gear used:
Dennon 2200 UDP
Philips 963sa
benchmark DAC-1
grace 901
Monarchy Audio DIP 4896 Upsampler
BAT VK-60
Sony STR-DA3000ES
the orange RS S/PDIF coax cables (a pair)
Apoggee wide eye coax
RS toslink
LEEGEDDY custom headpone>RCA IC
Gregg Straley licorace IC w/bullet plugs
Bouler Cable M-80 (cryo)w/bullet plugs
Gregg Straley digital amp series spaker cable (monster spade>banana converters)
Grado RS-2 headphones
Von Schweikert VR4 gen I loudspeakers
vibrapod cones
Room: 17'w x 23'deep x 7' ceiling. speakers against the 17' wall, spaced 11'. perfect equalateral triangle with listening position. VR4s pulled 6' out into the room. "custom" acoustic treatments (getto, but quite effective).
Material: tons of live phish, GD, all sorts of local boston stuff, recent MULE , WSP....just about everything. All of these AUD recordings were first rate and made w/a varity of world class microphones and outboard preamps/ADs..etc. Much of it was 24bit / 96kHz LPCM.
Studio stuff: Winwoods "about time" , dylan "time out of mind", new JMP disc, more than I can list.
We mostly used the Dennon as the transport. Toslink out from there to the Sony. A coax splitter on its coax output ran seperate digital feeds to the DAC1 and 901. Analog output from here went into the Sony.
OR
We would have the custom RCA>1/4" phone line ....also adorned with RCA>XLR ends to use w/the BAT (balanced input only)....and bounced between DACs in the same manor. though not quite as easy as pushing a button on a remote.
First off, everything sounded great. While Carl (BAT owner) dismissed the Sony after 5 minute, the rest of us though that it sounded very good, and even outperformed the other DACs in some arenas.
AMPS Like I said, the Sony sounded good. BUt..the class A 100lb BAT sounded even better. 60wpc of fat tube power. I didn't find it as punchy sounding as the Manley products i've listened to, but it had a nice thump to it. Strained at higher volumes a bit, and the bottom end would tend to slobber all over the place. But just a nice juicey sound w/a warm presention. It mixed VERY well using either of the two DACs to provide the gain stage. It was really a matter of chocolate and vanilla between the two DACs ahead of the BAT.
some of us thought that the difference between the Grace and Benchmark was more noticable on the BAT than the Sony. I thought otherwise. For my tastes, it wold be just a tad underpowered. 75wpc would do it, but i'm going to have to hold out for 100w I think. Smiley
the Sony provided us with nice reference quality power, much more slam, speed and impact than the BAT. The extra power from its 150 digital watts was certainly welcome. though I fnd that is still a bit weak for me at times.
It was nice to compare the two DACs as well as the Sony's digital input prowess and cycle through them on the sony remote. A/Bing w/the BAT was near impossible. Its a shame that the analog circuitry (opp amps and such) are garbage on the Sony. Its the only weak link, imo. It needs that digital input to really shine.
DACs Se all pretty much decided that we liked the Grace 901 the best. The benchmark was also very good...but we never discussed anything beyond which one DAC was the favorite and why. The difference between the benchmark and grace was subtle. A deffinate flavor w/o one being clearly superior at all. It just seemed that the Grace had considerably more weight and bass extension...even in vocals it was aparant. Imageing was full and the soundstage was wide, using every inch of space between the speakers (and beyond in some cases). the DAC-1 was the same way...but w/o that extra weight to each instrument, it just didn't seem as tight or focused.
the Sony excelled in a cople of areas. Detail was pretty damn impressive. We could hear certain passages on well recorded material much easier w/the Sony than with either of the other two DACs. Imaging was more stable and occupied a definate space w/o anything happening between one instrument and another in the soundstage.
Overall, the soundstage seemed fuller with both DACs, and full and FAT sounding with the Grace. dont get me wrong...there was gobs of detail in that too. You should have heard the Grado RS-2's through it. Shit! Then I could hear the detail that I wasn't getting out of the sony or BAT>VR4 chain.
The DIP...we didnt use it much. But what little listening we did ended up favorable amoung everyone (?). I'm a fan, any way. We all thought it smoothed out the sound and stabilized things a bit. Probably the jitter reduction vs. the umpampling that went on.
the fact that the $700 sony on its own was even in the same ballpark as a $6500 901>VK-60 combo says a lot. but, for pure fidelity, the 901>Grado RS2 combo, of which I only listened for two minutes right at the end...was very clearly the highest fidelity i heard.
I'm still happy w/the performance of my Sony. but man o man... I want the new Grace 902 !
