John Atkinson has belatedly delivered on the promised followup review of the DAC1 in the May issue of Stereophile. He reports that he wishes hed gotten to it much sooner, once he actually heard it in his system. He found it compares closely with his reference ML 30.6, which while still available sold for around $17K. I've been waiting for this follow up from him for sometime; I think it's going to push me into a decision. ;^)
The bench test results for the DAC1 were impeccable; very good analog and digital performance, including excellent low level linearity, very low jitter, and pretty much a complete absence of signal correlated jitter.
The analog section of these babies has to be pretty stout, because the standard configuration for studio use has -20dBFS at +4 dBV; full output will clip many consumer preamps, so there are internal jumpers to scale back 10dB or 20dB. Low level linearity and noise were excellent. It incorporates a NFB headphone amp with volume control using BUF634's, which can be switched into the main outputs to give a direct preamp with gain control function for driving power amps or monitors direct.
Another review recently posted online compares it favorably with a Levinson 390S, the owner of the Levinson and the owner of the DAC1 finding it more truthful and transparent- but that's only a $6700 CD player/processor.
At about $975, could be a real bargain. Now where's that piggybank of mine?
Regards,
Jon
The bench test results for the DAC1 were impeccable; very good analog and digital performance, including excellent low level linearity, very low jitter, and pretty much a complete absence of signal correlated jitter.
The analog section of these babies has to be pretty stout, because the standard configuration for studio use has -20dBFS at +4 dBV; full output will clip many consumer preamps, so there are internal jumpers to scale back 10dB or 20dB. Low level linearity and noise were excellent. It incorporates a NFB headphone amp with volume control using BUF634's, which can be switched into the main outputs to give a direct preamp with gain control function for driving power amps or monitors direct.
Another review recently posted online compares it favorably with a Levinson 390S, the owner of the Levinson and the owner of the DAC1 finding it more truthful and transparent- but that's only a $6700 CD player/processor.
At about $975, could be a real bargain. Now where's that piggybank of mine?
Regards,
Jon
Comment