Beresford Bushmaster DAC Reviews

Alex your a nutter!! ;)

Well, I'm pretty confident now that this thing is more enjoyable than the Majiks dac
Can't get the pc to sound as good feeding it directly though which is most frustrating as really I could do without the majik if I could
I'm sure with loads of tinkering I might get it there ... But I can't be arsed I don't think!

I'm going to try one more thing though ... The pc has an optical out that last time I tried it fed horrible clicking and hissing noises into the dac whenever I moved around the room ...
Going to try it one more time though ... So ...
I need an optical jack - normal optical connector cable ... Sorry, I've forgotten the correct terms ...
Anyone got one I could borrow? And maybe buy if it works ... No point in buying one if I'm going to have the same issue from the pc again ...

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Originally Posted by magiccarpetride

Did what I wrote here even make any sense to anyone?

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Made perfect sense to me. I'm glad it all came good for you in the end MCR ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hamish

Alex your a nutter!! ;)

Well, I'm pretty confident now that this thing is more enjoyable than the Majiks dac
Can't get the pc to sound as good feeding it directly though which is most frustrating as really I could do without the majik if I could
I'm sure with loads of tinkering I might get it there ... But I can't be arsed I don't think!

I'm going to try one more thing though ... The pc has an optical out that last time I tried it fed horrible clicking and hissing noises into the dac whenever I moved around the room ...
Going to try it one more time though ... So ...
I need an optical jack - normal optical connector cable ... Sorry, I've forgotten the correct terms ...
Anyone got one I could borrow? And maybe buy if it works ... No point in buying one if I'm going to have the same issue from the pc again ...

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Sorry, can't help you there, Hamish. I do have a nagging feeling, the more I listen to the Busmaster, that the real bottleneck in my system may be upstream. SBT just does not seem to be capable of outputting the best pristine digital signal (the ever so elusive so-called "bit perfect"), as I feel it continues to interject spurious digital noises (and I've tried everything under the sun to tame that noise, replaced the noisy switching PSU with a good linear one, killed all the unnecessary processes on SBT, etc.)

So you may end up stuck with your Majik as a transport. I honestly don't believe you can coach your PC into sounding nearly as good as Majik, unless you're an engineering genius... Sorry to pee on your parade:(

For those who missed Stan's link, I bought one of these 12V rechargeable batteries and charged it up fully before powering the Bushmaster from it.

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDAwWDQwMA...Jrg~~60_12.JPG

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISA...E:L:OU:GB:1123

Listening to it tonight in place of the provided 12V Unifive SMPS, I am impressed. The whole sound has taken on more solidity, especially in the bass, and there is even less harshness with a sweet, extended treble. In fact, the treble quality with hi-res streams from the Logitech Touch is delicate, airy and resolved in a way that CD cannot manage. Brushed cymbal work is superb. The noise floor seems a little lower, bringing the music up from blackness in a very satisfying way.

Once again, as if it need be drummed into us, a linear PSU works wonders to lower the noise floor, enrichen the soundstage and reduce hash and lack of resolution compared with a switched mode PSU.

A second benefit is that the BM + battery becomes an excellent portable DAC/Headphone amp for use in the field or on travels. I dare say you could charge it from a car socket given the correct adapter. An absolute bargain.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by magiccarpetride

Sorry, can't help you there, Hamish. I do have a nagging feeling, the more I listen to the Busmaster, that the real bottleneck in my system may be upstream. SBT just does not seem to be capable of outputting the best pristine digital signal (the ever so elusive so-called "bit perfect"), as I feel it continues to interject spurious digital noises (and I've tried everything under the sun to tame that noise, replaced the noisy switching PSU with a good linear one, killed all the unnecessary processes on SBT, etc.)

So you may end up stuck with your Majik as a transport. I honestly don't believe you can coach your PC into sounding nearly as good as Majik, unless you're an engineering genius... Sorry to pee on your parade:(

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FWIW, I use the Touch and I have no noise at all from the SBT that I can detect. I use a DACMagic but I also use an optical cable. I tried the coax with the Touch and found that optical just sounds better. I saw a few posts when it first came out and people recommended the coax as they thought it should sound better but after the Touch had been out a while I saw a lot of people confirming what I found in that the optical cable did sound better than coax :scratch:

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Originally Posted by MartinT

For those who missed Stan's link, I bought one of these 12V rechargeable batteries and charged it up fully before powering the Bushmaster from it.

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NDAwWDQwMA...Jrg~~60_12.JPG

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISA...E:L:OU:GB:1123

Listening to it tonight in place of the provided 12V Unifive SMPS, I am impressed. The whole sound has taken on more solidity, especially in the bass, and there is even less harshness with a sweet, extended treble. In fact, the treble quality with hi-res streams from the Logitech Touch is delicate, airy and resolved in a way that CD cannot manage. Brushed cymbal work is superb. The noise floor seems a little lower, bringing the music up from blackness in a very satisfying way.

Once again, as if it need be drummed into us, a linear PSU works wonders to lower the noise floor, enrichen the soundstage and reduce hash and lack of resolution compared with a switched mode PSU.

A second benefit is that the BM + battery becomes an excellent portable DAC/Headphone amp for use in the field or on travels. I dare say you could charge it from a car socket given the correct adapter. An absolute bargain.

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Does it selfcharge while running the DAC off a battery or when it starts to run down do you have to charge it? Probably could find out if I went to the site and read but I figure you already know the answer so I'll just ask:eyebrows:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by magiccarpetride

Sorry, can't help you there, Hamish. I do have a nagging feeling, the more I listen to the Busmaster, that the real bottleneck in my system may be upstream. SBT just does not seem to be capable of outputting the best pristine digital signal (the ever so elusive so-called "bit perfect"), as I feel it continues to interject spurious digital noises (and I've tried everything under the sun to tame that noise, replaced the noisy switching PSU with a good linear one, killed all the unnecessary processes on SBT, etc.)

So you may end up stuck with your Majik as a transport. I honestly don't believe you can coach your PC into sounding nearly as good as Majik, unless you're an engineering genius... Sorry to pee on your parade:(

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Hi Alex,
The Touch does output bit perfect via its SPDIF, the guys on the SBT forums have tested it using DTS files.
If it wasn't bit perfect the files wouldn't get through, but they do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by edmondwolfman

Does it selfcharge while running the DAC off a battery or when it starts to run down do you have to charge it? Probably could find out if I went to the site and read but I figure you already know the answer so I'll just ask:eyebrows:

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You charge it separately, otherwise the isolation benefits of using a battery would be lost anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gazjam

Hi Alex,
The Touch does output bit perfect via its SPDIF, the guys on the SBT forums have tested it using DTS files.
If it wasn't bit perfect the files wouldn't get through, but they do.

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Hi Gaz,

Yes, you're right. I chose the wrong term. What I should've said is that the already bit perfect signal gets slightly polluted by some unwanted spurious noise. I've been experimenting with changing the config parameters on the Touch, and was able to affect the level of that pollution. However, the more I was getting close to minimizing this pollution, the more would I be getting breakages in the playback, even to the point that the Touch would just fall completely silent, and only a hard reboot would jolt it back to life! So you see, the files do not always get through.

You can't win (not on the cheap, at least).

Hi guys, for those wanting to turn their Bushmaster \ Caiman into a remotely controlled device I've ordered this from an American company http://inday.com/da4x/da4x.htm it will also expand your s\pdif and toslink inputs. Good eh?