Ok, I'm by no means an expert reviewer, but here are my experiences and thoughts on my new EE DAC.
The EE DAC reached my doorstep on Tuesday of last week and even though the suspense was killing me as for what it might do for my sound, I decided for once I'd try to let a component break in before giving it a real listen. To that end, I heeded Bill's advice and just put my SB Touch hooked up via coax cable to the EE DAC on a 5 album playlist without hooking up the analog outs to the rest of my system. Bill mentioned that the unit started to really sound good and open up after about 100 hours of burn in so I thought I'd give it a listen on Friday evening for the first time as my wife and kids were going to be out of town for the weekend. Would that be 100 hours? No, but it would be close enough.
So fast forward to Thursday evening and I couldn't take the ribbing from two fellow audio enthusiast friends any further that I had a wonderful new piece of audio gear and I had yet to give it a listen. Sigh....a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do so I hooked up the analog outs and fired up my Salk ST's
Well.....I got 5 minutes into listening and my wife and two kids came home and I couldn't hear a darn thing. Decided to wait a bit more and put on my Beyerdynamic DT880's later and see what I heard. Well, a few hours later the time came to give the EE DAC a first listen. At first, I was doing quick A/B comparisons with the EE DAC tube output to just the SB Touch analog outs that were also hooked up to my preamp. I'm sad to report here that at first it was VERY difficult to make out the difference between the two units. Yes, the vocals were a smidge better and yeah I thought I was getting more detail, but it wasn't like a night and day difference. Now with that said, I just had a long rough day at work and was already somewhat frustrated and this listening test was further souring my day. At the urging of a friend who was telling me I should hear much more of a change than that, I tried to really relax and let the music just wash over me. It was at this point that I also migrated away from the quick A/B comparison and just went with playing a few minutes of a song through just the SB Touch and then restarting the song and listening to the same few minutes with the EE DAC. It was then that I REALLY started to notice the differences. Vocals were more than just "different" on the tube output of the EE DAC, they sounded like there was more meat on the bone so to speak. There wasn't just more detail in the EE DAC, things like cymbals sounded like cymbals should with more shimmer and decay after being hit with a drum stick. There was more resonance in acoustic guitar passages. Satisfied at this point that I was at least getting SOMETHING, I decided to hit the sack and let the DAC continue to burn in for another 24 hours and follow up the next night with a listening session with my Salk ST's instead of just headphones.
Now it's Friday evening and after getting home from work I look forward to pulling my speakers out from their normal resting places (yes my family room doesn't allow for optimum speaker placement most of the time), put the stereo on and see how things were sounding with the DAC after another 24 hour break in. That's when I remembered that I had to turn the PC on when I got home which meant that the SB Touch did not have an information stream all day long! (My wife had turned the PC off before leaving town earlier that day.) Talk about a pisser! Decided against trying to listen in 15 minutes to form any real opinion and just started up the PC and let the unit burn for a few hours while another local audiophile friend and I grabbed dinner. While at dinner, I was telling my friend about my frustration in trying to pick up differences between the SB Touch and the DAC on Thurs. He said he'd offer his opinion on Saturday night when he came over to let me borrow some of his acoustic room treatments to see what type of affect they might have on my systems sound.
So after dropping my friend back off at his home, I pulled the speakers out from the wall and gave a listen to Dido's Life For Rent with the EE DAC and the stock tube along with a nice refreshing adult beverage. This time around things were a bit more clear in comparisons to the SB Touch analog outs. First and foremost, the EE DAC had a much tighter hold on the low end which I had not noticed in my DT880 cans. Bass notes were much easier to pick out as individual notes instead of just one deep sound. Detail in the upper registers was also improved to use an often said line, the music just had a much more "alive" sound than it did previously with just the SB Touch analogs. This was most noticeable in Dido's voice. With the EE DAC her voice took on height and depth while with the Touch outs it just was a relatively flat presentation. Then I threw on some of the hirez downloads by Naim to see how they sounded on the ST's vs. the BD's. Again, the EE DAC did not disappoint with cymbals sounding like they had much more shimmer and decay than the output from the Touch alone. Drumstick hits were also quite easy to pick out vs. the Touch alone. At this point, I was becoming a bit more comfortable in my purchase
Played around with speaker positioning a bit more to try and get things sounding the best I could before doing any really serious listening the next day. With that done, I rolled into bed and let the DAC continue burning in.
Saturday morning, I got up about 7 and did about 2 hours of listening before heading out to see Inception. (Bad ass film by the way with what I thought was a cool soundtrack to boot.) During this two hour session, I decided it was time to do a little tube rolling as I really wanted to see if there would be much difference to the stock tube and the DAC now had 75 plus hours of burn in on it. So in went the Mullard
http://www.upscaleaudio.com/Mullard-Old-Logo-12AU7ECC82_p_247.html........... HOLY CRAP!!! What a change in sound! Vocals which I already thought were pretty good with the stock tube vs. SS became VERY VERY 3D. The sound wasn't really darker, but it just felt like everything picked up a notch of realism. To me, the low end became even more tight and stringed instruments had a really nice resonance to them. Soundstage also gained quite a bit of width. Sent a text to two friends telling them that I was quite blown away. Even though I wanted to go see Inception pretty badly, I seriously considered tossing that idea aside and just continuing to listen to the awesomeness that was playing before me. All wasn't perfect however.........vocals at times were a bit overdone and had just a slight bit of glare. This was especially apparent in stuff by Alison Krauss. It wasn't painful by any means and still sounded better than my system ever had, but I was kinda hoping that maybe the tube just needed a little settling time and that would iron things out. It was at this point I left for Inception with the EE DAC continuing to burn away with the new Mullard. When I got back about 4 hours later (had a bit of shopping to do after the film), the harshness in the midrange was gone and things were once again back to being buttery smooth
Like I said, I couldn't believe the difference between the stocker tube and the Mullard. Makes me wonder what other sounds might be out there in other tube land as this is my first bit of tube gear.
My friend came over on Saturday evening and again we tested the EE DAC to the stock SB Touch. Within about 10 minutes of listening he said there was absolutely no comparison between the two and all of the items that I thought were improved he basically reaffirmed. (I had not mentioned to him at this time what I thought had improved.) The first thing he mentioned was that he was surprised by just how much more control of the low end the EE DAC seemed to have. He was also quite blown away by the new found 3D'ness of the vocalists in recordings. Said it just lended the listening experience to a much more "being there" feeling.
Oh, one other thing, the EE DAC has a volume knob and I was a bit concerned about where to set it initially as it was just one more variable I thought I'd have to deal with having a dedicated pre. Well I went with the advice of Big Red Machine and just put it full over to see how things sounded. No issues that way and so I figure I'll leave it there as turning it down didn't seem to offer any real benefits in my system. Listened for the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening just to a variety of things and just had grins from ear to ear.
To sum it up.....would I purchase another EE DAC? Absolutely. I really was curious if this product was worth all the praise that seems to be heaped upon on it here and now I'm a believer. The ability to change the way the unit sounds with some tube rolling is really just icing on the cake as the bass control and detail this thing offers is great.
Also want to say a quick thanks to Bill for being so prompt in responding to a number of questions I had about the unit prior to purchase.
