I've got one !

[Sherwood]

Real music is infinitely more dynamic than that produced by the vast majority of hifi systems. It is much easier to put together a hifi system that is (generally) accurate tonally than it is to assemble one that has realistic transients and dynamics. Furthermore, many people, either by choice or by necessity (i.e. not annoying the neighbours) listen to music at quite low volume levels which further limits dynamics. Hearing a system that is capable of reproducing dynamics well can be a shock and many people just don't like it. I use a SEG with the Dorado and agree that the handling of dynamics and detail is very good. I would disagree strongly that it is artificial or exaggerated but I can understand why some users may dislike the sound. The same goes for bass extension. The SEG is capable of producing a very extended bass response with excellent handling of timbre and texture. This can cause problems for underpowered systems or speakers with loose slow bass responses.

Geoff

[pitadavespa]

Hi, Adrian, thank you for your kind input.

I was born in the 70's, so before this loudness war became "standard". I understand your point, but it's not the case (fortunately).

Don't get me wrong. I love dynamic! I hate to listen to these highly compressed albums nowadays and I almost feel sorry for the "kids" who never listened to music without (noticeable) compression.
But what I felt with the SEG was some type of compression/suppression thing (it's difficult to me to express better in English) that didn't sound natural to me.

I don't intend to feed this further regarding my opinion about the SEG, though.
I was just trying to understand what you guys notice is better after 30 hours burning in, and why.


Cheers,
L

BTW: my DAC is a Rotel RDP-980 (slightly modified with OPA627) and a Rotel RDD-980 transport with a CDM9-pro fitted. Not the best in the world, or I wouldn't be searching for a better one, but pretty damn good to me.

[pitadavespa]

Real music is infinitely more dynamic than that produced by the vast majority of hifi systems. It is much easier to put together a hifi system that is (generally) accurate tonally than it is to assemble one that has realistic transients and dynamics. Furthermore, many people, either by choice or by necessity (i.e. not annoying the neighbours) listen to music at quite low volume levels which further limits dynamics. Hearing a system that is capable of reproducing dynamics well can be a shock and many people just don't like it. I use a SEG with the Dorado and agree that the handling of dynamics and detail is very good. I would disagree strongly that it is artificial or exaggerated but I can understand why some users may dislike the sound. The same goes for bass extension. The SEG is capable of producing a very extended bass response with excellent handling of timbre and texture. This can cause problems for underpowered systems or speakers with loose slow bass responses.

Geoff

Hi, Geoff.

I understand and agree with your point regarding live music dynamics and our systems (and houses) (in)ability to reproduce it.
I have to disagree about the SEG part, though. Artificial or exaggerated are indeed good words to describe what I felt (although I may be COMPLETELY wrong!).

What do you mean about extended bass response?
Every Beresford DAC (and please note I have nothing against Stanley or his brand) that comes out is capable of more and better extended bass response, or so I read many times.
My questions, because I like to understand and question things a bit, are: Why? How? Does it mean that a 30Hz -40dB tone on a disk can be 33Hz -38dB on one DAC and 28Hz -37dB on another? And this all can change with a few hours of burn in?
So, how can an engineer built something? He tries to figure how each part will "sound" after burning in?
That's the type of questions I ask myself, in order to try to understand.

I just want my system to be as much enjoyable as possible, but I also want to be sure I'm hearing what is on the record, as much as possible, and the Sound Engineer's work (for good and for bad), not my system's sound.
Does it make sense?

OP: sorry if I changed your posts focus...

[AJSki2fly]

I don't intend to feed this further regarding my opinion about the SEG, though.
I was just trying to understand what you guys notice is better after 30 hours burning in, and why.

BTW: my DAC is a Rotel RDP-980 (slightly modified with OPA627) and a Rotel RDD-980 transport with a CDM9-pro fitted. Not the best in the world, or I wouldn't be searching for a better one, but pretty damn good to me.

Well at risk of being shot down in flames perhaps yours had an issue from build, DACs'Chips etc are complex beasts and no-one has made the perfect manufacturing process and pre delivery testing. So it might be worth trying another, you never know. Alternatively move on and have a go at another, I have read on here that the Schit one are pretty good, I was also tempted by the iFi DAC's which are highly rate.

Cheers

Adrian

[pitadavespa]

Well at risk of being shot down in flames perhaps yours had an issue from build, DACs'Chips etc are complex beasts and no-one has made the perfect manufacturing process and pre delivery testing. So it might be worth trying another, you never know. Alternatively move on and have a go at another, I have read on here that the Schit one are pretty good, I was also tempted by the iFi DAC's which are highly rate.

Cheers

Adrian

Agreed. The unit having something wrong was a possibility for me.

Cheers,
L

[Sherwood]

Hi, Geoff.

I understand and agree with your point regarding live music dynamics and our systems (and houses) (in)ability to reproduce it.
I have to disagree about the SEG part, though. Artificial or exaggerated are indeed good words to describe what I felt (although I may be COMPLETELY wrong!).

What do you mean about extended bass response?
Every Beresford DAC (and please note I have nothing against Stanley or his brand) that comes out is capable of more and better extended bass response, or so I read many times.
My questions, because I like to understand and question things a bit, are: Why? How? Does it mean that a 30Hz -40dB tone on a disk can be 33Hz -38dB on one DAC and 28Hz -37dB on another? And this all can change with a few hours of burn in?
So, how can an engineer built something? He tries to figure how each part will "sound" after burning in?
That's the type of questions I ask myself, in order to try to understand.

I just want my system to be as much enjoyable as possible, but I also want to be sure I'm hearing what is on the record, as much as possible, and the Sound Engineer's work (for good and for bad), not my system's sound.
Does it make sense?

OP: sorry if I changed your posts focus...

The answer is simple. Consider a vinyl recording. Many turntables and arm/cartridges are typically very poor at reproducing the timbre of bass or the "presence" of an instrument such as a double bass or cello. That does not mean that the information is not on the disc. The same applies to a DAC. Some DACs are better than others at recovering low bass notes and in conveying the timbre of bass instruments. In my opinion, the SEG is one such DAC, and the Dorado unit further enhances this capability. You say that you don't believe in "burn in" but most SEG/Dorado users would disagree, especially in the case of the SEG with the Dorado. If you didn't like it that's fine. You were able to send it back and get a refund. However, I think you will find that the vast majority of SEG/Dorado users are very pleased with the performance of this combo and consider it to be a very analogue sounding setup.

Geoff

[pitadavespa]

The answer is simple. Consider a vinyl recording. Many turntables and arm/cartridges are typically very poor at reproducing the timbre of bass or the "presence" of an instrument such as a double bass or cello. That does not mean that the information is not on the disc. The same applies to a DAC. Some DACs are better than others at recovering low bass notes and in conveying the timbre of bass instruments. In my opinion, the SEG is one such DAC, and the Dorado unit further enhances this capability.

Geoff, to my ears, the SEG's sound was a big mess. I thought I would love it. I wanted to love it. But I didn't. Maybe it's just not for me.
But I already left my opinion and I don't intend to depreciate it, so I won't comment about it any more.

You say that you don't believe in "burn in" but most SEG/Dorado users would disagree, especially in the case of the SEG with the Dorado. If you didn't like it that's fine. You were able to send it back and get a refund. However, I think you will find that the vast majority of SEG/Dorado users are very pleased with the performance of this combo and consider it to be a very analogue sounding setup.

Geoff

No, I don't believe in burn in. Not when mechanical parts are not involved. But I believe our brain gets used to a different type of sound after a few hours/days, and we are led to believe that's caused by the burn in effect. I hope I'm not being rude, but that is what I believe.

But, supposing it exists, why 20-30 hours? If something evolves during the firsts 30 hours or so, why does it stop? Or when can we expect it to stop getting better and better? Why not 500 hours, just to be sure?
Are chips, resistances, caps, transistors, etc. not fully working when they are new?
And why don't the manufactures say in a clear way, black on white, and prove it, that burn in exists?
It would be so easy to grab two units of the same product, measure boths "sound" with an oscilloscope, then burn in one of them for a week or so and then remeasure both to see the differences. When I see that, believe me: I'll believe.
I'm not the most informed person regarding this, but I don't remember having ever seen proves, measures, graphs. Only subject "talk". And, believe me, I was a believer, once.

I now believe that, in the first minutes turned on, temperature can have a bit of influence, but then it's gone. It's our brain that does the rest.
Like when, late at night, all our systems sound better. That's not because they're turned on for 18 hours or so. That's because everything is much more silent around us and we can hear all the details better.

This is just my humble opinion, just that and nothing more than that. I don't want you to take it. I just like to question things.
What matters is we hear and enjoy music.


Cheers,
Luis

[Pepperamip]

I have always experienced burn in with virtually every piece of new hifi i have ever owned. The sound almost always changed for the better with any harshness dicipates with time. I doubt my brain has been tricked every time but i see why some think like that. Each to their own as they say

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[PeteC]

QUAD always aimed to provide " the closest approach to the original sound", a fine ideal. During my days with the BBC I had the privilege of being able to move from the studio with a full orchestra playing into the sound control room to listen to the mix on studio monitor speakers. The best recording engineers really did get pretty close to the real sound, but perfection eludes us all in such a pursuit.

If you really want to test things may I suggest that you have a night out at a real concert hall, with a real orchestra an then obtain a recording of the same music and listen to it at home. How close does this come to resembling the real thing?

If you enjoyed the real concert then this could be dangerous as you might end up joining the rest of us nutcases in spending vast sums of money and too much time striving to chase the impossible, as QUAD always did.

If you are lucky enough to enjoy heavily processed sound, all compressed into an MP3 file then you might save a lot of cash!

[Lawrence001]

As has been said in other threads recently, people are free to give their opinions on gear in this forum, it might be positive or negative, and others are free to ignore it if they wish.

I can't comment on Stan's dacs as I've never owned one. The language used in the critique did remind me a lot of what I've thought with Sabre dacs I've owned however. Especially the loudness button comment. I did wonder if sabre had built some form of DSP into their chips as the sound seemed boosted in some way, both in terms of frequency response and soundstage/width. I assume technically minded people would pick it up very quickly with their measuring equipment so I must be wrong (unless it can be done in such a way that doesn't show up). But that's still how they sound to me.

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