[guzz46]

I measure with my ears and do not need any other tools to decide whether the sound is good. This Amir guy is not trustable IMHO.

You don't have any audio-gd gear, do you? I guess you just dropped by to help people form a valid opinion...

I agree, that Amir guy simply doesn't know what he's talking about, he seems to think if a particular piece of audio gear measures better it will sound better, but how does he know if it will sound better if he never listens to it? and what does "sound better" even mean to him? it must mean better numbers and graphs on a computer screen.

One of his top dac's (in 6th place) is the Oppo UDP205, which I've heard before on another system and I wouldn't write home about it, it had the same basic sonic signature as the Oppo BDP105, which I've compared directly to a Cambridge Audio 752BD, and the Cambridge sounded better despite the specs being worse, the Oppo had that classic ESS Sabre sound, lots of detail and dynamics, but cold and analytical, great for movies, but not so much for music in my opinion, just look at his list https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-index-of-measurement-comparison-charts.8246/
According to his list a Schitt Yggdrasil sounds worse than a Pioneer VSX-LX504 AV receiver.

 

[Chopin75]

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/art-basel-miami-maurizio-cattelan-banana-scli-intl/index.html

Duct taped banana sold for $120k at Art Basel Miami

Still cheaper than a Monet I guess, what a strange world...

Well the contemporary art world is very dumb and pretentious. People want to show off buying useless/valueless junk. They are buying ideas that really have no value in the long term. If we think it is ridiculous to buy $10000 cable, that is nothing compared with buying this banana that would decompose or an art work that would destroy itself (I forgot that prankster artist)
I did see some Hi-Fi equipment as art now and then. We can definitely make a piece of art out of some used R7 DAC or other audio-gd, and make up a story about it, e.,g "obsession of Head-Fi. or some other BS"..

 

[Chopin75]

I agree, that Amir guy simply doesn't know what he's talking about, he seems to think if a particular piece of audio gear measures better it will sound better, but how does he know if it will sound better if he never listens to it? and what does "sound better" even mean to him? it must mean better numbers and graphs on a computer screen.

One of his top dac's (in 6th place) is the Oppo UDP205, which I've heard before on another system and I wouldn't write home about it, it had the same basic sonic signature as the Oppo BDP105, which I've compared directly to a Cambridge Audio 752BD, and the Cambridge sounded better despite the specs being worse, the Oppo had that classic ESS Sabre sound, lots of detail and dynamics, but cold and analytical, great for movies, but not so much for music in my opinion, just look at his list https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-index-of-measurement-comparison-charts.8246/
According to his list a Schitt Yggdrasil sounds worse than a Pioneer VSX-LX504 AV receiver.

I think Kingwa's site mentions that R2R does measure worse than Signa-delta.
There is bound to be noise in a NOS mode without digital filter. Filtering out noise does not mean it will sound better. To me NOS mode sounds much better and organic but is relatively les clean and is much more affected by AC noise. If measurements are done with a noisy AC supply I imagine it would look really bad.
Vinyl is much noisier but can beat many cleaner digital gear on organic sound quality.
Noise is not necessarily a bad thing depending on whether noise actually affects the outcome of the sound.
The human ears detect many subtleties of sound not detected by instrumental measures
Real live music is not all dead quiet & clean, and there is noise everywhere in the concert all. People's noise, AC noise, etc... instruments make noise: scratchy strings, etc
I find heavy filtering often rob the music of this "noise" that is a true presence and really part of the music itself, giving life to the music.

 

[PLGA]

My case is similar to Scott.

My Line Magnetic LM-508IA integrated (used as power amp) has about 1% of THD and it sounds much better and real than my Nord class D amp, wich has a lot less THD and much more S/N ratio.

 

[517269]

I see that Amir has also dissed the Uptone Audio EtherREGEN on Audiophilestyle. In a nutshell, he measured no noise difference before or after the isolated Ethernet Regen port and he heard no difference so the 17 pages of positive listener feedback must all be wrong along with the 500 first production run of users who kept the 30-day guaranteed product. Alex Crespi/John Swenson published up front from the beginning that they did not have a way to measure the noise difference after the isolated Ethernet port but the listening differences were unmistakable...
Fourth post down on this URL page - https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...regen-listening-impressions/page/16/#comments

 

[morda]

Hi
Did anyone compare Denafrips Terminator vs AGD R7-HE?
I have to choose between two of them.
Please help me...

 

[Chopin75]

Hi
Did anyone compare Denafrips Terminator vs AGD R7-HE?
I have to choose between two of them.
Please help me...

Maybe you can ask these guys here:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/denafrips-terminator-the-king-of-r2r-dac.851085/page-38

 

[FredA]

Maybe you can ask these guys here:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/denafrips-terminator-the-king-of-r2r-dac.851085/page-38

@Jacula is supposed to do a comparison when his r7-he's burn in is done.

 

[ToddRaymond]

Hmm, interesting looking preamp, the XA-7: http://www.audio-gd.com/HE/XA7/XA7CH.htm

Looks like it was perhaps being offered for a limited time??

 

[newabc]

Hmm, interesting looking preamp, the XA-7: http://www.audio-gd.com/HE/XA7/XA7CH.htm

Looks like it was perhaps being offered for a limited time??

Based on the discussion of Kingwa's web forum(bbs.audio-gd.com), the limited clients pre-ordered them several months ago. The parts of XA-7 were very limited. There's no way to place an order for it now.

 

[JaMo]

Hmm, interesting looking preamp, the XA-7: http://www.audio-gd.com/HE/XA7/XA7CH.htm

Looks like it was perhaps being offered for a limited time??

Kingwa is a remarkable man. Beside the Audio-gd product line for public sale he now and then runs limited DIY projects in the domestic community where everything started. This with a very small number of builds. The XA-7 is a diamond differential, class A preamplifier with regenerating power supply and with the same tonality as the (also limited) TDA1541A-S2 dac. There is also a Class A power amp (XA150) in this line up. Very exclusive gears. I was lucky to get one TDA1541A-dac and I will never let it to go.

This time it seems that Kingwa will sell the XA-7 to public

I admire KIngwa for many things. I did a face plate change on my R2R-7 and had a pair of strange behaviors after. Kingwa guided and supported 100% until finished. Despite he is a businessman he still has his feet well grounded in "DIY" and near us, his customers. It may disturb some people with the sometime, fast changes of products. Some of us understand the great privilege we have to join this and if we can accept the continuous evolution, and some "home work", Kingwa is generous and let us upgrade for very decent money. -How many companies allows that? We get excellent performance and also a never ending chain of surprises from KIngwa. We may also learn something in process. Thank You.

/Jan

 

[borrego]

Kingwa always priced his diamond differential design models higher than his ACSS counterpart models, due to tighter transistor matching requirement and not using any DC Servo. I recall when I bought my Master-1 preamp back in 2011, I had the chance of buying the last SA3000 preamp in stock. The SA3000 was 10% more expensive than the then just released Master-1. I actually changed my order a few times between the SA3000 and Master-1 a few times, before finally decided on the Master-1, mainly due to the "direct" ACSS DAC-Preamp connection option.

A few years later I again had the chance buying the last ever SA31se headphone amp (not from audio-gd factor, but from the French dealer audiophonics), I did not want missing the chance again. In general I like the sound of ACSS with speakers and diamond differential sound on headphones.

 

[darren700]

Kingwa always priced his diamond differential design models higher than his ACSS counterpart models, due to tighter transistor matching requirement and not using any DC Servo. I recall when I bought my Master-1 preamp back in 2011, I had the chance of buying the last SA3000 preamp in stock. The SA3000 was 10% more expensive than the then just released Master-1. I actually changed my order a few times between the SA3000 and Master-1 a few times, before finally decided on the Master-1, mainly due to the "direct" ACSS DAC-Preamp connection option.

A few years later I again had the chance buying the last ever SA31se headphone amp (not from audio-gd factor, but from the French dealer audiophonics), I did miss the chance. In general I like the sound of ACSS with speakers and diamond differential sound on headphones.

Funny you should mention the SA-31SE. I just finished integrating it into my speaker system with the DI20 and R2R-7 so I would have a way to listen to the R2R-7 with headphones. (HE-350 feeding it also) Listening to it with my LCD-XC now and it sounds sublime. This is one amp I will never sell. I actually had a C2-SA also that I regret selling. I only wish Kingwa regularly offered his diamond differential designs instead of such limited runs of them.

 

[ToddRaymond]

@JaMo Thanks for sharing your thoughts! And I couldn't agree more with how commendable his entire approach is. Not only does he posses a stratospheric attention to detail, but an equally high level of desire to provide and support such wonderful products, all at a very reasonable price. (There's some free ad copy for him.) Without naming names, certain other companies put far more of an emphasis on the marketing approach and whatnot. To me, Kingwa is the very definition of not selling out, and of not resting on one's laurels. Sure, not every product he puts out is going to be for everybody – and technically I have not heard most of his concoctions – but his willingness and passion to keep pushing and experimenting is seemingly limitless.

There's a nifty looking phono stage coming out soon: the LP-1. He also has the XA-7 on the 'Home' page of the English site now.

 

[UsoppNoKami]

I went from R2R-11 to R1, then i managed to compare a Master-11S against Hugo2 TT + Mscaler and bought the M-11S... and now I am a happy owner of the R7HE.

I've heard some decent Chi-Fi DIY gear like XiangSheng DA-05B (dual AKM4497 and i fitted a WE396A in the tube buffer, upgraded the OpAmps to full set of Burson V6 Vivids ) and have extensively auditioned the Chord Dave + BluMscaler at a local dealer's place with their obscenely priced speakers...

but I keep coming back to my AGD gear with a smile