[Chris Kaoss]

I've spent the morning reading up on DACs. Wow, what a minefield for the uneducated like me. My quad Vena ii has a built in dac ess sabre. What does this mean for me? I don't really have a clue lol. My era-1 sound great. So do I really need to chase anything else?

If you're pleased and satisfied by the sound of the Vena II / Era-1, i wouldn't jump in that rabbit hole.

 

[The Jester]

If you're pleased and satisfied by the sound of the Vena II / Era-1, i wouldn't jump in that rabbit hole.

Second that ..
I came from the Vinyl era and as an early adopter of CD spent years chasing that “something missing” in digital, and as far as my budget has allowed I’m at the endgame, sure there’s “bigger, better, faster, more“ out there but way beyond my budget, so if you’re happy with what you have spend the $$ on more music, live concert tickets, Women, anything but ”Hifi upgrades”... some true lines from a James song “ if I hadn’t seen such riches I could live with being poor“ .. once hifi becomes a hobby and takes second place to enjoying music it’s a slippery slope ...

 

[Thfoolonthhill]

That answers that then. I spent enough chasing better sound, upgrading my turntable and buying expensive speaker cables that I'm happy with at the top of my budget. Could do without another chase. And yes I'm more than happy with the quads as they are. I should stop reading this thread, ha ha.

 

[WorksUnit]

Does anyone have any experience to make a comparison between LCD-X, Aeon2C and Era-1?

 

[Anatman]

I've spent the morning reading up on DACs. Wow, what a minefield for the uneducated like me. My quad Vena ii has a built in dac ess sabre. What does this mean for me? I don't really have a clue lol. My era-1 sound great. So do I really need to chase anything else?

Well, I am as uneducated as you in this department, maybe also even more, so: You mentioned ess sabre, and haven't got any more educated i guess?

My Pre Box S2 Digitals has:

Dual mono construction
High end ESS Sabre ESS9038 dual DAC
Proprietary clock circuity design
Organic polymer capacitors and thin film miniMELF resistors
MQA hardware decoding
DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 & DSD512 (DoP, DSD512 native)
Up to 24bit/192kHz for optical & coax inputs

Have anybody around here educated heads in the ESS-etc department? And if so, what does it matter for the Quads as planar magnetic headphones?

 

[fericske]

......Have anybody around here educated heads in the ESS-etc department? And if so, what does it matter for the Quads as planar magnetic headphones?......

Don't stress yourself on dac chip. It has own sound character, yes, but that's matter at very cheap designed dacs mostly.
In a correct designed (branded) dac the final result of sound is depend how built around the dac chip with parts, those are selected for the requested sound quality.
You have to check the features of the chip only, if you have some preferences for mqa, dsd capability and things like this.
Two different dac with same chip use can sound totally different, so is not on the chip (if designed well).

 

[Anatman]

Don't stress yourself on dac chip. It has own sound character, yes, but that's matter at very cheap designed dacs mostly.
In a correct designed (branded) dac the final result of sound is depend how built around the dac chip with parts, those are selected for the requested sound quality.
You have to check the features of the chip only, if you have some preferences for mqa, dsd capability and things like this.
Two different dac with same chip use can sound totally different, so is not on the chip (if designed well).

Thank you!

Almost as I thought, this department I will stay miles away form as of this moment! My Quads sound perfect to me now, and there are no reason to have any more "educations" relatet to the DACs "ess and the more the less in the ess" as far as this road goes for me. It is often so, when digging into it, a world of surroundings that matters opening up. For a modest man as myself, this is far above my pay grade I think.

And again, thank you!

 

[WorksUnit]

@Thfoolonthhill
There are some channels on Youtube where different dacs are plugged into hifi systems to "A/B" test". Worth a look if you are curious. Whilst there is sometimes a difference to my ears, and sometimes a clear preference it is not night and day ....the comments on a particular winner are generally polarising too.

 

[fericske]

@Thfoolonthhill
There are some channels on Youtube where different dacs are plugged into hifi systems to "A/B" test". Worth a look if you are curious. Whilst there is sometimes a difference to my ears, and sometimes a clear preference it is not night and day ....the comments on a particular winner are generally polarising too.

This thing like many others are gear dependent.
I have several dacs and amps, and they react different to cabling, dac, sources.
The small Spartan Helot 2x (great budget choice for Sennheisers) shows slight differences between 2 midfi (Korg 100m, Qp1r dap/dac) and a high end (TMP Ant) dacs, while the higher class Woo Wa6 and high end (TMP Ant) amps shows more significant differences between these dacs.
And so, if I want to try usb cables, power cables, mains, I have to use the TMPs for that, because they can show the differences immediately, while with the rest I could spend weeks to judge and make decision.
And of course this all matters only if you have higher quality/class speakers, headphones, those have to reacts nicely too for changes.

 

[Thfoolonthhill]

@Thfoolonthhill
There are some channels on Youtube where different dacs are plugged into hifi systems to "A/B" test". Worth a look if you are curious. Whilst there is sometimes a difference to my ears, and sometimes a clear preference it is not night and day ....the comments on a particular winner are generally polarising too.

Like Chris Kaoss suggested, im not gonna jump in that rabbit hole but thanks for commenting

 

[WorksUnit]

@fericske

Some of the channels do try to keep the gear / recording the same then swap the dac out, so I found that interesting. And of course youtube compression..
Also have Helot enjoy it a lot with senns

 

[WorksUnit]

Got my Era-1s back under warranty today.
Dealer returned them to Quad HQ in Huntingdon after confirming the fault, my origional pair and cable are back and working perfectly.
No information on the technical nature of the fault(s) though to contribute....but the takeaway is that these can be fixed under warranty in the UK despite not being manufactured here.

 

[DenverW]

So I recently lucked into a pair of quads that a fellow headfi member sold, and I'm enjoying them! I was reading back through the thread and I noticed that the pad discussion just sort of fizzled out around the end of last year. No good replacement for stock perf leather pads? I always like to replace the pads on headphones I get, so is there a place to get a pair of replacements? Hopefully not at focal level prices .

Going to take these to work tomorrow and try these on my portable unit. Right now listening on a bottlehead mainline and they sound excellent. I'm wondering how these would sound out of a bottlehead sex amp with lots of power.

 

[mobbaddict]

So I recently lucked into a pair of quads that a fellow headfi member sold, and I'm enjoying them! I was reading back through the thread and I noticed that the pad discussion just sort of fizzled out around the end of last year. No good replacement for stock perf leather pads? I always like to replace the pads on headphones I get, so is there a place to get a pair of replacements? Hopefully not at focal level prices .

Going to take these to work tomorrow and try these on my portable unit. Right now listening on a bottlehead mainline and they sound excellent. I'm wondering how these would sound out of a bottlehead sex amp with lots of power.

I've been looking for replacement pads but I think the fixation system is specific to the Quad. It looks like the Focal pad system except that you have 6 tips instead of 5. I guess you could get more standard pads (flat on the back) and glue or tape them to the Quad. Another possibility would be to remove the round plastic piece of the stock pads and insert it inside a replacement pad. And finally you could ask Vesper Audio to create some custom pads for you, but I doubt they would be able to create the same fixation system (I haven't asked them).

In any case I would look for similar perforated leather pads as the stock ones but with a flatter profile. I believe the angled shape is boosting the bass. Perforations help taming the treble with the Quad. The Dekoni perforated leather pads that I have are a nice improvement for sound quality.

Joshua Valour made a nice video on this topic

 

[Anatman]

Got my Era-1s back under warranty today.
Dealer returned them to Quad HQ in Huntingdon after confirming the fault, my origional pair and cable are back and working perfectly.
No information on the technical nature of the fault(s) though to contribute....but the takeaway is that these can be fixed under warranty in the UK despite not being manufactured here.

Mine are still in Germany. I received a email from them saying that they will not collect them from postal. Cause the sending is wrong due to customs, I haven't decide what to do yet... They said that they had to pay ca 200£ just to collect them from postal? I have already paid 30£ to sendt them to Germany correctly regarding the customs-rules here in Norway.

Still, even if my set are bought in Denmark fro the HiFi-freaks, that now is bankrupt, do I have a kind of "claim" to Quads HQ? I dont know...