[Il Cuffiotto]

I know, sadly...but what if someone bought officially his Kingwa jewel in his own country? Official italian Agd distributor is close to my town...what a pity! I will write to Magna in September. Will see.

 

[comzee]

I'm sure whatever Magna did isn't some novel idea. I'd put my bet on it being, replacing some of the electrolytic capacitors in the analog output stage with film capacitors.
Whoever has the upgrade could just take a picture of the internals and that would probably be enough info to replicate the upgrade....

 

[Chopin75]

I know, sadly...but what if someone bought officially his Kingwa jewel in his own country? Official italian Agd distributor is close to my town...what a pity! I will write to Magna in September. Will see.

I think you can send the DAC for upgrade at Magna even if you have not bought from them. They would likely extend warranty for another 1 yr and may take over the 10 yr warranty after the upgrade but check with them first.

 

[DACLadder]

Look at my HDPLEX PC, not exactly state of the art looking. The aurrender on other hand is beautiful and sleek. oh I left the USB attached to the PC, You can see the USB filter there that blocks the HDD noise. I don't have my external HDD attached in the pic.

Totally overlooked this on first scan of the forum a few days ago. There is so much activity it hard to keep up.

But congrats on your dedicated music PC! That is huge step up from your Mac.

 

[ToddRaymond]

I feel I should offer my recommendation for a really great value interconnect cable: the Neotech NEMOI-3220. Rectangular OCC copper conductors, with teflon and polyethylene insulation, Cu-mylar wrap and braided shielding, and a crapload of PVC to deal with if you’re attempting to use it with tiny mini 3-pin XLR connectors (I have Furutech FT-608mf). @alpha421 from his Triton Audio Cables did a marvelous job building my ACSS cables for between my R-28 and my pair of Precision 3Ss.

The 3220 is $13 CDN per foot, cryo treated from Take Five Audio.

 

[Il Cuffiotto]

I'm sure whatever Magna did isn't some novel idea. I'd put my bet on it being, replacing some of the electrolytic capacitors in the analog output stage with film capacitors.
Whoever has the upgrade could just take a picture of the internals and that would probably be enough info to replicate the upgrade....[/QUOTE

Kingwa's circuits are all dc coupled. This means no caps are in signal path, just on supplies. And in this use, electrolitics are a must, due to the needed big values. Probably a swap with some better brand, silmics or something similar...they can heavily affect sound results, in my experience! And of course silver cabling throughout...the secret of magna is linked to the long job in understanding where swapping caps to have significant upgrades! 80€ is a small amount: they will touch not so many components. A picture could help, but for an accurate job I think we need more. Of course if someone has better ideas will be welcome!

 

[Chopin75]

Totally overlooked this on first scan of the forum a few days ago. There is so much activity it hard to keep up.

But congrats on your dedicated music PC! That is huge step up from your Mac.

Yah, got it for 8 months, though the older version LPS was blown so for 3 months I was not using it. It has the Pinkfaun USB bridge, Ryzen 2700x 8-core CPU, running Euphony OS. Sounding quite gorgeous with best recordings from DXD, DSD. A huge improvement from my old MacBook, with same Euphony OS. It gets cranky and picky with some of the lower RES stuff, also maybe I have using mainly NOS. I am curious how it will compare with the Aurender. At least it can do DSD256 nicely!

But I really quite like TDA NOS, all rounded performer.
The older V3S FW perhaps a but warmer but probably less precise. V3S on NOS1 has been really great on DXD but not so good on 24/96 or lower, need upsampling. TDA NOS seems to do both DXD and lower RES both equally well, perhaps a more neutral tone? Anyway, will see how it performs on the new DaV2 board!

 

[DACLadder]

@Chopin75 Enjoy! At least you get to try before you buy later on.

Since you are sending Magna your R2R 7 for upgrade are you consider their latest mods? Caps and silver wires...

 

[Chopin75]

@Chopin75 Enjoy! At least you get to try before you buy later on.

Since you are sending Magna your R2R 7 for upgrade are you consider their latest mods? Caps and silver wires...

Magna did offer upgrade but looks like it is mainly for V2 Board

https://www.magnahifi.com/en/webshop/product/audio-gd-r2r-ladder-dac-board-upgrade

 

[Il Cuffiotto]

Kingwa's circuits are all dc coupled. This means no caps are in signal path, just on supplies. And in this use, electrolitics are a must, due to the needed big values. Probably a swap with some better brand, silmics or something similar...they can heavily affect sound results, in my experience! And of course silver cabling throughout...the secret of magna is linked to the long job in understanding where swapping caps to have significant upgrades! 80€ is a small amount: they will touch not so many components. A picture could help, but for an accurate job I think we need more. Of course if someone has better ideas will be welcome!

 

[Chopin75]

Another issue with loading the USB blaster, why would the start button remain mute? So i cannot click on it to download. I am sure i have the connection correct ans usb blaster is on. I also checked/ticked the program config. Strange

 

[Chopin75]

Another issue with loading the USB blaster, why would the start button remain mute? So i cannot click on it to download. I am sure i have the connection correct ans usb blaster is on. I also checked/ticked the program config. Strange

Never mind, I forgot to add device. It won’t prompt me when ther is an issue. I am a Mac user, so not used to having to think each time I press a button. Windows really makes people smarter!

 

[DACLadder]

@Chopin75 Thanks... It is difficult to understand what Magna is actually offering for 80 euros. I have seen pictures (briefly) of caps on the digital board that were changed and no mention of the V2 DAC boards. But 80 euros does not seem like enough money to change all the caps I saw in the photos.

 

[DACLadder]

Asy3 is interesting firmware. I tend to like OS0 (1x - no oversampling with steep filters) better with Asy3 versus the default OS 8x. Going old school this week I tried the Off Ramp 5 with the Aurender driving the show. The fully loaded Off Ramp (HDMI I2S) is no slouch at sound quality and sounding especially nice with Asy3 analog filter NOS mode. But the Off Ramp is limited to 192K PCM only.

Next week the 10Mhz OCXO oscillator arrives so will be able to compare externally clocked Gustard U16 against everything I can throw at it.

 

[Chopin75]

@Chopin75 Thanks... It is difficult to understand what Magna is actually offering for 80 euros. I have seen pictures (briefly) of caps on the digital board that were changed and no mention of the V2 DAC boards. But 80 euros does not seem like enough money to change all the caps I saw in the photos.

OK some clarification from Magna.

The DaV2 board they advertise as R2R Ladder mod is actually mod of the DA7v2, - 75-80 Euro I think
For any other mod please contact Magna for more info.