[jamato8]

I'm really interested in hearing this DAC. Glad to know so many of you in the DMV area have purchased, as I hope to hear it at one of the local Head-Fi meets. Someone mentioned a listening opportunity on 6/1? Is that officially posted somewhere? Otherwise, I'll just drive up to LTA to hear it. I've already got the MZ3, so I'm already a huge fan.

Audio Note UK used the 1865 dac chip in their 50,000 dollar dac. The AD1865 with the Zotl output would have to be so very fine!

 

[jamato8]

Here is a nice internal shot of the Aero DAC. Very nice layout! You have the Zotl amp section on the left and you can use 12SN7 or 6SN7 tubes.

 

[SolarCetacean]

I demoed the Aero on Friday at LTA HQ and I was quite surprised by its performance. I had thought the Aero would be warmer and smoother and possibly lack some detail vs the standard D/S DAC, but I was wrong on all of those fronts. I compared against the Ferrum Erco Gen 2 and I found no lack of detail, no oversmoothing, and no excessive thickness or warmth to the sound. In fact, in some songs there was more treble energy on the Aero than the Erco (the Erco uses a digital oversampling filter created by the developer of HQPlayer, so it's like HQPlayer in a box). There seemed to be a slight hint more body to percussion notes and a more "raw" sound to vocals and brass instruments. In some cases, particularly with acoustic or orchestral tracks, it made instruments sound a bit more lifelike than on the Erco Gen 2. The midrange was pushed slightly forward in space (closer to me), but not at the cost of instrument layering which can happen on other forward-sounding DACs.

I'm very intrigued. I was afraid I might not like a DAC that's warm and smooth at the cost of detail, but fortunately the Aero is not that sort of DAC at all. Now I'm wondering if I want a brighter, raw-sounding DAC and how well that would synergize with my headphones. And also how much I will enjoy tube-rolling. HQPlayer won't be a viable option for use with the Aero due to it only supporting PCM up to 192 KHz, so HQP can't really show off what it's capable of, but the Aero would open the door to tube rolling which could be an exciting new area to play around in.

I made a more detailed series of comments on my impressions in the other thread on the Aero: here and here