bel canto dac 3 cd 2 owners

Now it’s been a while, the new Bel Canto VBS is nice and broken in. My friend came over for a shootout with his Dac 3 sans power supply upgrade. We set up the gear so we could do quick side by side comparisons between them. A long story short, the new VBS Dac 3 combo is much better than the stock Dac three, and by a substantial margin! Wider soundstage, better detail, more open,
You basically name it, it was better ! Great job Bel Canto , they came out with an upgrade that actually is an upgrade, and not just different sounding. If any one out there has the Dac 3, this is worth it.

Update. just compared the dac3/cd2/vbs to a audio research cd 8 and much to my surprise the bel canto was better ,in about every way. between myself and two other people listening to the shoot out it was clear that the bel canto was passing more low level information , was more dynamic and had a bigger , more open soundstage. very impressive. It was also put up against the new Wadia, the 17,000 dollar one, and it just killed it. WOW ! the wadia was dead and uninvolved compared to the Belcanto combo. I am starting to think the Belcanto is not only [good for the money] but state of the art, regardless of cost, and is sitting right at that sweet spot on the bell curve between cost and performance. The irony is that I think a lot of people will never consider the Belcanto ,because they mistakenly think its to inexpensive to be state of the art. ps I do not work for Belcanto ,just am a happy customer !

The VBS1 power supply powers up to 3 units (not amps) and noticeably drops the noise floor.

$100 connecting cord will let you power the CD-2 to the VBS1.

You can upgrade your Dac3 to Dac3VB for $600 but you will have to have a VBS1 ($1,500) or a new LNS power supply to power it ($500).

Chrissain, thanks for sharing your experience about the upgraded Bel Canto DAC3. Since I have the same DAC, I am trying to decide if its worthwile to upgrade it. I recently compare my stock Bel Canto against a ARC CD7, and I think the ARC was better (they are in different leagues). Did you compare the stock DAC3 against the ARC CD8 before the upgrade?, what did you think at that moment?. If I could match your experience, this upgrade would be a tall order improvement.

Thanks

sorry for taking so long to reply. I did not compare a stock dac 3 to the cd 8. I had all ready upgraded the dac 3 with the vbs at the time of the shootout. but in a very good system, revel studio 2s, top sim audio preamp , rogue Apollo monoblocks, the dac3 vbs was better, and all of us listening thought the same thing, it was unanimous. It [the vbs] is a big upgrade. good luck, chris