Beresford Bushmaster DAC Reviews

[James_Woods]

Just one question: You tested the Bushmaster against the RegaDAC - but I did not see which settings you used.

Upsampling? Filters?

I've heard the RegaDAC - one thing that really hurts my eyes is that they use no external PSU. In my opinion the Bushmaster is at the same level of details. - whereas the flavour of the sound is a bit different in my opinion.

To the people with "dropouts" - have you tried turning of your WiFi connection? (On most motherboards the soundcard is using the same "lane" as the WiFi.)

[J-PG]

Tobi, habe alles ausgeschaltet, sogar spotlight. Es gibt keine Veränderung!

Tobi, I disabled everything, even spotlight. The problem still remains!

[Gazjam]

Theres no upsampling with the Rega Dac Tobi, think it was Filter 5 on the Rega but I didn't check.
I've not tried out the different filters on the Rega, maybe others would sound better, I dont know.

From Jriver the music was fed to each Dac as it was - no upsampling - using WinAspi - Event Style, Source bitdepth with memory play enabled.
None of the settings was changed so each dac was fed by the same track, same settings.

[magiccarpetride]

We then moved on to the fully tricked out Caiman. This had a smidge less clarity in the mid compared to the BM, but we found it was superior at the top and bottom. Better soundstaging too. A bit of a surprise to me and not what I was expecting frankly!

Hey, I got mighty intrigued by your guys's ranking of the Caiman. To my ears, Gatorized Caiman sounds pronouncedly leaner, dryer, and flatter than the Bushmaster. Perhaps you guys prefer lean, dry and flat sound, but even so, wouldn't you agree that the Bushmaster has a much better defined bass? Plus, my Caiman sounds very two dimensional next to the Bushmaster (at least in my system).

[Val33]

I have to say that this goes completely contrary to my findings too.

My Caiman is fully tricked up, caps, regulators, linear supply and either gaitor board or passive mod. The Bushmaster blows it out of the water. Much tighter and lower bass, more defined imagining, and crystal highs.

Very strange.

Val

[magiccarpetride]

I have to say that this goes completely contrary to my findings too.

My Caiman is fully tricked up, caps, regulators, linear supply and either gaitor board or passive mod. The Bushmaster blows it out of the water. Much tighter and lower bass, more defined imagining, and crystal highs.

Very strange.

Val

Is that with or without the beers?

[Ali Tait]

Hey, I got mighty intrigued by your guys's ranking of the Caiman. To my ears, Gatorized Caiman sounds pronouncedly leaner, dryer, and flatter than the Bushmaster. Perhaps you guys prefer lean, dry and flat sound, but even so, wouldn't you agree that the Bushmaster has a much better defined bass? Plus, my Caiman sounds very two dimensional next to the Bushmaster (at least in my system).

Nope, that's how I would describe the BM. I don't prefer that kind of sound, I like valves!

[Gazjam]

We were all open minded and gave our honest opinion.
People hear differently, different systems, different tastes etc.

Not to damn it with faint praise, but the BM is a very good dac for the money, its a crackin buy.
It was only in direct comparison to the others that (to us three) the differences came out.
Remember the other Dacs are more expensive, Ali's Dac being many hundreds of pounds more!!

We were all in agreement about the order of the Dacs.
I personally was surprised how good my Caiman sounded in comparison.
I have spent a lot on it with all the mods, also we were using it with a Mark Grant Linear PSU.

[Gazjam]

Nope, that's how I would describe the BM. I don't prefer that kind of sound, I like valves!

+1 that's how the BM sounded to me too.

I felt the bass and top end was better on the Caiman.
Not night and day better but put together it made for an easier listen than the BM.

...and valves sound excellent - that amp of yours Ali....

[Ali Tait]

Aye, those RS3's seemed to like the glass bottles!