Any heard/heard of Whest DAP.10 R processor?

What kind of inputs/outputs does this thing have? Is it unbalanced only or does it also support balanced connections?

It only supports unbalanced. They have a website address www.whestaudio.co.uk.

I compared the output of a BAT-D5se player running balanced to a preamp and the same player running unbalanced in to the DAP.10. The balanced version was absolutely crap compared to the DAP.10 output. And that was with the DAP.10s own interconnects which retail for £89 or $US130 or thereabouts.

I recently bought a Whest DAP.10 for use with my Benchmark DAC1 and Audiomoded CEC TL-1x transport. Transparency, focus, and depth and width of soundstage improved quite dramatically. An expensive "tweak", but nothing else I know of has this particular effect, especially with a state-of-the-art DAC. I know it's not coming out of my system for the forseeable future.

Robm1 and Emag,

Did either of you notice the slight power hum alluded to by the reviewer? Also, are you using the stock power cord on the unit? Finally, have you experimented with other IC's?

I just ordered one from Audio Advisor. I figured I would give it a try on my Prima CD player. They have a 30-day trial period.
All the best,
Howard

Boa2 - Please let us know what you think of the unit when you get it.

I'm on the fence about ordering one. First, it's silly expensive, and second, its operating principles don't make sense.

Whest claims that the DAP acts to realign frequencies above 35khz and has no effect on frequencies below this point. The problem I have is that no properly designed CD player, whether oversampled, upsampled, or non-oversampled (1FS) has any output above 22.05 khz (half the Nyquist sampling frequency of 44.1 khz). One of the major jobs of the reconstruction filters (digital and analog) in the player/DAC is to block everything above this point.

SACD has output beyond 35khz, but much of this is quantization noise relocated from the audio range to this region by the player's noise shaping circuits. It has little correlation to the music.

SO what is this box really doing? Since my DAC has no output above 22.05 khz on Redbook, then what is this box acting on?

Let us know your impressions.