Allnic 5000DAC

Having owned the D5000 for the last 5 months, I encourage everyone reading this thread not to dismiss this dac based on the Stereophile review.

After reviewing the article and researching some background regarding the physical dac used by Stereophile, I am somewhat perplexed myself.

The D5000 was first bench tested by John Atkinson, then reviewed by Art Dudley. As we have read, there is a significant discordance between the actual bench test and the reviewer's cerebral perception. I have no desire to be critical of either the approach or perception. This unit may simply demonstrate that the bench tests performed by Mr. Atkinson, while producing accurate measurement, do not translate to poor sonic qualities.

Could DHT tubes by nature test poorly?

The unit was returned to Korea and found to have 3 faulty DHT tubes, is suspected to have been damaged in shipping. This obviously can not be confirmed. Allnic has requested Mr. Atkinson to re-test with a different unit.

Interestingly, I had one DHT tube fail myself after 350-450 hours and observed no sonic degradation. Replacing the tube was easy and took only a few minutes.

On the first paragraph of Mr. Atkinson's review states "Apple's USB prober utility identified the processor as the 'D-5000' from 'ALLNIC SOUND' with the serial-number string 'USB' and confirmed that the USB input operated in the isochronous asynchronous mode." I did not read in the review: isochronous adaptive mode.

I spoke with the head engineer who also confirmed USB asynchronous mode, with similar traffic behavior to the XMOS chipset, although the standard UAC 2.0 is their own proprietary design with galvanic isolation.

I will post my thoughts of the dac itself soon. To my ears and those around me, it best EMM DAC2x. I also had less issues with the XMOS driver, which is used in both units.

Both the D5000 and the Empirical Overdrive SE loaded are wonderful dacs, each with their own qualities. If you desire DSD playback, I recommend auditioning this dac.

Sunil at Careaudio has a Allnic demo program. Mattenship will be auditioning the D5000 on his audiogon blog and I am curious to compare notes with his shootout with Empirical.

I own both dacs. If you are in my geographic region, you are welcome to listen for yourself.

Al,

My apologies for taking your quote completely out of reference.

I wish Audiogon would allow display of all comments simultaneously instead of refreshing the page showing only one comment.

J

Bryston is very proactive r and d division with continuous firmware updates implementing improvements Much sooner than other manufacturers. Depending on the firmware version the dac works. Waversa other times rewrites their software to be compatible. However, this has been short lived with further bryston updates. They are working on a solution and. Will post here.

Btw. I trialled my d5000 with the bryston with the local dealer. I really like the bryston and they would pair well once this issue is resolved.

Waversa who designed and manufactured the digital components for Allnic has investigated Bryston's implementation. This has been an ongoing issue before Allnic was designed and built.

I have not heard from Allnic or Waversa of any issues from other transports or servers. From my personal experience, the impedance of my AES cable was not to the standard spec and this would create clicks while playing tracks. I had no issue with an Audience AU24se cable.

In my experience, the USB implementation is the most robust of both the M2Tech used in Empirical Overdrive SE, which was far more stable than EMM Labs use of XMOS.

If anyone owns or demos a D5000 and has any conflicts, please post your experience.

I sent my personal D5000 south for some bench tests which tested with similar results to John Atkinson. Interestingly the person who was kind enough to take the time study the dac also auditioned the dac and found it quite musical and enjoyable. He believed the abhorrent test results are attributed to the inherent characteristics of the DHT tubes. I would be interested in seeing if other tube dacs like the new Modwright Elyse or Lampi 7 re-produces similiar bench tests.

If you are interested in my impression of the D5000, read on:

After a somewhat long delay, I wish to report my thoughts on the D5000. Since this is a DHT tube dac, I was not able to burn the dac in 24/7 and rapidly achieve what I believe close to its optimal sounding potential. Instead this dac was burned in over longer time period of normal use. Surprisingly this dac sounds wonderful new and although the sound did improve over the next 300 hours, the improvement heard with the SABRE chip was not as pronounced when compared to other dacs. By my experience, I believe you will hear 90% of the dac potential after 40 hours when the tubes have had time to settle. For a short period of time I had two D5000's in my possession. The DHT tubes have a silicone ring positioned midway and I was able to A-to-B the dac with and without these rings. While I prefer not having these rings on either my L5000 DHT linestage (preamp) or the A6000 300b monoblock amps, they do give sonic improvement with a larger, deeper sound stage and better inner detail, particularly clearer attack transient and subsequent decay mostly noted in higher pitched percussion.

The USB interface is implemented through custom hardware by Waversa Systems and is UAC2 standard compliant. Because of this compliance, the XMOS Windows driver links the D5000 to my custom CAPS server without issue. After a multiple USB cable trial, I found galvanic isolated interface greatly reduces the sonic differences between cables. Although there remains a difference between extremes comparing a USB 2.0 generic USB printer cable to my preferred Vertere Pulse-R 1.5 meter USB cable, the difference is muted demonstrating subtle differences. The Pulse-R removes a slight course texturing or hash bringing the overall soundstage into focus.

Waversa's custom internal processor will perform either upsampling or conversion to DSD in real time. When upsample is selected, repeat pressing of the button will progressively increase upsampling from 44/48 to eventually 352/384 then revert to 44/48. Therefore, the user may inadvertently select a lower sampling rate than native and down sample that particular track. The user selection of a specific sampling rate was intentional as some tracks may sound better upsampled but the sweet spot may not be DXD. I tend to prefer upsample to DXD over conversion to 128 DSD for reasons difficult to qualify. Maybe this simply has to do with the sonic signatures of PCM vs DSD.

Listening to the D5000 right out of the box while playing red book files without any upsampling I noticed the smoothness and fluidity of the music with a natural quality that immediately reminded me with great fondness listening to my older brother's studio reel-to-reel decades ago. Both upsampling to DXD and conversion to DSD options improve openness and transparency.

Unlike the EMM which produced a precise, neutral clinical sound, the D5000 is both involving with improved timing and pace creating a natural liveliness across all frequencies and viscerally engaging triggered through a deeper intricately layered larger soundstage where the speakers disappear into the music often creating phantom imagines that become palpable.

Empirical Audio Overdrive SE (ODSE) is my current reference dac. This unit is fully loaded with all available options offered by Empirical. Like the ODSE, the D5000 naturally envelops me in the music. While they both are excellent dacs, they truly are a different flavor. The D5000 provides more stage presence, as if you were at a nice outdoor venue sitting in a lawn chair somewhere in front of the soundboard. Empirical has more delicacy, revealing the fingertip-friction sounds on an instrumental string, better voice articulation and over all inner detail creating an ambience of a small studio session. I remain to find a dac that re-creates this level of timbre with such realism that naturally differentiates the uniqueness of each individual instrument when simultaneously playing the same note.

My sound system has naturally evolved into an all Allnic system over the years, consisting now of 26 vacuum tubes in total when I add the D5000 into the system. Because of this, I wonder if the DHT output stage of the D5000 would provide sonic benefit in a solid state system that perhaps otherwise becomes lost it an all DHT sound system. The solid state output stage of the ODSE is well designed and includes Paul Hynes voltage regulators that provide greater inner detail. What the ODSE offers pairs very well with Allnic gear.

To me the D5000 is sonically better than the EMM DAC2x and different than the Empirical Audio ODSE. In today’s market there are many excellent dacs and I realize the sonic qualities I have come to appreciate are not linked to market price. Dacs if this quality are like wine, each with their own strengths and sound characteristics. Despite the poor bench test demonstrated by John Atkinson’s review in Stereophile published in December, 2014 which most certainly has to do with the DHT tube characteristics, the D5000 is very musical, organic and engaging. I recommend anyone interested to audition this dac. Sunil at Care Audio (Care-Audio.com) is offering an in-home demo program. He will send any Allnic model to your home anywhere in the lower 48. This requires a 50% deposit which is 100% refundable. Experience dictates dealers offer some discount off list price, especially with a multi-unit purchase.

I am certain other Allnic Dealers too will offer an in-home demo arrangement, which I believe is wonderful since I am unable to get any local audiophile dealer interested in letting me trial gear in my personal system without full purchase and return restock fee. When Sanjay Patel at Ciamara had no issue sending me any gear I desire and offered a great price on any piece I am interested in, he was my go to person since Ciamara deals with many quality manufacturers. Unfortunately Ciamara does not deal with Allnic, but they have gone virtual and national and if they carry gear you are interested in, they will treat you well.