No, this isn't a thread about Stan's new secret Class A Krell stomping power amp that gets so hot that it needs fan cooling.
And I post this here at the risk of the management deciding that 'The Digital Impression' should be renamed to honour the contribution that people witing about Stan's products have made to the bulk of this area of the forum.
Still, I have some things that must be said.
So for you to understand why I bought one of Stan's DAC's I should explain a little of the background.
My home is in N. Lincolnshire, but I work in Lancashire & during the week I stay in digs in Preston. I have a very nice hi-fi at home that I've spent years getting to the point where I feel it's something to be quite proud of because of the way it plays the music I like. It's cost me a fair bit, but it's evolved over a long period of time & I've bought prudently and usually second hand.
I also have a lot of periferal gear in other rooms of the house, making up several different ways of listening to music. This is very important, because I have to have music playing pretty much all the time that I'm not at work (& when I used to work at home, I played it then too). So I'm happy enough listening through what many people would consider to be fairly ropey old gear. I have a small collection of old receivers, for example, that I use frequently, which are good enough that I never feel I'm really missing out on anything important to the spirit of the music I'm playing.
So, for roughly the last year, I've been using a cobbled together system while in Preston, which is made up from various things that have been available to me. Money has been short because of the circumstances that led me to have to take a job away from home, so a new, smaller system, was out of the question.
I started out using just an old DVD player to play CD's & good quality mp3 player with a reasonable (20 gig) storage capacity. These were played through a Marantz receiver into Tannoy Mercury MkII's on some good pedestal stands. That was OK, but then I managed to snaffle a Yamaha CR 1020 receiver, a beautiful piece of old gear that I truly love & sounds great - cost: 70 odd quid from Ebay.
Recently, the idea of moving the family over to Lancashire has become more realistic as my daughter finished her A levels and was looking for an Art college to go to. So we started looking for houses to rent - the idea being that we hang on to our old house to finish it's restoration & in the meantime the market will improve. We found a place close to Lancaster which will suit quite nicely for a while - we start moving in a couple of weeks.
I realised that the layout in this place allows for a whole room for the records, CD's & main hi-fi gear, while the living room only need have the speakers in it. This room will be interesting because it's built of stone & the main walls are not parallel - I'm sure it'll sound great! There's another reception room as well, that will serve as a study & (real) music room - we have guitars, a piano & my daughter is a serious cellist. So this room will also need have a pretty reasonable stereo in it too, because we'll be spending quite a lot of time in it.
This is where Stan comes in!!!
Up to now, all my serious digital sources have been routed through the very flexible DAC in my Accuphase CD player & it worked fine. In our new place, though, it won't be practical to route cables from the extra room all the way to the DP67 so I thought that a stand alone DAC would be the thing. Paying two lots of Council Tax & all the other things that we'll have to face mean that cash is still going to be a little tight for a while, so I needed a cheap solution. And of course as I spend a lot of time on AoS, I couldn't help but notice Stan & his products - there he was, sitting in the corner, winking at me!
So I bought a TC-7520 a couple of weeks ago & have been burning it in for a while. Nowadays, my main weekday source of music is Spotify from my PC (which only streams at approx ~160kbit/s), via a pretty scruffy USB cable to the 7520, down a 15 metre home made interconnect (yes 15, not 1.5!) into the big old, but lovely, Yamaha CR 1020 receiver & Tannoys.
Things are still a little bright, but no brighter than seems to be the flavour at the moment. The bass has really come together over the last couple of days though. Before, there was lots of it but there was no real definition. The most pleasing thing is the amount of detail & stereo information I seem to be getting - things I look for more than most people I suppose.
I was PM'ing with Stan a little while ago & told him that for a good while this evening, I've been sitting on the sofa, not able to do all the things I'm supposed to be doing, because this system has really begun to do things I didn't think possible. I've been able to do some really critical listening and felt that this fairly humble system was really punching above it's weight. So I'm chuffed to bits with the DAC & Stan should be proud of his achievement - it's a truly remarkable product.
When we move to the new house, I'll be trying it out with all sorts of different combinations of gear & I'm actually almost afraid to see how it compares with the built in DAC in my Accuphase CD player!
Cheers Stan