I received my dac and silver interconnects from Nick today. Fitted with the Burson discrete opamps, silver pulse transformer and an optical input.
It came very well packed and beautifully presented. The timber chassis is more a work of art than a commercial appliance.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted, and what I needed, but because of where I live, auditioning multiple dacs was never a possibility.
So any purchase was going to be something of a gamble. The benchmark for me was the Paradisea, which a friend owns. He plays around with tubes,
but otherwise it's standard, and it's a very impressive dac, which is about as expensive as I wanted to go. But Nick's ability to customize became a
telling blow. The Burson's over standard opamps, variable gain, which was huge for me, as the hard drive media center I'm using has very low output. Moving the jumpers to the 4v output fixed that.
Problems? My friends Paradisea was delivered in 4 days after paying on ebay. The Promi dac took over 17 weeks to get here. The incredibly long
wait combined with some complaints that surfaced after I had ordered, and the difficulties contacting Nick by email, made me very uncomfortable.
So there were definately plenty of times I wondered if I had made a mistake.
But all doubts were squashed the moment I turned it on. I'm not going to go on with a flowery disection of the sound quality. Quite simply, it is staggeringly
good. Brandi Carlile was performing in my loungeroom, and a steady stream of artists have followed her. If it continues to to improve as it burns in I'm
going to be extremely satisfied, for a long time. Compared to the Paradisea, without yet hearing them side by side, the Promi sounds in a different class,
it seems to do everything better. But a real comparison will have to wait.
The hum problem reported by some people, is completely absent in this unit. It is dead silent.
Many thanks to Nicholas. The long wait was well and truly worth it.
