bumping time.
Brought one of these in from Yahoo Japan by way of the Rinkya site and been using it for the better part of a year(?) now.
Using an ACUPWR stepdown transformer made in the US ( 120v here in Canada to 100v Japan ).
Don't trust those shoddy black box things where they want you to buy well above and beyond their wattage ratings so they don't go up in smoke...
Plus the ACUPWR is solid build quality, nice pretty much perfect wave reading in their scope on the video anyhow. *** I think they are guaranteed for life also ****
Absolutely no complaints at all.
=Nice standby button to idle when not in use so no need to fully power down each time.
=Easy to navigate right off the bat is great since instruction manual is in Japanese obviously.
=Screen dimmable levels or fully off.
=Aesthetics are
excellent , plus very solid casework and design. even has cork layers on the bottom of the feet.
=Direct plug and play with Ubuntu Linux no drivers needed and has never cut out once.
=I leave it on 2x mainly. No upsampling mode is generally a bit more abrupt ( in comparison ), good stuff but the
slightly more analogue 2x hits the perfect spot =it is a noticeable slight difference.
With the USB input I am not able to pull up 4x upsampling on the display when selecting the settings, the manual has something to say there about that IIRC it is what I am feeding it, or something like that. Anyhow not concerned in the least about 4x.
=Feeding it USB with a Pangea Audio Silver USB cable ( heavily discounted ) with a very nice result, something about the way they are heavily shielding the data lines and power lines separately must account for what it does. Additionally I wanted to see what cutting the 5v lines running along the cable length did too, so I blocked the 5v at the computer rear and reintroduced it at the DAC rear with a linear wall wart feeding 5v into a custom mini usb adapter I made. Fun project, why not.
Case at back top seems to get barely a hint of warmth.
About the only thing that might make me swap this out, from what I have narrowed it down to over this whole time, would be the Teddy Pardo Dac. Maaaaybe the Gungnir MB.
And the whole time thinking I could likely be perfectly happy staying put with this. There's nothing I can place that tells me I need to move it on, other than the audiphoolery.
If I were smart I'd ignore the " what if ", but that Teddy Pardo unit is hard to ignore.
I don't know what else to say about it other than agreeing with basic sonic impressions in here. every system is so different, amps, speakers , headphones etc.
Can't be too many people with one of these in here?
I did see
Muppetface still has hers ( nice to see ), saw that browsing the new Massdrop Cavalli amp thread which is why I thought I'd throw this in here what little good it will do.
Keep in mind that these can be had a heck of a lot cheaper nowadays than their initial cost.
After all, their sonics don't change, just the cost
and other options keep popping up. And the "what if" thoughts.
