I am in study mode regarding DAC's and transports. I recently acquired a California Audio Labs Delta transport. I am considering DAC's now, I lean towards the California Audio Labs matching DAC's but wonder as to the age of them how out of date they are, in my studying I have come accross many DAC's, one I am studying now is a Paradisea, does anyone have any input, good and bad as I have no expirience at all.





Jim

i have never even heard of this unit, but its certainly got cool factor.

the only advise i can give is to think about the cable interface and which one will give the best sound for the dac in question. my dac is about 10 years old and because of its design and the technology at that time, an at&t st optical cable provides the best sound, but it is my understanding that the toslink interface has improved quite a bit since then and there is also coax to consider. then again a dac may only have one or two cable options and because of their design and build, it may not matter which you use ... in my case i can tell absolutely zero difference between a $15 toslink and a $200 coax cable.

The transport I bought is coming with a coax discovery digi-1 cable, the transport is set up for XLR, coax and tos.

Here is a picture, it is not very good, I should get it Friday.

Jim

Thanks to speakerman1 here is a link to a very good review on the DAC.

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equi...oratory_dac.htm

Jim

sweet!

if you want to compare the digi-1 coax with a Stereovox XV2 i can send it out. i'd be curious to know if you can tell any difference.

that's most definitely a unique, unusual cabinet! all transparent colored acrylic! probably isint any good for noise blockage, though. say, what's the vintage?

I am not positive but I believe around 2005.

Jim

From all the gear inside the unit this must be a great DAC. Congrats.
I'm also a fan of non-upsampling DAC's. This one must have a nice soft sound.
Personally i'm not very fan of the Philips 1545 DAC chip but a digital decoder is not only a dac chip... The Burr Brown OPA2604's are very good imo, and one thing the reviewier doesn't mention and have a great impact on sound - because we're talking about signal path, not only 0's and 1's - are ( at least in all i can see from the pics ) the incredible quality of audio caps this baby have.
Btw Jim can you tell me what kind of caps does it have? They look incredible. Elna's, Panasonic's, Auricaps'???

I did pull the trigger on the DAC last night, hopefully I will have it in about a week, it has some traveling to do.

And thanks Clint e, I was hoping to hear from you in regards to the build of this DAC.

Jim

Alvaro, when I receive the unit I will get some nudies and maybe you can tell better as to which caps where used where, in the article it mentions many impressive names.

I ended up, as usual spending more than I had planned, I hope in the end it is justified by the sound.

Jim

Here are a couple of other "borrowed" pictures of the transport.




Jim

Well, as i thought it has aewsome audio caps, and as all good audio components they add their own sound signature to sound. From my own experience with some of those caps i can tell you this: Rubycon give a very well round and controlled tight bass (low freq's), the OsCon from Sanyo give an extraordinary clarity to mid range spectrum and the Elna Silmic give you highs like silk.

About the Cal Delta:

Matsushita ( Panasonic ) were i believe made the mechanisms for CAL Audio.
I think it have the same mechs than the Adcom GCD-750 and the Acurus ACD with RAE0113Z laser assembly

Panasonic MN66271RA LSI Signal Processing
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheet/...c/MN66271RA.pdf

Panasonic MN1 554 Microcontroller (drive controller)
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheets...0/502467_DS.pdf

Quad EIA–422 Line Driver with Three-state Outputs
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheet/...ola/MC3487P.pdf

Programmable Timer MC14541B
http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheet2...oog7y173epy.pdf

In resume you have purchased also a terrific transport.
I'm a little over the lunch time so i must get back to work now. Have fun with your new audio toys.

Just to add this:

You can try to put your analog gear plugged in one electric circuit and all digital in another, than tell me what you think about it....sound wise i mean.

The transport arrived to day, in the original box and an additional box. Tomorrow the DAC, then power them up, and hopefully get the bride to let me play it for a short time.

Jim

That's good news. New toys = great fun.