I took another trip last weekend to visit my friend Jon in Columbus OH and gave him a present in the form of a late 2008 Valab DAC. FS mod, full Cryo, SSOM with Audyn 1uf MKP-QS 630V couplers soldered directly to the stock I/V resistors and silver wire to the RCA jacks. (The Audyn QS are my favorite ultra low cost film caps, $3 each. Just make sure you get the 630V versions.)
Jon has a pair of Bastanis Prometheus speakers, Ladyday 91 SET 300B monoblocks, SUC-3000 v.3 Technics battery Preamp and Reference Audio modded Oppo CD player. Also a Mac Book laptop with all his music ripped to .wav files at my suggestion. First thing first we stopped at the Apple store to pick up the latest copy of Snow Leopard. $30
My friend Jon is a true music lover and doesn't like complicated technology or to much futzing around, so in went the Valab DAC via USB and his Mac Book laptop. Bang, just like that his modded Oppo CD player was dust. His system was singing like he never heard it before, we listened till 4AM. Color him blown away!
The next day after a great lunch he decided that USB and iTunes was his avenue of choice so I went ahead and installed Snow Leopard on his Mac Book, 30 minutes. Next we played with generic USB cables he had laying around. He couldn't believe how different these USB cables sounded. We picked our favorite from the pile and decided on a pair of LAT IC-200 I/C’s. Done! Even better sound ... he couldn't believe it! Next just for fun, and because I could, I installed a Demo copy of Amarra and pressed play in iTunes. A/B proved to be difficult but after listening for 30 minutes I shut it off and it was clear that something special was going on with Amarra on. That sums up Amarra, you get Amarra when you Get Amarra!
Sunday we ate fresh corn and tomato’s from the garden and cooked Brats from the German Village, listened to music and drank beer till midnight. Tony called at one point and Jon and he rambled about Audio in General and how good the Valab DAC sounded. Perfect weather, great food, great tunes, and great friends. What more could a man ask for.
Thanks Jon … it one hell of a ride.
What I brought away from this experience is just how important it is to use cabling to tune the Valab DAC to a system. There are no rules, try everything you have on hand, there will be a combo that clearly sounds the best. However the really cool thing about the Valab DAC is that no matter what I do the rabbit hole continues. Where it leads you may be different but our own personel choices blaze the trail.
What a blast!