Game enough?

No matter how many time you wash your car, your bucket of water still murky, only that the water gets less murkier than the one before. We, fi thirst for transparency. With each layer of haze removed, details prevail. I was all soak up with the spatial thing. The nuance decaying into the deeper soundfield thrills me, goosebumps. Little did I know, I have less tolerance with sonic haze. This is evidenced when listen to others.

What is life anyway? The routine eat, work and sleep? Long before the birth of toy, men busy make babies. Hobby induces nonsensical behavior. Give me my toy and I will stop harassing you. We have property bubbles but how come no audio bubbles? Audio prices rise way beyond our salary, this indeed is a sad story. Smell of troubles? Let tomorrow worry for itself. I could not spend lavishly as some could but I can tweak, I tweak like no tomorrow.

Resonance control is one area not to be neglected. It's role is bigger than we could have ever imagined. Speaker stand is a very good example and do not play down the importance of audio rack too. Good audio racks do not come cheap, you get what you pay. ET spider rack serves me well, it is versatile too. It allows me to mix and match with different hardness coefficient, rather than the supplied rubber footers. Moving forward, power cord resonance control is a game changer. Virtual Dynamic adds sands in their power cord line up, Accustic Arts with ferrite beads to curb vibrations, EFI and RFI, what more cotton fiber filling, cable jacket and cable sleeve. That's how garden hose power cords come about.

Long before that, all plugs sit on a support for the sake of minimising resonance. You know it too, in some cases, the sagging connections are not tight fit. These are eye sore to me, don't they to you? A steady connectivity is vital to any system. Taking a twist, I sit my power cords on PU foam (fruit packaging) and egg crates.

Egg crate is a cost effective resonance control. I see many hawkers place their chopping board on egg crates for cushioning, each chop receives less feedback. I am using plastic egg crate presently until I get some paper egg crates. You can savage these things from your kitchen. Unless you have amber space to afford the luxury of placing your rigs on the floor, that would be ideal. The best that I can come up with is partial resonance control on the power cords.

Now, the most intriguing things about power cord resonance control, it brings different results with where the resonance control at. This, I had been told. You will have to get your hands dirty and bend your back a bit. A tip, fine tune at both ends of power cord by moving the supports. If that not satisfactory, you may want to sag the power cord at certain point for tuning. Transparency and tonal balance are what you get at the end of the day, experience the off loading effect. Ideally, you might want your power cords to be less coiled/less stressed and leveled. This is easier said than done.

Holy cow! My eyes pop for my system responds to the slightest things I do, it speaks up. Slap me, somebody! Constant tuning sort of sharpen my listening skills. I do not believe the golden ear theory. Your listening abilities are as good as mine but knowing what to listen is another matter. With the resonance control in place, the upper bass muddiness has been offloading, phenomenal. The sound gets lighter and swifter.

Ruggiero Ricci playing Wieniawski under Dynamic label, wow! The bow actions and the nuances and subtleties are crazy. Dynamic label is known for transparency and clean recording, all hifi attributes you ever asked for are there. Ruggiero recorded this album at 65, for many couldn't ever hold a glass steady at that age. Remarkable hand-mind coordination at 65, I just hope that I won't be needing a walking stick then. The pesticide in our vegetation, the beta agonists in our livestock, the food chemical ... are taxing our bodies.

This CD will reveal the shortcoming of ill balanced sounding system. Ruggiero's playing is fiery and explosive, working the strings like modern violinist. Great technical command, he is a violin tactician. He plays with Guaneri De Gesus, a violin known for its dark G tone, powerful perfectly complimenting his aggressive play. Now, every violinist has a playing signature, some are more distinct than the others. Ruggiero camps on Heifetz side, technical prowess and fast. Sounded a little cold, oppose to David Oistrakh or Itzhak Perlman, they fiddle the violin with tone color.

You have got to be careful with this CD, it will sound dry and agitated like not getting paid for his performance.  With the wrong power cord, I can't help feeling the violin virtuoso is rushing his performance to get off the stage for his beer.

The complexity of piano harmonic can not be duplicated, the intermittent sub harmonics of keyboard, hammer, strings, sound board and pedals, all in one harmonic. The microphone could not capture the abundance of information of piano, in close distance, the nuances of piano is overwhelming. This effect fades when distance comes into play. Hence, listening from 10 feet away will not be better than what is reproduced from the CD unless you have Elf hearing ability. One of the measures of a system is how much rightness of piano reproduction and the overtones preservation.

Richter plays Debussy is one of my treasured CDs. Richter first live recording on CD, how about that! Sviatoslav Richter was a difficult pianist, he was reported walking out of a performance for no valid reasons. But his piano artistry is truly amazing, he is right there with the greatest there is. Far out weight his difficult personality, but we all forgive him when the maestro started to play. The CD is under a Russian label? I was skeptical about the recording nevertheless. Boy! The recording turned out to be sssu....perb.

The reverberations were everywhere. The wooden floor, the wobbling mike, the ventilation, scary realism. The ringing of the strings is forever, tide after tide. You do not get any better imperfection than this and the imperfection renders realistic. With power cord resonance control on, nuances become tangible as if I was on stage with him.

In short, we can not kill resonance but we can control it. The reward is transparency. Transparency allows us to count head in choral works, greater tangibility and spatial separation. This underlies a balancing act, transparency/density trade off. Mom used to say, you can't have your cake and eat it too. So, pandai pandai lah sendiri. The resonance control will dilute the character of power cord. My DIY WE power cord sounded as if had shed off some fat. I am happy to hear the overtones wholeness, that's to me is gold. And isn't this fidelity we all strive to achieve? Try this and tell me if I am wrong.

BMC PureDAC follow up

The cruel AB test, definitely not in my place because I will have a hard time letting the winning component leave. O my wallet is thin enough already! Furthermore, the changing of component in my system is a big hassle, have to deal with the delicate isolation and space constraint isn't conducive for equipment changing. Thus, I jumped on the opportunity to see BMC PureDAC steps in to the ring with the mighty dCS Debussy in a Wilson Sasha based system in a friend's place.

Stereophile reports, "Inside is the latest version of dCS's software-updatable "Ring DAC." This is a five-bit design, operating at 2.822 or 3.07MHz and handling the audio data in a proprietary five-bit format at DSD's sample frequency. All incoming digital data are oversampled to this format before being converted to analog". http://www.stereophile.com/content/dcs-debussy-da-processor  This is neither a 1 bit nor multi-bit machine.

Proprietary software and chipset are great cool sentiment, however if the product is sold few, no economy of scale. Cool factor for a price, someone will have to burden the cost. This is basic costing.

On the other hand, PureDAC uses common chipset. The design team was working on perfecting the circuitry to optimize the chipset. No rocket science and marketing hyperbole. Just plain ol school good engineering. PureDAC throws in DSD 128, this is a welcoming feature since digital evolution is light speed. Anything over three digital years is deemed obsolete. Future proof is a plus point.

The name dCS weights a ton, considered by many an untouchable icon in digital playback. By any standard, this PK is completely insane especially in term of price. BMC is neither BMW nor BMC bike, new kids on the block. Debussy is going for RM40k while PureDAC is RM7k+ locally, that's a difference of six fold in price. Does PureDAC have the David's sling?  Let's get on to it .......

I give praise to this Sasha based system because it is one of the better Wilson systems. The owner tireless efforts to get the best of Sasha is admirable, he tries everything under the sun to make Sasha shine. His strive for good sound will one day makes him a guru. There is no cut to experience.

Typically, Wilsons with its revealing nature require skill to set them up right, definitely not a novice's speaker. Much like Messi and ex Barca coach Pep Guardiola, they learn and relearn from each other. Both of them bring out the best of each other. The virtues of Wilson that we all come to know are, realism, dynamic, soundstage and bass slam. They are considered the best value in high end for what they capable of but not the most finesse by the world standard. Their European cousins fare much better in finesse department.

We began listening to Debussy, drives the amp direct. O gosh! The system sounded punctured like a tired old man running up the stairs. Blame Wilson Sashas for gain demanding, a lazy buffalo needs whipping to work. Nevertheless, the observations were based on 2 volts output albeit lacking in gain.

Tonality
In term of timbre honesty, Debussy is perceived to be more accurate. And accuracy always comes in the expense of musicality. Right out from the box, PureDAC is musical, has a noticeable bloom exhibiting romanticism. This tube like romanticism does vocal palpable, warm, organic and soft leading edges. No long hours listening fatigue. The succulent and liquidity qualities are the hallmarks of great vocal reproduction, free of digitis. Most dacs these days manage jitters far better, I have no complaint here. The blooming renders 3D images, projecting some meat to the bone. Debussy in contrast is leaner, colder and a tad quicker comparatively. 

Due to the forward midrange, PureDAC could easily misinterpreted as less detailed. Far from edgy, the highs has a rounded quality but I would not think the highs are rolled off. I could hear all there is to be heard only the extension is slightly short lived compares with Debussy. Debussy is more extended, the decay hangs around slightly longer, presenting a more airy and spacious soundscape. Having said that, in absolute linearity, Debussy highs still sound rosy, delicate, sweetened compares with say EMM Labs, a stone cold accurate DAC.

Debussy's leaner bass demeanor has the quick and bounciness that I prefer. Both dives equally deep. PureDAC has a fuller bass. 

Soundstage
The illusion of soundstage is room size dependent. In the battle of soundstage, Debussy wins, hand down. It manages to depict a wider and deeper soundstage, thanks to Debussy more extended highs. Both equally competent doing the spooky spatial thing with Stonehenge like images, capable of withstanding the storm. Credits to the amp for the iron fist control. Again, the spatial thing is what Debussy known for did not disappoint.

Transparency
Utilizing digital volume control, PureDAC steps all over Debussy albeit lacks of gain. We listened to softies. BMC's Digital Intelligent Gain Management is superior to yesteryear digital volume. Debussy has a hazy presentation in comparison. This did not surprise me. I had a good read about its voltage volume control and this listening reconfirmed my findings. The more traveling distance of signal will prone to more signal loss and sonic degradation.

There is no way you can cheat the battle of signal loss. I am a staunch subscriber of minimalist audio - less component and tuned via cables and tweaking. That's of course if you wanted a specific sonic signature of a particular brand, pre and power is the way to go.

Dynamic
A tie, probably PureDAC has an edge in dynamic but not as quick as Debussy. A worthy note, PureDAC sits on Debussy, while Debussy was rested on Nordost Sort Kones. We all know how isolation can do, right. It is not surprise to see that Debussy is more exciting but they were not compare on a fair ground.

Conclusion
A durian falls from the tree, the fruit is ripe according to the planter but it is the work of gravity for the scientist. Who is right? In a span of two months, I have heard two sub RM8k new dacs come close to dCS in performance. PureDAC is one of them. Competitors are catching up. To my ears, entry level dCS's might is narrowed and certainly not six fold the price would suggest.

Both Debussy and PureDAC are not able to drive direct to the amp but PureDAC gives a good run for the money taking into account that PureDAC was just taken out fresh out from the box. We all love underdog, don't we?

PureDAC is the most tube like solid state dac I have ever heard. Given some break in time and a right power cord, PureDAC will pop eyes!!!