A friend borrowed me his X-Sabre, so I am listening to it along with my other Dac, the NuWaveDac. I noticed that all your listening tests were made with the USB input. I use an old Musical Fidelity X-Ray CD Player as a transport, and have only a very basic laptop PC USB setup (Foobar2000 and Lindy USB cable). I connected the MF X-Ray to the coax input and noticed almost immediately the "glare" described in the review. The "glare" affects mostly nylon-stringed guitars, in my opinion. I tried other coax cables, but that did not solve my problem. Then I switched to USB and listened to the same records, ripped with EAC. The glare had disappeared, the nylon-stringed guitars sang in all their glory, but unfortunately I couldn't get a decent soundstage. By the way, I generally listen through my loudspeakers (ProAc Studio 100 through Nuforce amplification). My guess is that the "glare" might have something to do with the lack of a DIR stage. I don't have an Aes/Ebu equipped transport, so I wanted to ask if the "glare" is there also using the Aes/Ebu input. And also, is that normal that I got such a small soundstage? Maybe I should try with another USB cable? I used both the ASIO and the WASAPI modes.
By the way, I tried the NuWave Dac through the USB input, and found it, well, lackluster, despite the XMOS chip. The Spdif input really shines, though.
Thanks, Stefano from Italy
I do often hear more glare with coax input, though it can be reduced or even eliminated by using higher end transports. The YBA Design WM202 that I use now is a little better than the Cambridge 740C I was using prior. Good enough to sound enjoyable, generally speaking, where the Cambridge as transport was not something I would want to live with long term.
Not sure what you mean about lack of DIR stage. The ES9018 has it built in, just as it has its own ASRC (of sorts) also integrated into the chip. So there
is a DIR, just not an external chip as we are sometimes accustomed to seeing. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, and we'll never know what might have happened if Matrix chose some other way of doing it. It might not matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.
The X-Sabre sounded better through AES/EBU in my system (you lose DSD though... ). The difference is not as striking as on the M51 which has a mediocre USB implementation, as others already mentioned. Could also be a problem of the transport or the AES/EBU cable used ? From experience AES/EBU is very sensitive to cable quality (I have DH Labs D110 currently, works great).
I had the Nuwave in the past, I would take the X-Sabre over the Nuwave any day. No contest.
In my country there is a 300 EUR difference between the two, and the NAD is usually discounted below the X-sabre street price, perhaps now it makes more sense ?
I know not all Sabre sounds the same, but only the super expensive models I've heard sound musical while also retaining their super high resolution (Auralic Vega, Accuphase DC901, etc.) The reason why (most of) those are expensive relies in the implementation, as you mentioned. The cheap ones create the stereotype which I associated to Sabre and unfortunately the X-Sabre is one of them.
I guess I still don't see (or hear) the "Sabre" sound in "the cheap ones". X-Sabre, DA8, MiniMax, Anedio, M DAC, etc, all sound different to me, with very little in common. But I wouldn't necessarily call them "cheap" either - yes, cheaper than a Vega, but still fairly expensive.
The only time I hear something of a similarity is with the truly cheap devices using the entry-level Sabre chips. Such as the ES9023 used by a bunch of cheap eBay DACs. That chip pretty much does everything onboard so there is very little room for individualization - no separate output stage or ASRC or DIR required, and very simple power supply needs. So as long as you don't make mistakes in the design or build, they should mostly sound the same. That said, Cary uses two of them in their DAC-100, and it sounds very different.... as does their older Audio Electronics Lightning which used a single ES9023. So again, there's always room for variation.
Honestly i've been reading this thread by Purrin and was a little bit surprised by some of the statements like on the Resonessence Invicta:
and
Now i haven't heard the Invicta personally but by this description it seems to be a fail what surprises me because i've read other things about it.
I even enjoy the Audinst Hud MX1 and this one costs about 170 bucks so i can't figure it out entirely what he means.
I like Purrin and enjoy his thoughts on stuff, but he hears the Invicta VERY differently than me or anyone else I know. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
The X-Sabre does many things better than the NuWave, but I think that I did not hear yet its full potential, due to the "glare" in the coax input. I was also wondering if the Resonessence Concero HD has a proper digital receiver stage, and if its coax input sounds better than the coax on the X-Sabre with a stock CD transport.
Thanks, Stefano
Again, not sure what you mean by proper DIR. I believe Concero HD uses the built in DIR on the ES9018K2M and it sounds pretty similar between USB and a good transport with coax.