Is it because more expensive?
What did you listen to? What condition: bit perfect, oversampling, upconversion to DSD...? What player?
Interesting comparison, with the Totaldac six coming out on top. A much more expensive Dac than the T&A (4x)
I'm assuming DSD256 through The six and DSD512 through Dac 8. Would be great to read some more info to complete the picture.
Just had another week with the SGMS2015 and tried the modulators again so I can be happy with my fit and forget choice, all in the context of my system and music choices, everything from The Wknd to Copland to Cecille McLorin Savant and Rush(reluctantly).
I'm hearing the ADSM7 as being a great match for DSD>512 and DSD7 256fs for everything else>DSD512. So, as I've only about 20 DSD recordings of dubious musical merit, the latter is confirmed as my preferred modulator. Just don't ask me what it is or why it's labelled 256. Obviously these preferences may not be relevant if using a different Dac or indeed different amp/speaker.
Also, the SGMS2015 is sat on a granite slab(30kg) on carpet over floorboards so I thought I heard a thickening/smearing of bass lines on bass heavy material caused by vibrations. At 84db the room does start to sing along in the best possible way. Luckily I had a set of three Aurios roller bearings and with some help elevated the SGMS2015 onto the bearings. An additional spacer was used due to the bearings being about 2mm shorter than stock feet. Great result, the bass now quicker and less smeared.
Still can't believe how good Tidal sounds.
Cheers
Blue58
The 3 players are used with their native OS & playback softwares.
Files used are 16/44.1 files ripped from CD.
SGMS has native advantage because its HQPlayer onboard can do upsampling : to DSD512 when with T+A and to 24/176.4 when with Totaldac Six.
Go to listen to them yourself and tell us your view.
I thought you can tell the sound quality by price and no need for any auditioning.
I had a landmark day with Ben and Dominc at Volent's office and showroom in Kowloon. Ben's Paragon VL3.5 speakers are superb, with in-house technology ribbon super tweeter, Acuton ceramic tweeter, ATD mid range and woofers, all in a HDF cabinet with no parallel sides. These speakers were TAS editors choice award winners !
It was my first meeting with the TotalDAC D1-six, and the task was to come up with new settings to suit this great sounding DAC so as to deliver the best possible sound from Roon to HQ Player upsampling to 24/176. We were able to develop new OS settings and HQ Player settings that brought the already excellent TDD1-6 to a new level.
With the T+ A DAC 8 DSD, we were able to raise the performance to a higher level with a USB cable change to Sablon's USB.
The SQ of both DAC's was raised so much, that people will need to hear both of these DAC's again to see which one they like the best.
The depth of the sound stage was an incredible 3.5 meters behind the plane of the speakers
Hi Edward,
I shall visit Volent showroom again on Wed evening.
Hope that I may meet you and learn from you how to set the HQPlayer to suit different DACs.
Many thanks in advance!
CK
It was my first meeting with the TotalDAC D1-six, and the task was to come up with new settings to suit this great sounding DAC so as to deliver the best possible sound from Roon to HQ Player upsampling to 24/176. We were able to develop new OS settings and HQ Player settings that brought the already excellent TDD1-6 to a new level.
Very interesting. What did you make of the totaldac d1-six? There aren't many reviews online so your impressions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Guillaume
I have heard the TotalDAC D1-six several times and D1-12 yesterday, and can say with full confidence that their performance is superb when the audio data is being delivered from Roon to HQ Player, upsampled by HQ player to 24/176. Playing 16/44 native is not in the same sonic class, even when delivered by a top of the line bit perfect transport or music server. It's good to point out that HQ Players digital artifact hunting and elimination is also in action when doing PCM to PCM upsampling.
The TotalDAC's do need a very "RFI clean" source as evidenced by TotalDAC's various add on offerings. When I met Michael Lavorgna in Munich in May, he told me that he was extremely impressed by the TotalDAC's having just visited Vincent
on my recommended DAC's to audition list for Roon to HQ Player are sorted by detail on top and tone color / richness on the bottom
T+A DAC 8 DSD
TotalDAC D1-Six and 12
Lampizator Siebener DSD 512
What I would like to hear to evaluate are Nagra HD, and Lampizator Atlantic to see where they fall in the detail <> tone color spectrum
Not such a long list
Hi Edward,
So you prefer the above-mentioned DACs to pair with SGMS instead of other top DACs such as dCS Vivaldi, CH Precision C1, MSB & Trinity?
Please share with us your view.
Many Thanks!
(My personal favourites are MSB Select II and Totaldac Twelve)
CK
Hi CK,
There is always a trade off between sonic performance, convenience & easy of use, and cost which my recommended to audition list reflects.
I have not heard the dCS Vivaldi stack, but I would, just for fun like to compare it with SGM with HQP but no Roon feeding to a custom DSD 512 discreet converter. However it's not something available on the market yet. It's a horse race between large parallel processing in firmware and hardware versus heavy software processing delivering to fast and relatively simple firmware and hardware processing.
I have only heard reports on CH Precision C1, I expect it to be a very nice paring with the SGM, but the PCM 1704 is a bit of an old timer classic now
The Trinity DAC is another DAC I have not heard, but I do know Trinity owners who prefer the TotalDAC D1 -12 to it, and it is very expensive
MSB is well beyond my pay grade, so it's not on my list of recommendations to friends
Steve Williams Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator | Ron Resnick Site Co-Owner | Administrator | Julian (The Fixer) Website Build | Marketing Managersing |