[alexdemaet]

I am very satisfied with the mk2 upgrade! The upgrade only took a couple of days and the delivery return was very fast!

 

[geoffalter11]

I am very satisfied with the mk2 upgrade! The upgrade only took a couple of days and the delivery return was very fast!

Can you hear a difference?

 

[alexdemaet]

Can you hear a difference?

I am sorry but unfortunately I forgot how it sounded before the upgrade. I would need 2 Soul's to hear the difference.

 

[geoffalter11]

What does it sound like now?

 

[geoffalter11]

I have been planning to do a full review of the Corda Soul for months, and I keep procrastinating. My hands simply won't allow me to write as long as I want and I think this device deserves its due. It is that special. So, I thought I'd write some initial thoughts.

1. The Soul is an absolute revelation. I have heard the T+A HA200 at 3 times the price, the Bartok Apex at 8 times the price, the DAVE and the TT2. All AIOs, all considerably more expensive. None of them are better than the Corda Soul. My favorite of the group was the T+A HA200, and I would have said 2 weeks ago that it was better, but since getting a ridiculously high powered fanless Roon NUC10 with 16gb of ram and all the latest goodies, it has taken my Soul to sonic levels I didn't think possible.
2. I only use the Soul as an AIO. I use it for reviews, and for headphone listening. I don't use it as a pre/dac. I have never separated the Amp and DAC. I always use as one unit. It is extremely coherent, articulate, balanced, extended going both directions, with impeccable imaging and a realistic soundstage.
3. it has plenty of power to drive my HEKv2 non-stealth and my Code X at 87db of spl at no higher than 12 on the volume pot. It has plenty of power, and the amp is out of this world good.
4. The treble is light, extended, subtle, aggressive when the music calls for it and always balanced. The treble is my absolute favorite part of the Soul. I think that the Soul's treble is a study in perfection. If any designer out there wants to know how to provide you every last bit of info and air without etch or sibilance, they should talk to Jan. It is that good.
5. Bass is fast, articulate and extends below 50hz without any issue. It doesn't trail off, it goes as deep as the music needs and allows. I love the tactility of the bass. It is extremely accurate and tonally right on point. Whether the musician is using a pick or his/her/they fingers you can hear the initial strike and there is plenty of decay to allow you to hear the note trail off.
6. Midrange is accurate and opens up like a flower in the spring. All of musics information is there. I can hear every detail, and the transient attack is spot on. The Soul has an incredible ability to handle dynamic shifts and swings in the music.
Anchored by a solid and accurate bass allows the midrange to come at you from all 4 angles floating in and out of the pocket giving you a truly 3D experience.
7. Decay and Transience are spot on. I love headphones that have the right amount of decay which causes air. The Soul's ability to throw an accurate stage and to decay instruments at the right pace is truly magnificent. Transience is always one of those terms and parts of the sound that I have a hard time explaining. How I perceive it with the Soul is that it has no issue starting, stopping, turning and resolution is top notch. In addition, headphones with a lot of saturation are a great match for the Soul as the proper amplification turns that saturation into resolution. Keeps the sound from getting to dry and gives you a true sense of holism.
8. The DAC is harder for me to explain. You get bit perfect sound which is easy to check. Look at your source file and make sure that the Soul's blue lights match exactly to the source file. If I had to pick one of the two that I prefer, I would say the amp. But, the DAC has plenty of detail, great tonal balance with a neutral to slightly warm sound. The sum of the parts outweighs each initial piece of the Soul. The DAC is not holding back the amp and vice versa. The DAC is every bit as good as DACs costing several times more. I don't find the DAC to be less than the T+A 200, nor do I feel it to be less than my reference DAC, the Matrix X2 Pure. It is detailed and balanced with great tonal and timbral properties. Nuff said....
9. What makes the Corda Soul even more special are the DSP functions, which exist 100% in the digital domain. If you use the Soul as just an amp, you will not be able to utilize the DSP as it is only in the digital domain. The tone controls are subtle and accurate. And for someone like me who rarely plays with EQ, it is the perfect compliment and allows me to play with EQ easily and subtlety. MY absolute favorite of the DSP functions is the crossfeed. The crossfeed opens up the soundstage and makes the Soul even less fatiguing, which it isn't. I keep the crossfeed at 3 notches to the right and it is absolutely perfect. I love it. I have not used the notch filters.

So, there you have it. The Corda Soul at its price point continues to be a bargain and remains at the top my list for AIOs. I have to hear something better, and we should all be doing as much as possible to shed light on this amazing piece of gear. It is worthy of Summit Fi and worthy of the very best systems.

 

[MRC001]

Nice detailed review. May I suggest you add it to the reviews in the gear section?
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/meier-audio-corda-soul.23528/reviews

 

[alexdemaet]

Nice detailed review. May I suggest you add it to the reviews in the gear section?
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/meier-audio-corda-soul.23528/reviews

Indeed! Thanks for the review @geoffalter11

 

[geoffalter11]

Nice detailed review. May I suggest you add it to the reviews in the gear section?
https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/meier-audio-corda-soul.23528/reviews

Thank you: I will clean it up, add more plus some pictures and put it in the review section.

Thanks for the kind comments

 

[Jan Meier]

Dear Alex,

"I am very satisfied with the mk2 upgrade!"

Glad to hear so!

"I am sorry but unfortunately I forgot how it sounded before the upgrade. I would need 2 Soul's to hear the difference."

I would happily sell you a second unit!!!

But indeed, our auditory memory is relatively short-living and it's therefore not so easy to compare before and after, unless you have another system that you can compare to. Recently another customer also had his amp modified. His comments (translated from German):

"The best thing is, that I indeed can hear a significant difference. It truly is an improvement, which I didn’t expected as such. The soundstage becomes wider and more 3-dimensional. The sound is more clear. Die slight graininess has completely disappeared. Now the sound is absolutely clean. A direct A-B comparison is not possible but I can verify the effect with the help of my Audio-GD headphone amplifier. All headphones profit from the upgrade. It truly was worth it."

His impressions correlate pretty well to my own. Just yesterday I listened to a Mahler symphony on a Pure-Audio-Blu-Ray and the level of detail was simply overwhelming, maybe even a little bit too much.

Another customer had the opportunity to compare at home his own standard SOUL to my MkII version. His conclusion: Some recordings benefit (sometimes considerably), some don't and some are more listenable with the standard version. He also found the level of detail sometimes overwhelming.

I have a SOUL in my television setup and for me the most noticable effect is, that voices have more "authenticity" and speech-recognition has (slightly) become more easy. For me this proves that naturallness has improved.

One should always be aware though that differences are not day and night, and the standard-version of the SOUL already is a fine amp/DAC that gives a lot of pleasure.

Cheers,

Jan

 

[geoffalter11]

Dear Alex,

"I am very satisfied with the mk2 upgrade!"

Glad to hear so!

"I am sorry but unfortunately I forgot how it sounded before the upgrade. I would need 2 Soul's to hear the difference."

I would happily sell you a second unit!!!

But indeed, our auditory memory is relatively short-living and it's therefore not so easy to compare before and after, unless you have another system that you can compare to. Recently another customer also had his amp modified. His comments (translated from German):

"The best thing is, that I indeed can hear a significant difference. It truly is an improvement, which I didn’t expected as such. The soundstage becomes wider and more 3-dimensional. The sound is more clear. Die slight graininess has completely disappeared. Now the sound is absolutely clean. A direct A-B comparison is not possible but I can verify the effect with the help of my Audio-GD headphone amplifier. All headphones profit from the upgrade. It truly was worth it."

His impressions correlate pretty well to my own. Just yesterday I listened to a Mahler symphony on a Pure-Audio-Blu-Ray and the level of detail was simply overwhelming, maybe even a little bit too much.

Another customer had the opportunity to compare at home his own standard SOUL to my MkII version. His conclusion: Some recordings benefit (sometimes considerably), some don't and some are more listenable with the standard version. He also found the level of detail sometimes overwhelming.

I have a SOUL in my television setup and for me the most noticable effect is, that voices have more "authenticity" and speech-recognition has (slightly) become more easy. For me this proves that naturallness has improved.

One should always be aware though that differences are not day and night, and the standard-version of the SOUL already is a fine amp/DAC that gives a lot of pleasure.

Cheers,

Jan

Thanks Jan! This is valuable information coming from you. I have recently added a very powerful Roon NUC10 in a gorgeous fanless case. It was time for me to remove the bottleneck in my system, having my roon core on my iMac. Now my entire 2TB library plus Tidal flow through my NUC into the Corda Soul. It also flows into my reference system of DAC/Streamer and a Eddie Current Aficionado, Matrix X2 Pure and a CFA3. However, the Corda Soul has seen the greatest benefit from this addition.

My Corda Soul already sounded incredible. But, it just got turned up several notches. Especially with micro detail, piano tones, vocal presence and imaging. It is literally like the lights just turned on and I am now looking out a clean window. Before the lights weren't as bright and the window was clean, but not crystal clear. Now everything is crystal clear. I have known for a long time that I needed to remove this bottleneck, that I wasn't giving my equipment the best chance to run at its most efficient and best. I wasn't going to do the upgrade, but now I am going to do it, and I can't wait to hear it. My auditory memory is actually quite acute, so I will give very detailed impressions to our family here on this thread when it returns.

Rhythm and Pacing is better, Tone is more accurate, Transience have more snap, and everything just clicks. I am getting the same benefits in my other system as well, but I really hear it in the Soul. My Soul has got some "Soul". Here is a little soul to top it off... I love the Corda Soul. I just got back from Canjam and tried The Bartok Apex, T+A HA200, DAVE, Sennheiser HDV820, Ferrum Erco. I think these were the only AIOs that would "compete" with the Soul. The only one that I thought competed with the Soul was the T+A HA200 which is a very impressive unit. However, NONE of them sounded better than the Soul. It is that good...

 

[MRC001]

To add to the discussion & comparison, I discovered by accident how good the DA converters in my Tascam DA-3000 recorder are. It uses the Burr Brown PCM1795. This recorder has a mode called "DA-AD" where it doesn't record, but activates its AD and DA converters for real-time conversion.

As described earlier in this thread, use the Corda Soul's external DAC loop. Set the DA-3000 reference level analog output voltage to match the Soul's internal DAC levels so when you flick the switch back & forth between the Soul's internal DAC and back the volume doesn't change. Set the DA-3000 clock to "DIN" so it matches/syncs/adapts to the digital input clock. I ran some measurements and the digital side is bit perfect. Of course, the DA conversion and analog signal is different.

Note that the DA-3000 is professional gear so its analog output voltage is much higher than consumer gear. If you are using a consumer DAC then you may need to open the Soul and flick the internal switch to high analog gain.

It's easy to A/B test because the switching is instantaneous. Compared to the Soul's built-in DAC, the DA-3000 measures a bit cleaner with lower mid-treble distortion. Subjectively, it sounds just a touch warmer, softer, with less glare. Not that the Soul has glare, to the contrary it's one of the smoothest that I have heard. But these are relative differences - the Tascam is more forgiving of bright edgy recordings. Yet it's not veiled, no loss of detail, just a bit more natural presentation. Measurements I made don't explain this because both have the same flat frequency response. There must be something more subtle going on. The slightly warmer voicing works well with my Magnepan speakers, which can be unforgiving of recordings with boosted or artificial presence.

I doubt that any other DAC based on the PCM1795 would sound the same as the DA-3000. The PCM1795 is a modern current output DAC so the implementation must do dI/dV conversion. Every device using this chip will have a different circuit for this which probably makes them all sound different.

I've tried other external DACs that made less difference or sounded worse than the Soul's internal DAC, even though they were modern DACs with super clean measurements. So the Soul's internal DAC is very good. The DA-3000 is unique in being the only one that I found to be an improvement, however slight.

 

[geoffalter11]

To add to the discussion & comparison, I discovered by accident how good the DA converters in my Tascam DA-3000 recorder are. It uses the Burr Brown PCM1795. This recorder has a mode called "DA-AD" where it doesn't record, but activates its AD and DA converters for real-time conversion.

As described earlier in this thread, use the Corda Soul's external DAC loop. Set the DA-3000 reference level analog output voltage to match the Soul's internal DAC levels so when you flick the switch back & forth between the Soul's internal DAC and back the volume doesn't change. Set the DA-3000 clock to "DIN" so it matches/syncs/adapts to the digital input clock. I ran some measurements and the digital side is bit perfect. Of course, the DA conversion and analog signal is different.

Note that the DA-3000 is professional gear so its analog output voltage is much higher than consumer gear. If you are using a consumer DAC then you may need to open the Soul and flick the internal switch to high analog gain.

It's easy to A/B test because the switching is instantaneous. Compared to the Soul's built-in DAC, the DA-3000 measures a bit cleaner with lower mid-treble distortion. Subjectively, it sounds just a touch warmer, softer, with less glare. Not that the Soul has glare, to the contrary it's one of the smoothest that I have heard. But these are relative differences - the Tascam is more forgiving of bright edgy recordings. Yet it's not veiled, no loss of detail, just a bit more natural presentation. Measurements I made don't explain this because both have the same flat frequency response. There must be something more subtle going on. The slightly warmer voicing works well with my Magnepan speakers, which can be unforgiving of recordings with boosted or artificial presence.

I doubt that any other DAC based on the PCM1795 would sound the same as the DA-3000. The PCM1795 is a modern current output DAC so the implementation must do dI/dV conversion. Every device using this chip will have a different circuit for this which probably makes them all sound different.

I've tried other external DACs that made less difference or sounded worse than the Soul's internal DAC, even though they were modern DACs with super clean measurements. So the Soul's internal DAC is very good. The DA-3000 is unique in being the only one that I found to be an improvement, however slight.

This is great info. As good as the DAC in the Corda Soul is, the amp is the shining star. Together they make the best AIO I have yet heard. I just listened to the T+A HA200 and the Corda Soul was every bit as good. It was also as good as the Bartok Apex running as AIO. It was not as good as the Bartok Apex when hooked to an external clock. Which makes the DCS really shine. I did not hear a single AIO under $20,000 at Canjam that sounded better too me than the Corda Soul. Not to say it is perfect, as nothing is, but for what it is it is awfully good.

 

[FritzS]

....

I've tried other external DACs that made less difference or sounded worse than the Soul's internal DAC, even though they were modern DACs with super clean measurements. So the Soul's internal DAC is very good. The DA-3000 is unique in being the only one that I found to be an improvement, however slight.

Corda Soul use: After processing the digital signal is converted to an analog signal using two WM8741 DAC-chips in dual-mono-mode.
I own Corda Daccord ff, that use: 2 pieces WOLFSON WM8741 D/A converter-chip in dual-mono mode.
In analog path both use AD797 opamps biased into class-A.

I am very satisfied with Corda Daccord ff. Jan Meier is currently offering it at a bargain price.

 

[Jan Meier]

Hi Mike,

"Compared to the Soul's built-in DAC, the DA-3000 measures a bit cleaner with lower mid-treble distortion. Subjectively, it sounds just a touch warmer, softer, with less glare."

Seems to me that you're a fine candidate for the MkII upgrade of the SOUL. It just removes that last hint of glare/brittleness!



Jan

 

[geoffalter11]

Hi Mike,

"Compared to the Soul's built-in DAC, the DA-3000 measures a bit cleaner with lower mid-treble distortion. Subjectively, it sounds just a touch warmer, softer, with less glare."

Seems to me that you're a fine candidate for the MkII upgrade of the SOUL. It just removes that last hint of glare/brittleness!



Jan

Coming your way in the next week or two Jan. Can't wait for Mk2. I don't hear any distortion in the treble, nor any glare/etch. But, I could see some feeling that way. I mainly use my Soul with a Final D8K Pro and a HEKv2 non stealth and both are being driven to their max. I also have a CFA3, Aficionado and a Pure BiPolar and don't find the Corda Soul to give up much. I do find that I prefer the amp to the DAC on the Soul, but I love the DAC too. I guess I am a Corda Soul fanboy as I have yet to hear any AIO that eclipses the Corda Soul for my listening preferences. My favorite way to use it is to leave the tone controls alone, but turn the Cross Feed 3 notches to the right. Opens up the soundstage and removes any sense of etch or glare. Maybe I would hear slight treble distortion without the Cross Feed turned to the right. So, thanks Jan as it has made a huge difference in my listening.