Meier Audio Corda Soul - TOTL DAC/AMP/DSP
Jul 8, 2020 at 11:14 AM Post #151 of 357
I have to withdraw the comment of the Daccord preamp and have thus edited the comment above.

And to add something nice to the thread, Meier Audio is running a summer sales with very very sweet prices. I have to say the DACCORD FF + JAZZ FF combo is amongst my favourite headphone audio components. There's even a CLASSIC available. Happy shopping. :)
 
Jul 9, 2020 at 12:39 PM Post #153 of 357
Jul 16, 2020 at 5:44 PM Post #154 of 357
Jul 17, 2020 at 3:17 PM Post #155 of 357
I see this unit went on sale (seems to be a reasonable price) but I'm somewhat frustrated as there are no clean description of the specs:
http://meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/soul.htm
http://meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/amplifiers.htm

For example if you go here and hit specs you get everything you could ever ask for displayed in a digestible manner:
https://www.bursonaudio.com/products/conductor-3x/

Like for meier what is the power output by impedance level? What is the THD etc...
I have a Soul and I did some basic measurements using my sound card (an ESI Juli@, which has balanced inputs). That's not ideal of course, but the Juli@ is a decent sound card with distortion & noise below audible thresholds, so it would reveal any obvious or audible flaws.

In summary, the Soul measured cleaner than the loopback connector, so it's more transparent than my sound card. It would require an AP analyzer to really measure it. All I can say is it sounds fantastic and cursory measurement didn't reveal any problems.

Incidentally, I did the same with my JDS Atom amp, and it measured slightly higher noise & distortion than the Soul.

I also measured the Soul's DSP functions (tone controls, notch filter, FF) and they perform exactly as described.

PS: I used a similar measurement process to discover the Jazz voltage limit & overload, about 6 years ago before ASR measured it. This gives me confidence that while this process is nowhere near as good as an AP analyzer, it is good enough to find any obvious flaws. And anyone with a good sound card can do it (of course, to measure the Soul it will need balanced inputs), so the results are easily independently verifiable.
 
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Dec 23, 2020 at 6:02 PM Post #156 of 357
Hi, short question, I am using a Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) with the latest USB Audio Player PRO and the MQA addition connected via USB to my Meier Audio Corda Soul DAC/headphone amp.
Now here is my problem :
Using the UAPP my Corda Soul works for 44.1 but when switching between some Tidal master quality tracks (bought your MQA addition) the sound gets weird and totally bizarre. Tried different optimization but not getting it right. Anyone has an idea what to do?

Thanks. Best, Reiner
 
Dec 23, 2020 at 6:38 PM Post #157 of 357
I encountered a UAPP bug but it wasn't related to MQA. When I run UAPP on my devices, it doesn't properly handle sample rate changes. It sets the sample rate correctly for the very first track you play after starting the app. After that, if you play any other tracks that have different sample rates, UAPP doesn't change it so the tracks sound sped up / slowed down if the sample rates are close (like 44.1 / 48) or horrible noise if they are very different.

When I reported this bug to UAPP they told me about a settings option that fixes this. And it did indeed fix it! It's called "Free USB bandwidth after playback". By default it's off, and I had to turn it on / enable it. With this enabled, it always sets the sample rate correctly even as you play different tracks at different sample rates.

Note: I've seen this bug on 2 different phones and a tablet, all running different versions of Android. So it's not specific to just one unusual device.
 
Dec 23, 2020 at 6:52 PM Post #158 of 357
I encountered a UAPP bug but it wasn't related to MQA. When I run UAPP on my devices, it doesn't properly handle sample rate changes. It sets the sample rate correctly for the very first track you play after starting the app. After that, if you play any other tracks that have different sample rates, UAPP doesn't change it so the tracks sound sped up / slowed down if the sample rates are close (like 44.1 / 48) or horrible noise if they are very different.

When I reported this bug to UAPP they told me about a settings option that fixes this. And it did indeed fix it! It's called "Free USB bandwidth after playback". By default it's off, and I had to turn it on / enable it. With this enabled, it always sets the sample rate correctly even as you play different tracks at different sample rates.

Note: I've seen this bug on 2 different phones and a tablet, all running different versions of Android. So it's not specific to just one unusual device.

Great advice. Thank you!
Worked.
 
Dec 25, 2020 at 7:06 PM Post #161 of 357
Since this thread is about the Corda Soul, I'll add that I've had mine for 2 years now. It's proven reliable, high build quality making it a pleasure to use, wonderful sound quality, the tone controls and headphone crossfeed help bring imperfect recordings to life. I've bench tested and it has excellent measured performance. Jan has great support, he even customized its firmware for me. The Soul is expensive but I don't mind spending the bucks knowing they went into careful engineering design, attention to detail, excellent build quality, and supporting a talented engineer like Jan and his innovative approach that considers both engineering and psychoacoustics.
 
Dec 25, 2020 at 7:18 PM Post #162 of 357
Since this thread is about the Corda Soul, I'll add that I've had mine for 2 years now. It's proven reliable, high build quality making it a pleasure to use, wonderful sound quality, the tone controls and headphone crossfeed help bring imperfect recordings to life. I've bench tested and it has excellent measured performance. Jan has great support, he even customized its firmware for me. The Soul is expensive but I don't mind spending the bucks knowing they went into careful engineering design, attention to detail, excellent build quality, and supporting a talented engineer like Jan and his innovative approach that considers both engineering and psychoacoustics.
Can you tell me more about the Firmware customisation?
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 2:30 PM Post #165 of 357
Jan Meier was so friendly and lent me his private collection of Corda Soul and a Daccord / Jazz combination so that I could test the two devices over the holidays. If requested, I will be happy to report how I experienced Daccord / Jazz and the Corda Soul.
Yeah please share your impressions.
I bought my Classic ~8 years ago and jans devices are really impressive
 

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