Thank you, gentleman.
@Mike: Yes - I have tried Quad DSD, and DXD384; both are sublime; I agree with you, that there is little to separate DSD 256 from DSD 128: I have both versions of several recordings for test purposes, and struggle to hear much, if any, difference. Perhaps a hair more liquidity, a tad more "ease", but really unless you played them back to back, and through a highly resolving system (and I do not claim for a moment my system or room is that) then one is unlikely to hear, I suggest, substantial benefit from the Quad DSD. I suggest the recording and transfer is more important than the sample rate here.
I have not listened in any great measure to PCM yet - frankly the DSD I have is so captivating, that I just haven't got to it yet.
I happened to have a (very good) Paul Haynes derived Linear power supply unit (12v 10A) that I had made a connector for the Nadac, and have tried that. I think it offers a positive improvement to the power plug, but wouldn't say it is night and day. Certainly it does not detract from its performance.
@ Kal, I'll look forward to your review, as I do with all your writing, which I find balanced, thoughtful and without manifest hyperbole (if I may offer my observation, and compliment). For a reviewer, you are a breath of fresh air. Ed Kramer is borrowing my unit to review for Australian Hi Fi magazine. Ed is a lovely man, and has a pro back ground, so comes at things slightly differently to your average reviewer. While like all reviewers he is loath to write a bad review, and to be fair while he usually only publishes reviews that are positive (the bad ones never get published), he is reliable in his findings.
I would love to be able to afford (and receive spousal permission for) surround sound, as to my ears and experience classical and jazz sound marvellous when properly recorded in this medium. Perhaps something for my retirement, if I make it that far :
@Micheal (DallasJustice) - hello; it is a pleasure to meet you. Lovely system you have. As Kal mentioned there is no internal up-sampling. I am agnostic about upsampling per se, and have found it is somewhat hardware dependant. Which is to say some converters (and transfer protocols) benefit from it and some do not. In my experience with the Manhattan it offers benefit with PCM although you can achieve much the same thing on server side. I particularly like red book upsampled to eg 24/192 and listened to over the headphone out. Very immersive. The native ASIO driver is also very transparent.
@Bruce - I am getting the opportunity to visit and spend time in a local production facility that specialise in DXD and DSD recordings (Merging + Horus & Hapi) of local (primarily live) mainly jazz performances for surround and two channel and hopefully attend some of the recording sessions, work permitting.
Set Up
With the Nadac a managed network switch is mandatory beyond one unmanaged connection.Hence why it works fine straight from a laptop, but not over an unmanaged network eg with my AIrport Extreme. The benefit of the ethernet protocol (and indeed the firewire protocol of the Mytek) is that I am experiencing extraordinary sound quality without having to pursue any particular form of dedicated server - hooray! no more flips and twists trying to make USB sound half decent. I anticipate picking up a (cheap) Dell or Lenovo Laptop to use the native ASIO driver Merging write, and so experience native DSD without DoP. Although I may just build a dedicated pc server for it - parts are cheap and saves me various headaches.
Overall I am very pleased with the purchase of the Nadac. It is in my view a stunning bit of kit, and very competitively priced compared to the (to me outrageous) comparable audiophile products (MSB and dCS come to mind here). As with the Manhattan, it offers stunning sound for £, and comes with my highest recommendation, particularly if you have a DSD library, as I do.
2 thumbs up from this side of the pond for DSD.
