I'm into hour 30 of the break in and if things continue to improve, well...it'll just be scary. As I upgraded from the 1.1 I'm betting my break-in is gonna happen quicker than those of you who bought it new (although the board is completely new, the DAC 2 and the 1.1 share the same power supply).
Wvcb: in a word--balance. The DAC 2 has a balance that the 1.1 simply didn't have. Lets be honest the 1.1 had a character and I bought it with that in mind. I was using it as tone control for a system I thought ran to the bright side. The 1.1 was lush and rolled off the treble. I suspect Bel Canto did this so it would suggest a tubiness, and act as a counterbalance to the Evo's extraordinary resolution. Detail may have been lost but the machine was so listenable, so non-fatiguing. The DAC 2 doesn't roll the treble; it's very neutral and quite extended. When listening to my remastered copy of Big Country's The Crossing the E-bows are shrill (the engineer should be shot for screwing up this fantastic album) and painful to listen to, but when listening to Dwight Yoakam's Hillbilly Deluxe the steel guitars and fiddles are sweet and open and reach for the sky without any of the Big Country ear bleeding. The DAC 2 really is playing what's there, good or bad.
Kevziek: Bass? The 1.1 and the DAC 2 seem like different beasts, but maybe not all that much. The 1.1's lushness caused some lower-midrange bloom. And personally I loved that (even though saying so is an audiophile sin). I loved the long decay rates of the 1.1, like ripples in water, like the after taste of an expensive red wine--it was beautiful in a velvety way. Rise times for brass and percussion sounded natural, but man oh man, those lingering notes were very romantic. In other words the 1.1 didn't do much for dirty, nasty rock n' roll.
My favorite music in the world is late 70's to mid-80's punk rock--give me X and the Clash over Mozart and Thelonious Monk. Only problem was that the 1.1 sounded best with my Mel Torme and Dean Martin Cds, interesting and fun, but it wasn't going to sustain my soul. Anyways, I often thought that the lower midrange overpowered the bass. That bloom is gone with the DAC 2. Both rise times and decay are fast. The DAC 2 seems to be a sprinter. When listening to the Mapleshade recording of the reggae group Midnite (currently my number 1 recommendation for best recorded CD) the bass is tight and fast. There's an excitement and a dynamic quality that wasn't there with the 1.1. With the 1.1 this recording was flabby and it shook the walls and stereo cabinet--not any more. Bass and lower mids are in attack mode, well-defined, but maybe overly linear.
In another ten or twenty hours I'll give another update on my impressions. Happy listening everyone.
