Soooooo - how does it sound??? (continued).
As promised, here we go:I’ve reached the point where I feel like I have a good grip on the stock sound signature. I've accumulated 10 to 12 hours of dedicated listening so far. As I’ve mentioned earlier, it is fantastic for a $2k player and
easily competes with anything in its price class. And I’ve heard more expensive stand-alone dacs that I would stay sounded inferior to the Z1ES, and I'm not going to mention names!
First – this is important to mention: Even though smargo put some burn-in time on it, out of the box it sounded a little bit closed-in, bloated in the bass, and kind of strident at times for me. After letting it run in for about 24 hours connected to 5k load resistors, it DID make a noticeable change for the better! Like a lot of components, it will benefit from 100+ hours of burn-in connected to a load before you start getting critical with it. If you don't believe in burn-in, just delete what I just wrote from your mind and let's continue...
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Ok – with both Redbook, High Res PCM, and DSD, the Z1ES sounds big, bold, and beautifully balanced sounding! It is very clean and dynamic. It does a fantastic job conveying the energy in the music (assuming you are listening to energetic music in the first place)!
The top-end is nice and extended, with plenty of decay. Plenty of fine detail retrieval without acting too much like a magnifying glass to the point where it ruins things. I don’t want to mention “air” because I get tired of that term being used, so I’ll just say that throws of the illusion that there is a lot of nitrogen, some oxygen, and a smidgen of other gases around the instruments being played.
The midrange is what I’d call neutral. Maybe a little dry, but not overly so. Instruments and vocals are nice and clear and distinct. When it comes to conveying
emotion (for me, that mostly lies in the midrange) it is good, but I believe that is one of the key areas where the Z1ES can be improved the most, and where I also believe a good tube implementation would be most welcome.
Another one is sound stage. In its stock form, is fairly deep, but not as wide and tall as I’m used to (using the Bellina dac). It needs to get taller and wider to really sound three dimensional. But front to back layering is solid in its stock form!
In terms of tonality, I am happy to report that is does a decent job. I just needs some more of it to do a better at
seducing me into the music with certain favorite tracks of mine for testing this kind of thing. Again, it’s an emotional thing – and in my experience, a good tube output stage implementation would be KILLER here!
The bass digs deep and has plenty of weight, but I found that it lacks a little in articulation. Some bass solos have a bit of overhang to the notes. It’s not “slow” – but at times it gets a bit congested. I think I know where that little issue is coming from after studying the analog power supply and analog output stage boards.
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As far as the PCM to DSD remastering goes, I was actually pleasantly surprised. I did not think it would impress me (why not just keep the files in their native PCM form?), but for certain Redbook albums, they gained some missing fullness and body, and even became a tad less aggressive in the top end. With well-recorded Redbook and hi-res PCM, I mostly preferred the PCM-to-DSD feature turned off. YMMV with this feature, but the fact that you can enable or disable this feature is a nice touch, so use as you please.
I preferred DSEE turned ON when testing out the internet radio as did help bring a little more life up top, but it was only a subtle improvement for me. For Redbook, I preferred it always turned OFF. There is an annoyingly bright, blue LED on the front panel that turns ON when DSEE is ON. I plan to add some more resistance in series with it to calm it down if I can find which resistor it is. I hate laser beams in my field of view when I listen!
The green power LED that remains ON when the unit is ON is fine...
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So without getting to chatty and verbose, there you have it. Remember, this is just one man’s opinion (and all opinions are biased, true?) of the stock Z1ES player. What I love about it is that
it has HUGE potential to be a stunningly good sounding machine. I believe 100% that it is worth my time and energy because it is a super solid foundation to work on in terms of both sound, build quality, internal layout, power supply, etc. I realize that it doesn’t have all the features that some of you (and even I) want. But I can tell from studying it that it is a specialized design and it is designed to do what it does exceptionally well, and NOT designed to do a lot of things (other features) only “well-enough. And because the price of it, IMHO, is a bargain for what you get in terms of an overall quality design, so it makes developing a modification package(s) for it a sound idea.
That is where I'll be going from here. Thank you for your interest in this journey - more to come soon enough!
Vinnie
