[Whitigir]

I still don’t get it, DSD only needs low pass filters , isn’t it ? Low pass filter is at the end of the chain by every DAC

 

[FredA]

Dsd is by definition a pulse train. It can be played as is with a low-pass filter as you say, but you can't just bypass the da-7 boards. You need to have the correct signal amplitude and a glitch-free train. That is why it has to go through the da-7 and for other reasons too i guess.

 

[Wynnytsky]

The audio-gd may be too transparent and “naked” for now?

are you already on the smooth FW? I'm still loving V2's Accurate. Even the most testy treble tracks from Musica Nuda's 2004 album are delivered with dual Sabre like dynamics w/o the fatigue
05 - I Will Survive
12 - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
15 - Imagine

not a Head-Fi fan at this time so listening time likely is shorter later on at night

midnight listening -- that's when I turn my horns down 10%

 

[Chopin75]

are you already on the smooth FW? I'm still loving V2's Accurate. Even the most testy treble tracks from Musica Nuda's 2004 album are delivered with dual Sabre like dynamics w/o the fatigue
05 - I Will Survive
12 - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
15 - Imagine


midnight listening -- that's when I turn my horns down 10%

That is why I need headphone so I won't disturb my gf while she sleeps by 10PM! Music sounds the best around midnight likely due to the reduced interference from the neighboring electronics etc...all TVs off etc....
I am doing SW - the R27V2S ? I have no comparison with other FW as this is new machine. Default setting so I think it is 8x OS, not sure what the jumper situation is as I have not opened up the chassis yet. The DSD late at night is sounding quite nice even though I am not able to turn up volume, liquid smooth without the edge of SD chips, definitely more refined. The clarity and layering is amazing! at times, as I was playing a Scarlatti polyphonic choir music which I think probably 6-8 part vocal parts and mixed in with solos. With the SD chip it is all in a mess and muddy. I thought something was seriously wrong with the recording! But with R2R7 the placement of different vocal parts become much clear, e.g. Soprano L (or both side) bass center, Tenor center L etc.... you can here the more recessed male voices further back and more forward females on the side. Mind you, this is stereo and the recording is for multi-channel,. which means it will likely be super amazing with 5.1 surround. I also find such stereo downmix recordings inferior when playing just 2.0 (stereo) but when using R2R7 this is pretty damn good! Perhaps mutli-channel with 3 Audio-gd R2R is the way to go??

 

[FredA]

are you already on the smooth FW? I'm still loving V2's Accurate. Even the most testy treble tracks from Musica Nuda's 2004 album are delivered with dual Sabre like dynamics w/o the fatigue
05 - I Will Survive
12 - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
15 - Imagine


midnight listening -- that's when I turn my horns down 10%

Accurate fw forever!

 

[Whitigir]

Dsd is by definition a pulse train. It can be played as is with a low-pass filter as you say, but you can't just bypass the da-7 boards. You need to have the correct signal amplitude and a glitch-free train. That is why it has to go through the da-7 and for other reasons too i guess.

There is no way to bypass the DA-7 board. In order to correctly bypass the DSD, there has to be a route into a 1 bit DAC, which Sony did in the pass. Since Sony abandoned this, there have not been any other developers to pick up after it. Perhap, the only one is TA+8DAC whatever the name is.

However, I still stay on my point that the DSD Native shall not be altered in anyways as it is only recognized by the Altera from it Multibit DOP by the Amanero, and then put them together at the Low-pass filter, and ofcourse glitch-free (which relying on the processing speed, where es9028Pro and 38Pro are very fast), Altera on the DA-7 board isn’t bad. However, I don’t see why there would be a separated circuit to be burned-in. Low-pass Filters burn in as much as the DAC itself, and then the DA-7 board.

The DSD performances on R2R7 is behind it PCM Capabilities. I don’t mean to say that DSD on r2r7 is behind LKS-004. What I am saying

1/ PCM on R2r7 with great source and I2S input, is the best I have heard from any PCM DAC. Even it own DSD can’t compete (the secret recipe is the R2R boards and the FPGA+firmware)

2/ LKS-004 does excellent job on Native DSD, and it DSD playback is much better than it PCM performances, which is the opposite of R2R7.

I have yet to officially comparing the DSD from LKS004 vs R2R7 yet. Because I can not make my R2R7 playback DSD512 correctly....yet

 

[Chopin75]

There is no way to bypass the DA-7 board. In order to correctly bypass the DSD, there has to be a route into a 1 bit DAC, which Sony did in the pass. Since Sony abandoned this, there have not been any other developers to pick up after it. Perhap, the only one is TA+8DAC whatever the name is.

However, I still stay on my point that the DSD Native shall not be altered in anyways as it is only recognized by the Altera from it Multibit DOP by the Amanero, and then put them together at the Low-pass filter, and ofcourse glitch-free (which relying on the processing speed, where es9028Pro and 38Pro are very fast), Altera on the DA-7 board isn’t bad. However, I don’t see why there would be a separated circuit to be burned-in. Low-pass Filters burn in as much as the DAC itself, and then the DA-7 board.

The DSD performances on R2R7 is behind it PCM Capabilities. I don’t mean to say that DSD on r2r7 is behind LKS-004. What I am saying

1/ PCM on R2r7 with great source and I2S input, is the best I have heard from any PCM DAC. Even it own DSD can’t compete (the secret recipe is the R2R boards and the FPGA+firmware)

2/ LKS-004 does excellent job on Native DSD, and it DSD playback is much better than it PCM performances, which is the opposite of R2R7.

I have yet to officially comparing the DSD from LKS004 vs R2R7 yet. Because I can not make my R2R7 playback DSD512 correctly....yet

You may be right that the burn-in time is the same for DSD/PCM as both go through some common pathways.What I am saying is that the DSD skips most or all of the R2R part of the circuit.

Per Kingwa, he seems to say it is running on the same board but decoded differently, these are various answers he gave me when I asked him about DSD playback:

The R2R DA boards built in the separate DSD decoders for DSD signal.
DSD had the separate decoders built in and the data process is different to PCM , so the oversampling setting had not effect the DSD playback.

USB input support up to DSD256.This is the limit of Amanero.
HDMI and RJ45 support up to DSD512 .
It built in 4 groups separate DSD decoders for DSD playback, different to PCM decoders.

Whatever this means? I suspect much like HoloDac and Total Dac, the DSD goes through the first bit decoding and then is separately decoded for DSD and then to the analogue filters. It can't go to R2R circuit because it is not PCM. Having said that apparently there are some DACs that use the first 5 bits of the R2R board to decode 1 bit DSD (apparently some multi-bit SD chip does the same), such as the Terminator (see their web). We know that DSD is not really affected by the firmware, at least per some users here noted, so the firmware is really to upgrade the PCM playback. There is probably nothing much to upgrade for the DSD except maybe better FPGA (I assume that is also used because I think PS Audio real pure DSD uses that). Well, maybe I am talking all nonsense!

 

[FredA]

There is no way to bypass the DA-7 board. In order to correctly bypass the DSD, there has to be a route into a 1 bit DAC, which Sony did in the pass. Since Sony abandoned this, there have not been any other developers to pick up after it. Perhap, the only one is TA+8DAC whatever the name is.

However, I still stay on my point that the DSD Native shall not be altered in anyways as it is only recognized by the Altera from it Multibit DOP by the Amanero, and then put them together at the Low-pass filter, and ofcourse glitch-free (which relying on the processing speed, where es9028Pro and 38Pro are very fast), Altera on the DA-7 board isn’t bad. However, I don’t see why there would be a separated circuit to be burned-in. Low-pass Filters burn in as much as the DAC itself, and then the DA-7 board.

The DSD performances on R2R7 is behind it PCM Capabilities. I don’t mean to say that DSD on r2r7 is behind LKS-004. What I am saying

1/ PCM on R2r7 with great source and I2S input, is the best I have heard from any PCM DAC. Even it own DSD can’t compete (the secret recipe is the R2R boards and the FPGA+firmware)

2/ LKS-004 does excellent job on Native DSD, and it DSD playback is much better than it PCM performances, which is the opposite of R2R7.

I have yet to officially comparing the DSD from LKS004 vs R2R7 yet. Because I can not make my R2R7 playback DSD512 correctly....yet

I am not saying there is a separate circuit. Just that the operating freq. is much higher (MHz).

 

[Whitigir]

I am not saying there is a separate circuit. Just that the operating freq. is much higher (MHz).

Agreed, and this is where the ES9038Pro shines through.

 

[Whitigir]

Damn it, why is the Smooth Accurate firmware sound so good in 8X-OS ? It used to have those over saturated edges resolutions. It is now so smooth and organic feeling. It feels like an improved NOS with punchy dynamic. This level is mind blowing

 

[FredA]

Damn it, why is the Smooth Accurate firmware sound so good in 8X-OS ? It used to have those over saturated edges resolutions. It is now so smooth and organic feeling. It feels like an improved NOS with punchy dynamic. This level is mind blowing

Seems like Kingwa made of us very happy campers with these firmwares. Thanks to him. The funny thing is we all have our favorite one. It's a good thing he made those 3 variations. Things are not all perfect with the accurate fw but so very close, i love its laidback presentation.

 

[DACLadder]

The hybrid V2SA OSx8 sounds really good on both the R7 and M7S. Some of Smooth’s organic drive with Accurate’s treble clarity. Bass is very good as well. Took me a while to warm up to V2SA but it is very good.

I’ll try V2 Accurate again in the R7 but Accurate did not sound as good as V2SA in the M7S. But sticking with V2SA for now as it sounds great.

@Whitigir i would like to compare the Pink Fawn HDMI I2S with a Singxer SU-1 HDMI I2S. The PF probably takes the R7 to a new level!

 

[enigmus12]

The hybrid V2SA OSx8 sounds really good on both the R7 and M7S. Some of Smooth’s organic drive with Accurate’s treble clarity. Bass is very good as well. Took me a while to warm up to V2SA but it is very good.

I’ll try V2 Accurate again in the R7 but Accurate did not sound as good as V2SA in the M7S. But sticking with V2SA for now as it sounds great.

Damn, i was starting to think that NOS3 from V2A was the best for my system with M7S (after testing V2S and V2A on 8xOS and NOS3)... Now I'll have to test V2SA I didn't at first because I thought it was some kind of half way compromise between what we already got.

Thanks

 

[Whitigir]

The hybrid V2SA OSx8 sounds really good on both the R7 and M7S. Some of Smooth’s organic drive with Accurate’s treble clarity. Bass is very good as well. Took me a while to warm up to V2SA but it is very good.

I’ll try V2 Accurate again in the R7 but Accurate did not sound as good as V2SA in the M7S. But sticking with V2SA for now as it sounds great.

@Whitigir i would like to compare the Pink Fawn HDMI I2S with a Singxer SU-1 HDMI I2S. The PF probably takes the R7 to a new level!

Pinkfaun i2s is stuck at pcm 32/192 X_X. It is great with R2R7 and i Can recommend it all day long

 

[DACLadder]

Damn, i was starting to think that NOS3 from V2A was the best for my system with M7S (after testing V2S and V2A on 8xOS and NOS3)... Now I'll have to test V2SA I didn't at first because I thought it was some kind of half way compromise between what we already got. Thanks

I’ll have to revisit V2A on both DACs. I originally felt V2SA had better bass on the M7S with not much additional improvement in the trebles compared to V2A. After listening to V2SA on the M7S I loaded it on the R2R 7 and like it as well. So working my way up to V2A but may go too far in my system. I need more lower register weight and less treble abundance. I get that with V2S. So V2SA is a good balance.