Caiman+Gator v Benchmark DAC1 - initial impressions

[StanleyB]

A few people have sent me a PM or email to ask where they can get the same Gatorized Caiman as Steve's. I have temporarily added it on my sites in the actual ordering page. Just select from the various drop down boxes which bits you need added to your Caiman. It will shorten the time between email and PM replies hopefully .

[maniac]

Thing is - I've also ordered a Teddy Pardoe PSU from Audiocom as I didn't actually expect this one to work - it will be really interesting to see what (if anything) I get for an extra £180.

Hi Steve, i'm really currious to hear your comparison of those two linear PSUs from totally different price range. I'm now in the situation considering if to go for budget PSU or one of Teddie's PSUs for Caiman with muratas mod.

Looking forward for your review

[Butuz]

Hi Steve, i'm really currious to hear your comparison of those two linear PSUs from totally different price range. I'm now in the situation considering if to go for budget PSU or one of Teddie's PSUs for Caiman with muratas mod.

Looking forward for your review

Yes you are not the only one. Looking forward to finding out whether the extra £180 makes any difference!!! I would suspect the law of diminishing returns to apply, i.e switched to cheap linear = big improvement, cheap linear to expensive linear, not so much.

Butuz

[worrasf]

I'm hoping to get the Teddy PSU from Audiocom in the next week or so and will report findings after a few days of comparison - my gut feeling is that my £180 might have been put to better use as the cheapo one is just so much bang per buck.

My Cyrus CD XT se started playing up last night - skipping tracks in the middle of CD's - just spoken to my dealer (Audio Republic in Leeds) and taking it in tomorrow so hopefully will be sorted soon - in the meantime will use my Quad 67.

Steve

[StanleyB]

It's not important whether you use a SMPS or Linear PSU with the Caiman. What is important is the ripple voltage of the supply.

It's coming up to five years since I was made redundant from my previous place of work, and that will release me from my agreement not to use any R&D findings I carried out at that place for five years. So I am free to further develop a power supply filter for low current applications. If it works with the Caiman I'll probably offer it for sale. The ripple voltage on my last prototype was less than 2mV and noise was less than 100micro Volts. So well worth trying to see how it will perform in this case.

[worrasf]

Interesting Stan. The quoted ripple on the cheapo psu was max 3mV down to 1mV RMS (don't know what the specs on the not so cheap one is) - I expect there's more to it than that (isn't there always) but I'm certainly impressed with the improvement for such a small outlay.
Regarding confidentiality - it's OK Stan you can tell me - I'm a doctor

Steve

[StanleyB]

I have been playing around with the PSU regulator/filter design of mine and I am completely bowled over. It accepted any DC input up to the max 30V of my variable bench power supply. So the normal 15V max input of the Caiman was easily bypassed with this little box of tricks of mine . But more impressive was the ripple and noise figures that I could see on my scope. On the 1mV settings the ripple and noise were within the graticule.
The next step is to do some long term listening tests and further tweaking.

[Covenant]

I use a linear PSU with Teddy-reg on my Caimenized 7520 so know the sonic benefits.
Will this get incorporated in your next power supply or will it be an add on box?

[Tim]

Well after a very helpful telephone call to Stan, I have just ordered myself a Caiman + Gator upgrade. I will update you guys when it arrives, as to what I think.

Great forum by the way

[Werner Berghofer]

Steve,

I am definitely hearing more layers/detail

this is exactly also my impression. I’m a happy user of two TC-7520 DACs and a Caiman DAC, placed in different locations throughout my flat. To my ears the Caiman performed best, but when using my AKG K701 headphones plugged into the Caiman I missed a certain punch, power, volume, bass and space.

Since I like listening to music with my headphones a lot, I considered adding a Musical Fidelity V-DAC and a V-CAN headphone amp combination, but I hated the idea of two additional boxes and two additional power cords and power plugs. Then I read about the modified Caiman and the K701 specific tweaks.

Knowing that the various StanDACs offer by far the best value in their price range, last week I ordered a Caiman Plus (no need for USB connectivity in my setup) with Gator PCB. Being aware that I use AKG K701 headphones, Stanley generously offered to implement the K701 modifications. Yesterday in the morning the unit was delivered to my home.

Out of the box the improvements in the headphone section were impressive. There’s more power, punch, the sound stage appears wider, even the resolution – already excellent in the standard Caiman – feels more detailled and clear. The separation between the left and right channel seems to be better now. Keeping in mind my budget, as far as I can tell this specific Caiman delivers the best signal to my headphones, which are known to be hard to drive. For my taste there’s enough bass to be heard – something which other critical reviewers of the K701 headphone claim to be a weak point of these cans.

I plan to upgrade the other Caiman with the Gator PCB and the K701 specific mods. Since I’m a complete idiot when working with my hands I’ll ship the Caiman DAC to Stanley and ask him to do this delicate task for me.

Sources used for my first tests: Apple Macbook Pro and Apple Mac mini, Caiman Plus directly connected via optical cable and wirelessly streamed via Airport Express, ALAC 44.100/16 bit playback from the latest version of iTunes. In case anybody is interested in the tracklist I used: it is updated in real-time and can be found on my Lastfm profile.

Please excuse my occasional bizarre English; it’s not my native language.