same source (ROON feeding the DACS through 2 USB cables coming from the same Macbook Pro). We were so amazed that we tried removing one cable, lowering the volume of one DAC, etc.. to see if booth were indeed independent ! And... I do not mean that we could not say which DAC we preffered, I mean there was NO difference when we switched the input of the BHSE !  And we were 4 of us trying blind ...  A mistery ! 

 
EDIT : May be the answer to this mistery is that a "perfect" DAC should be transparent since it is supposed to reproduce the initial recording without adding anything. They are NOT supposed to add any flavour. So between 2 "perfects" DACs there should not be any difference since there are no 2 different initial recordings.  Of course, those 2 tested DACs are not 'perfect', but... they must have reached the limits of our systems (that includes our own ears or... the music that we chosed did not includes parts difficult enough to reproduce for those 2 TOL DACs (Violon, solo piano...) ?
 
 
Then we moved to a very high-end Speaker system (Mark Levinson Big old Mono blocks + the latest TOL B&W speakers).  And then, for our Guest that owns the DAVE that we replaced by the TotalDAC, the difference between DAVE and TotalDAC become audible. DAVE is more precise, but TotalDAC is warmer and sometime more enjoyable.  Our guest who owned the DAVE considered buying a TotalDAC for his speaker system.
 
So, it seems that at this level of quality the difference is more obvions with speakers than with headphones !  does it make sense to you ? 
 
PS: The TotalDAC was an  D1-Dual which has not been upgraded since a while. Vincent tells me that his new best seller, the "D1-Six", offer much better bass and will be much more dynamic than the D1-Dual.  So may be the D1-Six will have beaten the DAVE even with headphones ? 
 
For me the good news is that there is no need to rush to upgrade immediatly my HUGO, and that I will look at the feature set of my next DAC as much as to the sound. (idealy a 1 box " DAC + ROON server + 2 Tb storage.." .
 
Also, since I hear not such a huge difference between HUGO and DAVE (I must have VERY BAD ears ? ), I should not buy DAVE and instead change "house sound", and try new brands of DACs.  
 
But... as I said already, for all of us, the real winner of the meet was the BHSE+SR009.  Everybody found it amazing, even our host who uses HE1000 directly connected to his DAVE.  This is the very first time I hear him telling a headphone is better than his HE1000 that he really loooooves

 

 

[justin w.]

  On second thought this may be the delivery for the 007 being I just noticed the package is only 8lbs. 

the rest of BHSE batch 4 is going out next week! just have the packaging left to do. I'll be able to keep shipping BHSEs after this as I have received enough of the parts for batch 5 to do so

 

[joseph69]

  the rest of BHSE batch 4 is going out next week! just have the packaging left to do. I'll be able to keep shipping BHSEs after this as I have received enough of the parts for batch 5 to do so

Beautiful…thanks for the update!

 

[HeadAmpTeam]

 
Also, since I hear not such a huge difference between HUGO and DAVE (I must have VERY BAD ears ? ), I should not buy DAVE and instead change "house sound", and try new brands of DACs.  
 
But... as I said already, for all of us, the real winner of the meet was the BHSE+SR009.  Everybody found it amazing, even our host who uses HE1000 directly connected to his DAVE.  This is the very first time I hear him telling a headphone is better than his HE1000 that he really loooooves

 

 
We're very happy that you are enjoying the system so much, it was my pleasure to deliver it to you in London.
 
I agree with you that the DAVE and HUGO share a similar sound signature, the main difference being in the very finest details. A DAC with a different design philosophy/topology would likely indeed give you more variety from your HUGO.

 

[bmichels]

   
We're very happy that you are enjoying the system so much, it was my pleasure to deliver it to you in London.
 
I agree with you that the DAVE and HUGO share a similar sound signature, the main difference being in the very finest details. A DAC with a different design philosophy/topology would likely indeed give you more variety from your HUGO.

 
I also enjoyed meeting you and bringing my "precious" home.  And as you suggest I am investigating other DACs brands: I heard TotalDAC that I liked and will try to listen (with the BHSE) to AYRE QX-5, Mark Levinson 519, Brinkmann Nyquinst, CH Precision, Orpheus absolute media server... and even some SACD/DACs like Luxman D-8u for exemple to see if their internal USB Dacs is good enough when used with High-Res files.  
 
Any suggestion ? I need a warmer Sound signature because with HUGO+BHSE+SR009, I have ofter ear ringing after listening cession ( and I do NOT hear a loud level, and I do not experience this phenomenon with my orthos headphones !??).

 

[HeadAmpTeam]

   
I also enjoyed meeting you and bringing my "precious" home.  And as you suggest I am investigating other DACs brands: I heard TotalDAC that I liked and will try to listen (with the BHSE) to AYRE QX-5, Mark Levinson 585, Brinkmann Nyquinst, CH Precision, Orpheus absolute media server... and even some SACD/DACs like Luxman D-8u for exemple to see if their internal USB Dacs is good enough when used with High-Res files.  
 
Any suggestion ? I need a warmer Sound signature because with HUGO+BHSE+SR009, I have ofter ear ringing after listening cession ( and I do NOT hear a loud level, and I do not experience this phenomenon with my orthos headphones !??).

 
It's interesting that you say that, as I've typically found CHORD DACs to sound on the warm side of neutral.  Maybe try using pink noise combined with frequency sweeps to try and pinpoint if a particular frequency range is causing you listening discomfort, then it would be possible to EQ to compensate.  Tyll has some good material about such things on Innerfidelity.

 

[bmichels]

   
It's interesting that you say that, as I've typically found CHORD DACs to sound on the warm side of neutral.  Maybe try using pink noise combined with frequency sweeps to try and pinpoint if a particular frequency range is causing you listening discomfort, then it would be possible to EQ to compensate.  Tyll has some good material about such things on Innerfidelity.

 
Thanks I will try.

 

[PATB]

   
Thanks I will try.

@bmichels just rest your ears for a while.  Don't listen for a day or two.  I usually have that problem with any headphone when I have new gear