Caiman II impressions

[maxrob200]

Stan must have access to hypersonic freighting services...ordered last Thursday and the unit arrived in Melbourne, Australia on Tuesday!

This is my 3rd StanDac

The Caiman II swings!

Analogy: When a jazz band plays well together, they swing, and in a nutshell this sums up the sound of the Caiman II. It all gells together beautifully. The band sounds like they are in synch with each other and everything is cohesive and in it's correct spatial position.

Vocals are palpable and inflections are easily discerned over the mix. Great silence between notes, yet string and brass have a lovely resonance to them after being struck or plucked

I felt the Bushmaster was a bit too polite and vocals were more subdued and flatter within the sound-stage. It also didn't get my feet tapping as much. The Caiman II allows vocals to project and individual instruments are layered really well

Very analogue sounding without tubbiness, great bass tautness (e.g Brubeck Take 5), makes you want to re-discover all your oldies again

I played everything from Count Basie to Canned Heat and enjoyed them.

Bad recordings however were shown up easily, especially closed miked vocals which had the "clipping" type edge

The Caiman II has only been on for a few hours so I will see if the sound changes with "burn-in" over a few more days

Well done Stan!

[StanleyB]

Glad to learn that you are already wired up and playing music in less than one week of ordering the Caiman :).

[fourtetisburial]

Hi Stan

Do you know if the AKG Q701s + the Caiman MKII is a good combo? Vaguely remember that you've mentioned the Q701s earlier, that's why I'm asking.

[maxrob200]

The Caiman II has now been left on for a few days and further listening has only reinforced my first impressions. Midrange is lively and lucid, vocals have good inner detail without over-emphasis on breathiness or sibilance. Instruments have weight (piano keys) and decay is very good. I particularly like the stability of voices in relation to the spatial positioning of other instruments. Subtle inflexions are easily discerned in the singer's voice. An edginess when lots of instruments are playing loud seems to have softened. If anything, I would like a bit more richness in the voices but it is more my preference for a "tube-like" midrange (EL 34).
All good and really pleased with the excellent performance of the Caiman II.

[StanleyB]

Hi Stan

Do you know if the AKG Q701s + the Caiman MKII is a good combo? Vaguely remember that you've mentioned the Q701s earlier, that's why I'm asking.
It is a very good combination. It is one of the headphones that I use to let visiting customers listen to the Caiman.

[oldius]

My lovely wife bought me a caiman 2 for Christmas. My caiman 1 still provides sterling service and is now powering an active setup in the kitchen.

The caiman 2 is a superb piece of kit Stan. If you priced based on sound quality you would easily be able to charge four times the asking price. Thanks for chatting to Jo and helping her with her purchase.

[drpetar]

Hi everyone and Mery Christmas ! :)

Alex, I hope you don't mind if I write in your thread about my Caiman MKII impressions. Although I usually avoid such descriptions because it is so difficult to find the suitable words and they are so subjective. The Russians have a proverb that "no friends for taste and colour".

Anyway CMII is my fourth Beresford DAC (CMI, BMI, BMII). It's powered by Anker Astro Pro 2nd gen battery. After a couple of weeks listening I can say that the dac is a significant improvement over the BMII. The only negative finding is a bit of harshness from time to time on some tapes.

The biggest improvement for me is the bass - it is tight, clean and more prominent. The vocals are very natural and as my wife said "She (the singer) is here in the room". The holographic scene and separartion of the instruments are better too. The sound is very detailed and I can hear new sounds, that I haven't heard before.

The whole sound is so warm and analog-like. Now I was able to recall the sound I've heard about 20-25 years ago, when my main source was a gramophone.

With the battery the sound improvement went even further (I was a little bit sceptic about this).

Congratulations Stan, very well done. I'm very happy with the sound and now my system seems completed. Actually almost completed. There is always "almost", isn't it :)

[fatmarley]

The only negative finding is a bit of harshness from time to time on some tapes.

Replace that Chord Odyssey 2 speaker cable with some good copper cable and I'd be surprised if the slight harshness didn't go away.

[DSJR]

+1 to that!

Odyssey 2 is perfect for richer toned 'UK style' speakers with a soft, rolling bass, but used with leaner and 'meaner' speakers, it goes way OTT I found - and I did it to the max using some with Wilson Benesch Act 1's (Tactic drivers) - the audible result was painful to the ears! To put this into perspective for Marco, should he be reading this, I sold a rather expensive system once, using Krell FPB300 (lovely amp now almost affordable on the used market) and Sonus Faber Amati Homage speakers. The recommended speaker cables from our main shop was VDH 'The Wind,' and while waiting for the custom lengths to be made up, we leant the client some Odyssey. In comparison with the rather lovely and refined 'The Wind,' Odyssey sounded scrappy and messy in the treble, that sort-of characteristic some silver-plated wires have as against solid silver..

If you have an Australian equivalent to RS Components, two separate lengths of a stock 56 strand instrument cable (4mm cross section?) will be cheap and effective I think :)

[drpetar]

Matt and Dave, thanks for you replies. They surprise me a bit, a haven't thought in this regard. But it is worth to check this. Although with the BMII and the same Odyssey 2 I haven't heard this slide harshness. I have a pair of Chord Carnival Silver Screen (I think they are pure copper cables without any silver) and will check with them.


...If you have an Australian equivalent to RS Components, two separate lengths of a stock 56 strand instrument cable (4mm cross section?) will be cheap and effective I think :)
Can you give me a link for such a cable? I'm not very familiar with this.

PS. Sorry for the off topic.

[wee tee cee]

Peter,
The caiman 2 is quite a bit more revealing than the BM2. I moved from the chord odesey 2 to TQ blue/black and then onto ultra black. Black was a very good compromise IMHO.

[StanleyB]

I have been playing about with a couple of different interconnects that Mark Grant has made up for me and also modified professionally after I decided to mess about and try them out at different lengths. I just need to find the time to decipher the notes and dig up the pics I took. Something for the new year.

[StanleyB]

The only negative finding is a bit of harshness from time to time on some tapes.
Be careful with pointing the finger at the CMII for that problem. It might be a good idea to go over those particular track sections again and again and confirm that the location of the harshness is consistent in its location. The CMII can expose recording and ripping errors, which is very easy to attribute as some sort of problem with the CMII. The 32 bit decoding not only makes it possible to detect very tiny signals that would otherwise be neglected by a 16 or 24 bit decoder, but can only pick up encoding differences. That's why I asked a few times in the past if anyone could pick up the differences between the mp3, WAV, and FLAC test files from Philips.

[drpetar]

OK guys, thank you for the advices. In summary I'm going to check the cables and/or the sources. I knew my system is almost completed :)


Peter,
The caiman 2 is quite a bit more revealing than the BM2. I moved from the chord odesey 2 to TQ blue/black and then onto ultra black. Black was a very good compromise IMHO.
Yes, I'm starting to realize this. :) About the cables, is "TQ" stands for Tellurium Q? If so, congratulations about your ultra black. Unfortunately I can't afford it :( Actually I can, but don't want :) Even black is a bit pricey for me. But thanks for the advice, I didn't know this brand.


Be careful with pointing the finger at the CMII for that problem.
Actually I'm not Stan. It was just a subjective neutral ascertainment of the sound without any judgement for the reason :)

[drpetar]

Stan, the link (http://www.soundliaison.com/all-our-products/179-formats-to-compare-wav-flac-cd-mp3) for the test files you have provided in an other thread doesn't work. Do you mean these (http://www.soundliaison.com/all-categories/6-compare-formats) ?

[StanleyB]

Stan, the link (http://www.soundliaison.com/all-our-products/179-formats-to-compare-wav-flac-cd-mp3) for the test files you have provided in an other thread doesn't work. Do you mean these (http://www.soundliaison.com/all-categories/6-compare-formats) ?
The previous webpage seems to have been removed. But the link that you provided has a similar test set that can be used.

[maxrob200]

For my Caiman II, I am using Belden 1694a (1.5m) as the coax spdif cable and found it to be very good. A budget Toslink was noticeably inferior in sound quality, bass was flabby and vocals quite flat. There was a distinct lack of dynamics compared to the Belden. I upgraded to an Audioquest Cinnamon Toslink and the differences between the Belden and the AQ is now a matter of degrees. I prefer the bass of the Belden but vocals are a bit more vivid with the Audioquest. The caiman II IMO will reveal poor recordings and present them warts and all. Feed it a good recording and it will reward you in spades.

I don't have US$16000 to spare for a Berkerley Audio Alpha DAC but I will be curious if anyone has heard one and have their opinions of it's subjective quality