Anyone ever hear Conrad Johnson Premier 9 Dac

Hi Doug,
I owned one for awhile. I did several mods to it(MIT caps RTX and PPFX-S replaced the CJ signal caps, ELNA and Blackgate caps in the ps, etc...) which really improved it. In stock form, it had a rather "woolly" bass, and was a bit dark and slow in the mids on up. In a system that borders on bright and lean, it might work out. It's not a bad unit and can sound quite good, but it gives up quite a bit to the better current designs. Just MHO. Enjoy.

In my humble opinion this is all very system dependent. I have used it with my CEC TL-1X for a number of years with the right power cord on the CEC and Esoteric/Acrolink and the sound is heavenly by analog standards. I know the sound of live music and the CJ captures this much better than many of the audiophile stuff out there. Modifications can begin to reveal shortcomings in the rest of one's system. I have ribbon drivers and also electrostats which are verty transparent.

Listen to it in stock form with the right stuff and it is magical indeed. However you will be surprised that it is not the DAC that can be the problem but the transport. The differences in transports have been amazing to say the least. I found most of the ones I used were very mechanical: Sony SCD-1, Marantz SA-7, etc.. Only the CEC was up the standards I am looking for.

The Conrad Johnson Premier 9 is one of the most musical DAC's that I have heard. It is not overly warm, distorted, and syrupy gushy fuzzy like some of the earlier CJ equipment. It is beautiful and musical sounding without being lean or sounding artificial, in other words, deserving of the Premier in its name.

I am sad to say I had and sold a Premier 9 for several years and even had the caps upgraded. Awesome DAC. I now have a GNSC Statement Wadia S7i.