TOTALDAC DAC

My D1 went down the other day, throwing a nasty smell through the appartment in the middle of night. Sent back to Vincent Brient last weekend and it's already there under repair.

Now, I took the opportunity to ask about the D1-six upgrade which ended up being a big big mistake... I went for it and my audio budget is once again pretty much shot for the rest of the year :-O.

My D1-dual was 2 dacs per channel working in differential mode (hence one was using only half the dacs with rca or headphone out).

The D1-six adds one more DAC per channel and they are switched to parallel operation. The conversion to differential signal is done by a separate discrete circuit (no opamp) and the output stage was improved compared to the dual.

Apparently, putting 3 dacs in parallel brings much more benefit than running a single dac in differential configuration... We'll see

As a bonus, I am actually getting a brand new unit, expecting it back here in not too long. I put back the Yamamoto YDA-01 to duty during the absence of the D1 and, while it's not bad, the magic is gone. It's not a huge difference but it's missing air, instrument separation, impact. I will be putting the Yamamoto dac for sale, I've been too lazy to put up the add till now but it is time to let it go .

Cheers,
Arnaud

 

Interesting.
 
A couple of questions:
1) Before the upgrade, why didn't you used balanced>RCA adapters to get 2 (/full use) DAC chips per channel?
2) What was the cause of the DAC dying??
 
I'm sure you'll enjoy the six

 

Interesting suggestion about going balanced to se with an adapter (TotalDAC sells one as a matter of fact). Reason why I haven't tried it before is simply I did not think / know that could be better. The BHSE is fully differential amp, so are the transducers so I thought the best source configuration would also be differential...

As for the failure, it was apparently a capacitor in the power supply which made a resistor overheat and eventually give up. This particular capacitor model is no longer used apparently.

Indeed, I am pretty I'll enjoy my dac back, can't be any worse than before .

 

Seems you're unlucky with your rig @arnaud . Some black voodoo maybe?

 

Looking forward very much to your impression of the D1-six.

 

I had some problem as Arnaud...something was burnt inside the d1-dual dac...I sent it back to Vincent who immediately replaced some flawed components.

Then I asked Vincent to perform the (costly, indeed) d1 dual to d1 six upgrade.
After 24 hours burning in...sound is already amazing.
Major differences: higher soundstage, more details and harmonics without loosing musicality (perhaps even better than before...)

Keep you posted with further evolutions

Fabio

 

Ah Vincent, what a devil. No sooner do I have my d-1 dual and separate server integrated into my system, than the d-1 Six appears.  While I love the idea of a single box, I am not sure that the single box plus the 6 ladders versus the four I have is enough to justify the transatlantic inconveniences of an upgrade. Now, if that DSD capability got increased, that might swing it. With the recent software update that made the Server RoonReady and UPnP-capable, my Totaldac is already quite sweet. Still, I have already written Vincent........... [Pic of my main listening station attached; sorry for the fuzzy picture quality.]

 

Vincent wrote about the D1-six:
 
... you could also use the XLR output (for headphones with a special adapter-cable), or it is also possible to use the jack output and order a d1-six with 4.8Vrms on the jack output and RCA output (and double on the XLR output), a special option for headphones. This way you keep the normal headphone wiring.
 
Sounds really interesting. What do you think about the HD800 with those different options (I like the HD800 a lot with my D1 dual right now)? I suppose that both options drectly from the D1-six will sound better than the HD800 from a dedicated headphone amp (like my Master 9).

 

Arnaud - Please PM me. Thanks Mark

 

I am very interested in how to d1-dual + d1-server (with reclocker) would compare against the d1-six... Also taking into account the ease of upgrading to higher-end models like the d1-monoblocks.

 

I wrote Vincent about upgrading, thinking to myself that if I could consolidate to one box, that would be an advantage. But Vincent advised that I should consider upgrading the d1-dual to the d1-six [without server], and keeping my server, because my separate server would have a sonic advantage with the USB reclocker. I noticed on his website that he refers to the six/server as the best integrated solution. Apparently, he feels that a six plus separate server is still superior to the integrated six server. So, I am definitely contemplating an upgrade from the dual to the six.

 

I would imagine upgrading to the six without the server would also save you money.

 

It seems that option a) d1-six + server (no reclocker) costs almost the same as option b) d1-dual + d1-server, which is mainly the reason I asked. Since Vincent believes that in the end his d1-server sounds better than embedding a server capability in the d1-six, in the long run getting a d1-dual + d1-server will be more advantageous.
 
Considering you may want to upgrade later, in option a) you need to upgrade the d1-six and get the d1-server, in option a) you can keep the d1-server and only need to upgrade the d1-dual. Or is there a flaw in my reasoning? It seems that the d1-six is only worth considering if you feel no need to upgrade at all and/or it sounds significantly better than the d1-dual + d1-server.

 

Some people prefer as few of components as possible, and the D1 SIX gives the best performance Vincent can give you in one box....

 

I started with the D1 Dual and D1 Server , I later upgraded to the Monobloc 4 box setup and couldn't be happier.