[jackman]

hi guys,

probably going to be beaten to death but.

all this breakin talk is over exaggerated. it usually takes about 10 hours to break in a product and there after i cannot hear any improvement.

may'be i need to go to the doctor and have my ears syringed out with clean water .

it could well be that you were used to the sound and just started to like it.

regards

rocket

Hi Rocket,

You won't get any disagreement from me on this one.  It makes me scratch my head when I hear or read about people (or manufacturers) who claim their products take up to six months to break in...give  me a freakin' break.  Speakers may take a while to loosen up because they are mechanical devices and amps may take a day or two, but six months???  I have also never heard a shrill sounding or harsh sounding tweeter get smooth and nice sounding from hour 40 through hour 100 or beyond.  If it doesn't sound good after a good 40 hours or so, it probably ain't going to sound good ever.

Just my thoughts, I could be wrong on this one but haven't experienced anything to indicate this is the case on this one....

Jman

[csown]

Hi guys,

Been building dAck!s for you guys who ordered them so I've been busy.  Finally have a small window to join in on the discussion.  Here goes...

Ray:

Good to hear from you... didn't know these are your stomping grounds now.  Over at asylum things are a little slow, though technical discussion has picked up in the digital forum recently... pretty nice change.

You're right about the battery supply - it's a fundamental requirement for the sonics.  But it's still only part of the story, and you touched upon this with regard to the LT regulators.  The way the power is delivered to the circuit is just as important as noise floor.  A lot of battery-powered designs sound simply anemic.  True, an SLA can give you an instantaneous 60A of current, but lead inductance will still get you every time.  I owe some of the credit to you - I'm still using some bypassing tricks I picked up from you years ago.

Still can't claim that the dAck! sounds exactly like vinyl, but the gap is getting closer.

Regarding the 89259, I still don't like it very much (straight coax, not TP).  It's a little too warm and gooey... I definitely like snappy, active transients, so I suppose I'm not a copper interconnect kind of person.  I've been into the silver braid for years and it still wins for me, at least for the sort of equipment I typically listen to.  It doesn't sound like copper, but doesn't sound like the usual hot, wiry silver sound.  It's juuuust right .

A review by Thorsten, who happens to be one of the world's experts on non-OS, should show up one of these days.  I'm simply not going to worry about the print mags - they tend to review stuff with wide distribution and I would like to keep this a manufacturer-to-customer operation and avoid all the hassle of the in-between.  Anyway, I think reviews are kind of overrated.  Even if you go into the reading with a skeptical mind, when you first listen to the product your head is not a blank slate.  I believe having a product in one's home to demo with limited prescience of the coming experience is still the best way to decide to buy something.  You don't have to worry about anybody else's input and you're comfortable and you can do it over the course of many days.


A few replies to the others:

I'm aware that with the DI/O some folks have experienced problems with the unit losing lock when play is stopped.

The dAck! is ridiculously reliable when it comes to latching.  If it doesn't latch, the receiver chip is broken.  When I was designing this thing, I could always get a latch when I brought the digital signal wire within 5mm of the input pin   .

about the batteries: it seems that they aren't really "hot swappable", but is replacement pretty quick & easy? How long could one keep a spare around before the spare would discharge?

They can be swapped out in 5-10 minutes by the user.  It's not advisable to keep a spare around unless you intend to top it off every month or so.  They discharge slowly and old batteries that haven't been topped off go bad.  That's why it's very risky sourcing SLA's, because 9 times out of 10, they are old stock and have probably lost a lot of life.  The cells we stock are as always healthy and kept in top condition.

may'be i need to go to the doctor and have my ears syringed out with clean water .

Hehe...  A lot of it is psycho-acoustical for sure.  But from a materials standpoint, it is a real phenomenon.  I think you can break down the break-in phenomenon into a few categories that possess different time-scales.  The major ones are capacitor dielectrics.  Electrolytic dielectrics take maybe a few hours to form and then a couple days to stabilize.  Signal caps take a lot longer, maybe 2 weeks or so with a normal listening schedule.  Then there are your integrated circuits, especially analog circuits.  These can take a long time to break in, but they do indeed change over time.  When you have localized potentials on various structures inside the chip, you alter their dielectrics and promote ion diffusion, and this takes some time to equilibrate.  It's temperature-limited, but it happens continually until you reach a metastable state, no doubt about it.  I have never heard of the sound getting sharper, usually it's warmer/lusher/rounder/smoother.

Most high-end products need a great deal of time because of huge power supply electrolytics.  I would figure that 90% of what you hear in terms of break-in on that sort of gear is in the PSU.

With the dAck!, break-in is a lot shorter and occurs in two major phases.  One happens in about 8-12 hours of first firing it up.  The electrolytics break in and the converter chip gets some exercise, taking the edge off the top end.  Then the amplifier chips and capacitors break in over the course of about 2 weeks.  The amplifiers will never fully break in, because the circuit runs at room temperature, so I say 2 weeks max is about the time you need for the dAck!, translating to roughly 3-4 days of continuous use.  And this is on a product that gets turned off all the time; short break-in is another neat consequence of battery-powered design.


-Chris

[Todd Krieger]

Regarding the 89259, I still don't like it very much (straight coax, not TP). It's a little too warm and gooey... I definitely like snappy, active transients, so I suppose I'm not a copper interconnect kind of person. I've been into the silver braid for years and it still wins for me, at least for the sort of equipment I typically listen to.

Try the DH Labs D-75.  It provides one of the cleanest and and fullest-bandwidth digital transmissions, yet it is not expensive.  

[transam]

I don't understand why high end audio co. don't break-in gear for you.Why should you listen to music for hrs when it's not 100%.If i owned an audio co. i would want my gear to sound it's best right out of the box.Just a thought.

[Tyson]

Some companies do.  VMPS break in speakers for 2 days of 20hz to 20khz sweeps at loud volumes.  I requested 5 days of this and they happily obliged.

[cjr888]

I don't understand why high end audio co. don't break-in gear for you.Why should you listen to music for hrs when it's not 100%.If i owned an audio co. i would want my gear to sound it's best right out of the box.Just a thought.

This was covered in another thread (quite a while ago though), and I think your assumption that people who run shops would love that to.

For the smaller shops that do build to order, and small distribution, you may have a shot.  You're ordering something, having it built, and then waiting days or months to have it delivered.  So what's a few more days or weeks?  Well, in that situation, what's the difference between them doing it and you doing it?

In reality though, you're not their only customer (I'd hope!), and if you think of the costs (seperate equipment to break in each customer's component), one of your biggest expenses - real estate and space, and your other enemy as a business owner - time, it makes perfect sense.  

Everything is a cost, and outside of cost, time is the other thing you usually never have.  Say you are a company that makes rather large speakers, whether you're a one person business, or large corporate entity.  Saw you get dozens or hundreds of orders a month, whether as build-to-order, or to be sent to dealers.  Its not exactly cost-effective or practical to have an enormous sound-proof room or warehouse to store all those speakers for X number of additional days, a matching number of amplifiers and sources to power those speakers, all to break them in.

[csown]

Try the DH Labs D-75. It provides one of the cleanest and and fullest-bandwidth digital transmissions

I was referring to analog IC, and I think Ray was too (the JR double-coax is for analog).  I actually use 89259 for digital quite often...  All digital cables sound very different from each other and different from themselves when in different situations.  The behavior is not so predictable, unlike analog IC's, so I'm not ready to get into that ballgame just yet.

Will make a note to try your cable out tho...  For now I am not even using a real transport (instead, a CD-ROM drive), so I hack all my cables together from bits and pieces and they all have different ends on them.

I don't understand why high end audio co. don't break-in gear for you.

I give each dAck! an 8-12 hour break in, which is a lot for any piece of gear.  cjr hit the nail on the head, time is my enemy - it's tough to get in sufficient break-in time for those weeks when I have a lot of product going out.  Each one needs a load, a digital source, and an AC plug for the charger, and I have to keep track of how each one is doing.  I listen to each unit for at least 15 minutes of those break-in hours with the same music - it's a wonder that I don't go insane listening to the same 4 pieces over and over day in, day out .

-Chris

[peakrchau]

...Regarding the 89259, I still don't like it very much (straight coax, not TP). It's a little too warm and gooey... I definitely like snappy, active transients, so I suppose I'm not a copper interconnect kind of person....

-Chris

Yep...I was referring to the analog IC in the case of the 89259.  The "straight" version is "gooey". Even the  preferred and recommended cable configuration uses "two different twisted co-axial centers" the cable can still sound  "gooey" unless the spaced off braided shield are added along with the capacitor connection at the amp end.  

With the braid shield and cap, I found the noise floor is lower, the bass is fully developed, the midrange is very organic while the highs are there but not unduly emphasized.

I bought a copy of a James Taylor album (Hourglass) about a year ago on the basis of a product review where the writer said that "James Taylor sounded just about right". In terms of bass weight, midrange vocal weight and resonance in the chest, and soundstage...it did indeed sound just about right?  There is cut called "Gaiia" where a drum comes in from way benind the left speaker with a fast, deep, and rich toms on a bass kit. I've never heard it sound better...ditto for the rest of the album.  Prior to the JR cable, the highs were rougher and the bass seemingly less by an octave.

I think the JR cable gets the leading edge of the note right and the preserverance of the upstream signal's coherence is what I am experiencing.


Ray

[Bob A (SD)]

Chris,

   Looking forward to receiving the dAck!   As for cables, I'll be using  Belden 1695A with Canare crimp RCAs as the S/PDIF connector and a pair of HomeGrownAudio Super Silvers to feed my preamp.

   The 1695A, along with the 1506A, are the recommended flavors from Jon Risch:



"       Posted by   Jon Risch    (  B  )  on January 28, 2003 at 10:28:07

      In Reply to: S/PDIFF what to look for in a cable ? posted by Johann F on January 28, 2003 at 03:34:24:

    75 ohms characteristic Z is the main thing, but cable shielding, and dielectric performance are also relevant.

    If you can cross-reference to Belden part numbers, the top Belden cables for S/PDIF use are:
    1695A
    1506A
    89259

    and their foamed PE counterparts:
    1694A
    1505A
    9259


    Jon Risch "


   As with many other components, opinions on S/PDIF cables vary.  There are those who much prefer the 1695A to the D-75

--Bob

[nature boy]

Hey Folks,

I have been using the Bolder Cable digital cable in my system demo'ing the dAck!  Just picked up a DH Labs D-75, because the family wanted the Bolder back in our HT set-up to listen to DVD's.

My IC's are copper based, Groneberg Quattro Reference.  If I hear any improvements in the digital cable, I might opt for a pair of new IC's either Chris's new blend or something from DH Labs.

Chris, please keep us up to speed on your listening with the Sonicaps vs. Auricaps.  I know you have a lot of orders to fill out, but I am hinging my purchase decision on the caps sound difference.  Sorry to be so anal - it's a great DAC needless to say.  Feel free to PM or e-mail me if you think your comparison will take to long.  

NB

[oracle9i]

Both units have stepped it up a notch or two now.

The DI/O up a couple of notches now using Wayne's power supply (Bolder Cable Co.). Wayne sent one of his digital cables (data link) and an in-line Bybee filter to use with the data link too. So several of his products were used this week.

First of all Wayne's DI/O mods were a huge improvement over the stock unit and his services are highly recommended. Kudo's as well for sending out his other products just for review.

With Wayne's power supply the n ...

Danny, what are the rest of your system's components? Thanks. I have the WAVAC 811 and the Avant-Garde DUO.  They're awesome. I'm just put my name on the trial waiting list for the dAck. I hope that it is not to warm for my system.  Thanks,

[Danny Richie]

The system I used to evaluate the DAC's used electronics from Dodd Audio.

Speakers used were our Alpha LS: http://www.gr-research.com/AlphaLS/Alpha.htm