Eastern Electric's new tube DAC using ESS Sabre??

Doug - The 24/48 or 24/96 files I play through my EE dac sound significantly better than redbook. I just don't see how the dac can create additional data simply because it's 32 bit. Calling for the death of high-rez digital because we have 32 bit dacs now is just silly, IMO.

Mr T. - In your review I think I saw that you use a passive pre - The dac has a very high output impedence from the tube stage (22K) - I was wondering if you tried it with an active pre, and if not I suggest that you might not have heard all that this little wonder can do.

-Mike

hi mike:

i did briefly hook up a tube preamp but did not notice much of a difference in performance, so i discontinued its use and did not mention it.

Mike, did you have an identical pathway for the 16/24 bit comparison?

Doug,
No, nothing that I could know came from the same master. I'll have to reread the review to see if/how you accomplished this. It just seems like most everything I have in high-rez has a walk-around/walk-through soundstage that I rarely if ever get from 16/44 sources. Tonally they are very close but spatially far apart, no idea why.
I still don't understand how the use of a 32 bit dac can add info to a 16/44 file that is present in a higher bit rate/bit depth source. I appreciate your reporting your experience as you experienced it.
Great dac, though, that's for sure!

OK, just quickly reread the review. I see that you were simply playing redbook material that had either been upsampled to 24/192 or left at 16/44. This is completely different from comparing 16/44 vs. higher-rez data. No suprize to me that 16/44 that is internally upsampled in the Sabre sounds the same as 16/44 upsampled to 24/192 and then further upsampled by the Sabre sounds the same. It's essentially the same data.
On my quick re-read, I did not see that you actually listened to any hi-rez data, yet you surmize that hi-rez has now been rendered moot by the existence of 32 bit dacs.
You should really listen to hi-rez through this thing before commenting that there is no advantage to using hi-rez files vs. 16/44.

-Mike