I hear you. The latter transformers I used were all fly wired.
What I found is: The XS4400 makes a very small upgrade, relatively. The mu metal and amorphous are obviously more clear in general and get out of the way sonically, better. Relatively then, the M6 core imposes a sonic “sameness” limit on the sound that I personally cannot have.
Between mu metal and amorphous, not sure which I prefer actually. Mine has amorphous in it currently. Doing over (and I’m ~ sure we will be for some of the gang down south) I “might” save the extra cost and stick with the mu metal.
Based on my experience, think what I would recommend do is:
Mu metal Transformer (big)
Vocm mod (bigger)
OA circuit change (biggest)
Enjoy!
Optional, and maybe (still TBD)- Bybee QP on the output, either Cu, Ag or Au.
(I have a feeling my friends DAC may get Ag, if we mod his. He’s also waiting on a 2.4se) (the
“tour” results will help determine “if”)
And for me of course, throw the kitchen sink at it and re-do the OA as bit buffers and move the actual D/A conversion into a nice little passive low pass filter. I understand not many will do that however
Can you try to describe the coloration that the Edcors provide that the mu-metal cores seem to eliminate? The reason I ask is that a huge and presently unanswered question in my mind is: “Is some portion of the DS’s sound that I love so much simply the result of colorations resulting from the use of the Edcor output transformers?” If it is, then upgrading to even more transparent transformers might not be a great choice for me.
No, it doesn’t make it sound better. It holds it back. For example you can hear much more clearly that a recording is a “pop” recording with the mu metal. With the Edcor they sound more like the same. In other words you cant hear it as clearly. Its equivalent to taking a thin blanket off. If you like “sameness” imposed on your sound, then stick with the M6
By this, do you mean that the M6 makes pop recording not sound as bad as they would otherwise? Because I don’t really understand the meaning of this statement: "For example you can hear much more clearly that a recording is a “pop” recording with the mu metal. ".
Are you saying that you can hear things like brick walling of a recording much more clearly (and painfully) with mu-metal, or are you trying to say something else?
Karthick, I’m not sure what to make of these capacitor mods. For one, SMD are much more delicate and sensitive components to solder to. Also, I have not seen a whole hearted endorsement from Ted. At the moment I think it best to be patient, follow the discussion as best I can and wait to see how it all pans out.
Wayne
What does the component look like and what board does it reside? I know that over clock ovens the coppershield plus RF absorber can cause some ringing.
Well the “tour” was interesting today. The persons system (big tower speakers mostly) I had not yet heard before and was basically way more capable than what I’m used to at home. So this was going to be a first to hear it compete in the wild on a totally different, dare I say even much better system.
And we played 2 other DACs first, Jay’s DAC and an expensive Sabre DAC, the name starts with Wa… and is kinda odd and it’s escaping me now. I thought both sounded rather good and the system threw a great sound stage and speaker disappearing act, surprised me, even though they were imposing size (even taller than me lol).
Then we connected the modded up DS and 2 persons literally let out an involuntary “Wow!” at about the same time just from the first couple of bass notes that started… The openness and clarity… the accuracy of the sound of each instrument… No distortion. This is not scripted. It was truly amazing performance. I couldn’t be more pleased with how it plays now. And I’m being completely honest when I say I don’t know what would beat it. I say, bring on anything… 40K+ MSB? Dcs ring DAC? Bring it…
Not sure if it would hurt or help. Really depends if it is too close to capacitors i would think. I know I always avoided capacitors near absorber. But the rings were great on power cables that act like capacitors by hollowing out the sound.
Exciting to hear, Turbo. Might I suggest posting in a single message (to insure easy access over time) links to each of your posts that identify each of the mods that you incorporated into the DS? A sort of “here’s what I did” shortcut list.
Sure, the Mk II will (perhaps arguably) outperform the mods being mentioned (or already have their equivalents incorporated.) But there are always mods that are very expensive and you can’t compete with them with a cost limited product. E.g. I’d really like to use output transformers that cost above $100 each, but that won’t happen in a product at the price of the Mk II.
If I ran the world this is what we’d do… Collaborate for a greater good, and continue the Mk1 (in the wake of the Mk2) as a new (very) special edition The “Purist” edition(?)
*By the way, are there any DS owners here located within a reasonable drive from the Austin TX area?
T
