So will, any new impressions?

Hey Will,

Your impressions dovetail nicely with mine . . . the first two weeks there were interesting and ultimately improving changes in the sound from the ZDAC-1. Around the beginning of week three I felt it was generally broken in and sounding great.  It's had a few wavers in sound since then and probably sounds a bit better now as it nears the end of another week.  I considered it broken in after two weeks, and it will season over the next months.

I'm pleased at how well my SACD player has held up beside it (I have both running through my ZBox, which I had Steve add another input to a year and a half or so back). I can toggle back and forth between them. Like the sound of both for Redbook for different reasons, as I'vew mentioned above.

Keep on enjoying and keep on letting us know.

Yes, I'm using a 12BH7, an RCA NOS.

My problems with the ZBox before were in combination with the ZCD and CSP2 actually, too much hum using all these, and it seemed to mask dynamics and some detail.

It doesn't add a whole lot to the ZDAC sound, but I'm using it right now so and probably will onwards to switch between the ZDAC and the SACD output of the SCD-XA5400ES.  The ZDAC sounds great without it, perhaps just a tad smoother with it.

Thanks Lon for the Zbox input.

And you too Randy. Thinking back on the burn in experience, it has been pretty much as you said...dreamy good, then for me, a little surprising when the goose bumps weren't there, but it still sounded really good. Left me sort of wondering....did that really happen? I thought this thing was carrying me away yesterday!

I expect it is appropriately named Zen DAC, since an object of Zen practice is total involvement with something, so much so that there is no distinction between subject and object....or in this case listener and listened to! After the experience of the music involving us so completely, it is almost like a dream to remember the experience.

I hope it ends with the goose bumps all the time!

Lon,

Thanks for the further explanation about how you have figured out the use of the Zbox. Makes good sense and I appreciate it. I had a Jolida CD100 with tube output for a while, and I really liked a lot of what those tubes did to richen the musical experience...I also liked how it made lesser recordings sound more rich and live. But finally I had technical problems with two different jolidas and I ran for it, going for a more accurate, but still pretty musical solid state player. Not sure if that was the best plan or not at this point.

But now, with the ZDAC or the Rega, the appeal of an additional tube stage could fit, potentially rounding off some of the remaining hard edges of lesser recordings with musical, harmonic detail... I can imagine a really good front end with a really good tube stage as being pretty sweet.



As for dreamy home listening....I hear you, but for me it is real. Maybe I finally have room and system synergy sorted out, with a "live" but controlled sound that is downright surreal at times it is so "real" sounding. With it, I can easilly get fully absorbed by beautifully played and recorded music...the pleasures of the sound quality being a component of the mind bending seduction of music at home.

I guess in the end I have a hard time comparing live with home listening as I "feel" them differently. I do love to hang with the vibe of good players on a good night, and though the sound quality is rarely truly great, it is usually pretty big, and that combined with being with the players as the music is created can also be truly captivating. I love both.

But finally, there is considerable beauty is the immediacy of home playing. In my seat, with my room and gear tuned and nothing else to do...there is little else that brings more pleasure than the beauty of those sounds.

Lon,

I get it totally and agree. I played a lot before I got rear-ended by a tractor and trailer going a lot faster than us. Many years later, I sometimes wonder if the back and neck will let me play again. I am often inspired to try it when I get sucked into this beautiful sound system. The vibe of the guitar back on your belly, the fiddle strings and wood vibrating... not just in the room, but through our bodies, minds and hearts. That is what really got me...the sound of strings and wood and where that would lead me! But pain can be a strong deterrent.



Then there is the solace of the potential beauty of good studio work. A whole different world with its own parameters, but real in its own right. Separated from the fundamentals of the player with instrument in our space, but made really cool by adding the additional creative elements inherent to bringing music into a mobile format. Good players and instruments, good mics, gear and rooms...good engineers....and the potential synergy there! Its all good!

I imagine we are thinking about the same about it...just semantics really. Thank goodness for the studio though. Keeps my MG944's and your IT Radials singing!

Good discussion, guys ..... a bit off topic, but that is the beauty of a forum.  Your discussion of the music does nothing but add to the overall appreciation of the great audio gear being discussed.

I understand what Lon is saying that there is a definite difference between live and recorded music, but I will offer some thoughts.

On a regular basis, I use the phrase " the vocalist is in the room".  I rarely use the phrase when it comes to instruments, but sometimes do that as well.  The phrase probably means different things to different people.  To me, there are some recordings that lend themselves more to the effect I am speaking of than others ..... and as Lon mentioned, a live or "unprocessed" recording generally pulls it off the best.

I recently purchased a CD by Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault, and Peter Mulvey called "Redbird".  It was recorded in a living room with the three of them gathered around a single stereo microphone.  As you might imagine, the realism is pretty intense and the ambience of the recorded space is amazing on my system.  I usually listen with a single 7 watt light behind my listening seat and with little in the way of visual distraction it is very easy to "feel" the room that they recorded this in.  The vocals are amazingly three dimensional ..... I can hear "around" the vocalists and the sound of their fingers on the strings and other "noises" taking place in the room are very realistic without sounding contrived or forced (as is sometimes the case).  When everything is right, it is like having a personal concert in my listening room.

It is also my experience that the simpler the recording (meaning a limited number of instruments and vocalists), the greater the potential for realism.  I have my own theory on this and have discussed it with Steve Deckert a couple of times at the DecFests over the years.  For lack of a better term or phrase, it seems to me that there is a limited amount of "potential dynamics" in a recording.  This is probably different than the term "dynamic range".  I have quite a bit of music that starts out simply, with one or two vocals or instruments and is extremely real or "believable" sounding, but as soon as several other instruments enter the mix the illusion falls apart and I am brought back forceably and against my wishes to the fact that I am listening to recorded music.  I used to think it had to do with the capability of the amplifier, but this is not the case because I have owned a couple of 100 watt tube amps and the effect is the same with them as it is with 1.6 watts.

Truthfully, this effect has probably influenced my taste in music over the years.  I prefer to listen to more "complex" music in my car and simpler stuff (folk, Americana, "old timey", acoustic blues and Celtic) in my home system.

I often wonder how many people actually listen to music the way I do ..... with no distractions, just me and the performers.  I had a gent that I work with come over for a listening session a couple of weeks ago.  He has a pretty nice system at home with B&W loudspeakers, so I wasn't sure what he would think about my system.  I sat him in my listening seat and placed another chair behind him for me to sit in.  Six hours later, he made the comment that "this was the best system that he never heard".  I'm sure that some of the readers of this forum understand what he meant.

Great hobby, this .....

Randy