romaz
1000+ Head-Fier
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- Jan 19, 2013
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Hello,
First post here, and hope to be welcomed as a fellow compadre I am not promoting anything for financial gain or anything else. There are a couple friends posting on this thread (romaz, a1uc), and I am a Totaldac lover, so I thought I would join the fun. I am 3 years intoxicated with Totaldac, and there is no hope or help for me...
The Totaldac D1 Monobloc to Twelve is also very substantial. It is not like the jump from the D1 Dual to the Monobloc, but I wouldn't say it is not as much of an improvement in other areas. Maybe even more important areas. Let me explain:
Going from the D1 Dual to the Monobloc is like listening to the D1 Dual on steroids. You get more of everything, and nothing that you don't. More separation, more dynamics, more bass slam, more focus, more refinement, lower noise floor.... More more more. Simply put, and is a very nice and amplified "plugged in" type of presentation.
What the Twelve brings is more intimacy, yet nothing is missing. Kind of hard to explain, but I'll try....
You go from a lively bold slamming presentation to more of an "unplugged" presentation. Transparency is greatly improved. The noise floor is so low it is kind of haunting if never experienced. Image focus is crazy good, and approaches the best vinyl in this regard. To the point that I literally have 3D holographic images in my room, with air all around and behind the artists, making real presences before me. Spooky! Ambient resolution is also more on display, and I believe this goes hand in hand with creating the amazing hologram image focus. This allows our ears to hear and our brain to interpret more of the cues in the recordings, making a more realistic soundscape. This makes things more stable and easier for our brains to create the illusion. The Twelve is also more direct. As in you are seemingly getting direct mic feed playback. You hear all the inflections of the voice, the wood of the piano, the string plucks, drum smacks, metal and breath of the horns, etc. It all just sounds very real. It does all of this and never sounds digital, harsh, etc. It really is, magic.
Fear not though ladies and gents. The Totaldac Monobloc is the best DAC on the planet if you have never heard the Twelve I would put Monobloc, or the D1 Dual for that matter, up against anything, and have put them up against allot of heavy hitters. There is just nothing like a Totaldac, if you ask me. So, D1 Dual or Monobloc is not a bad place to be at all. It is also easier to integrate either of these into ANY system. They have tons of drive, drive headphones direct beautifully, and you don't need a preamp using them, at all.
Which brings me to the one weakness of the Twelve. That is drive. It will struggle to drive the heavy load solid state amplifiers directly. Won't drive headphones directly. Though it will do a nice job of driving most tube amplifiers directly, I feel that it really should have a world class preamp backing it up for best results, no matter. So that is another thing. You have to set aside allot of coin for this preamp to compliment the Twelve.
Paul
Thanks for chiming in, Paul, and welcome to head-fi. I've read your posts on this matter on the What's Best forum and it was some of these similar statements that convinced me to give the monoblocs a try. Based on my own experience, I will concur with all you have said and because the Twelve is not a practical option for me since it won't drive headphones directly, I will do my best to avoid hearing it