Wyred DACS

Haven't had a chance to audition the Tranquility yet. Due to some issues there is no need to go into about here it will be shipped to me in Australia Monday. It was going to be part of a DAC shootout Saturday week and there is now some doubt it will not reach here in time for that. I will keep my fingers crossed but it will be tight.

Thanks
Bill

Thanks Bill,

Looking forward to your report.

Take care,
No Regrets

Hi Guys

The Tranquility just arrived. Have done a quick evaluation with a Windows Notebook which is far from its optimum setup. Already however to our ears we think it is better than the WFS - no trace of the sibilance issue. Both Dianna Krall and Tom Jones Praise and Blame sounded very fluid, liquid and musical. Maybe not quite the detail of the WFS. The output stage, while solid state, sounds very non solid state like.

What is planned is it will remain down at Mike Lenehans for a few days while he checks it out further. I will contact Eric Hider to set up the Mac Mini optimally then we can give it a serious evaluation.

Thanks
Bill

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the quick update! Looking forward to hearing more from your "serious evaluation".

What is it about using windows that makes it far from optimum? If I were to get this, I'd be using it with my laptop which is Windows Vista Home Premium....would this not be compatible or not recommended?

Thanks

The guy whose reference system we tried it out on did some further investigation when I left and this is what he posted in an unrelated thread on another forum (it was about a DAC shootout we were at):

Bill had a normal Laptop and I think he was using I River (it was J River) software. First impressions were ! well a little underwhelming. Nice and smooth to be sure , top end seemed a little down to me and the bass was Ahh lazy ! It did nothing wrong but it did nothing right either ! the ConnorNM24 killed it in my view. OK so bill leaves and I thought I’d just drop my Compaq laptop on and feed it some of my wav files from I tunes. HOLY SMOKE what just happened, It was instantly competitive with the NM24. This little alloy brick thingy must be very sensitive to what USB signal it’s fed. More on this device soon when we feed it with a Mac mini ( as recommended by Eric Hider ) It did however trail behind the NM24 overall and particularly in the bass , being still a touch inarticulate and rounded. Resolution was very good with no hardness or detectable digititis evident Perhaps with MacMini integration we could have a real competitor. Although Mr Hider has’nt stated what DAC is being used it sounds very 1704 ish to me.

So bottom line here is even with a bog standard windows machine we were achieving results comparable to an uber expensive heavily tweaked statement DAC. However this is getting a bit out of the scope of this thread. For you guys it is probably best to follow it on the thread in Audio Circles where I will be posting this stuff.
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=74816.440

Thanks
Bill