I do remember reading on the Burson site, that the guys got a deal on some chassis for the buffer through a company. As long as the savings are past on to the buyer..this is great!
OK well I have over 100 hours on the buffer. It should be well burned in as it does run in Class A. The buffer will not make something out of nothing. There has to be a good source from the beginning. Using it with my modified Pioneer's analog outputs which I admit I've never liked. The buffer adds more fullness and size to the soundscape. It will not make up for an imbalanced sound to begin with. The Pioneer seems to be missing the extreme highs and the lows..leaving only midrange. It also has a low voltage output when run directly into the passive volume control. No..the buffer didn't make up for the imbalance. It did make the Pioneer more listenable.
The Burson buffer doesn't glaze or sugar coat the sound. It has a fullness that's like tubes without the bloom. When used with the NOS Dac the sound is much more open with a sense of ease. Voices float higher than before. There's a greater meat factor here. I'm more able to focus on the voices and instruments separately. The Pops, snaps and growl of the guitars are all there.The whack of a hand on the wood of the guitar comes across in full colour. Percussions also exhibit more of that meat factor. If you're looking for HiFi sound..this ain't it! The music isn't highlighted in any one part of the spectrum. There's more of a balanced layering...which I really dig!!
I asked my wife tonight what she thought of the sound. Keep in mind..I never tell her when I'm buying my next component or whether it's in the system.
The words out of her mouth were" It sounds more acoustic". "I hear everything more clearly defined and open".
I had a big grin on my face..as I'd already heard the same things. No longer is the music just around the speakers. It gets out and away from the speakers.
As a side note I was told by one of the designers that the buffer's input impedance is 44k ohms to 47k ohms.
This is off topic...during this time I've also been experimenting with the Monarchy DIPs. One basic version and the other the 48/96 up-sampling. What I heard when I added the upsampler to the 1543 NON oversampling dac was pure magic. Now I have the larger and more focused sound of up-sampling with the nonfatiguing organic sound of the NOS. There is also more stability in the soundstage...Imaging has improved greatly!!
I've learned in the last week that these type of dacs are EXTREMELY sensitive to jitter and signal strength. Feed them a strong signal and low jitter ..and listen to them open up like never before. Before the Dac would sometimes have a hard time keeping things separated on complex passages. That isn't the case at the present time. It sounds like I took the limiters off and let her run wide open! For anyone using the older chip dacs..the Monarchy DIP 48/96 or the GW labs unit is a must have. Especially if the source is not an expensive highend transport.
I've had a lot of fun over the last week or so. I hope others get a chance to try out the Burson buffer and maybe the upsampler if the system can fit them in. At the present time this is the best my system has sounded. After spending several weeks with Lonewolf's ECD-1..which I still consider cream of the crop one box dacs I've heard. The addition of the two components have brought me very close to the performance I heard from this Dac.
Good listening!
