Weiss Minerva Dac


Hi,

I wanted to know if anyone over here has got the Minerva dac from Weiss. What is the sound like? also can one up-sample to 192KHz and stream it to the DAC?

Best Regards,

Satyam Bachani.
sbfx

Showing 3 responses by luvwine

Interesting that you need two cables to get the high bitrates. I have a Cary Audio 306 Pro with digital inputs and it states in the manual that it accepts up to 192 khz 24 bit and will accept digital inputs at the following sample rates: 32khz, 44.1khz, 48 khz, 88.2 khz, 96 khz, and 192 khz and it accepts 16, 20, or 24 bits. When I feed it hi rez downloads via a dvd player like the Oppo, the display reads the proper sample rates (have done up to and including 192). If what you say is true, then this should not be possible (as it only has Coax, Toslink, and AES/EBU digital inputs and only one of each). It sure sounds good and will oversample at various rates up to 768hz for CD playback (via analog outs) and will playback digital inputs at 44.1, 96, or 192hz. I am not attempting to compare this CD/SACD player and DAC to the Weiss as I have not heard the Weiss, but I am curious as to the explanation for difference between what the unit display and manual by Cary say and what I am reading here. Thanks for any explanation, and please accept my apology if the answer is obvious and I am just too dense to know it. :)
All I know is what the display on the machines say. However, a friend (who brought is Oppo over to test out the Cary) says he uses a Sound Devices 722 Recorder: http://www.sounddevices.com/products/722.htm
This recorder has 24/192 capability and only has one aes/ebu and only one spdif in and out and it has no trouble handling 24/192. The Cary shows 192hz on the display when fed the 192hz signal from the Oppo. When I talked to my friend, he volunteered to call Benchmark (Benchmark Dac folks) as he knows them well. What my friend says he was told is that initially two cables were used to transmit the high bitrate signals. Subsequently, and for the last 5 years or so, digital cables, such as SPDIF have been found to be fully capable of handling 24/192 signals and thus it is no longer necessary to use two cables for high bitrate digital signals up to 24/192. My friend called using two cables to transmit high bitrate "old technology". I don't know any of this information personally, and this is obviously hearsay, but my friend does a great deal of recording and has a great interest in high bitrate digital recording. I guess I have answered my own query and hope that this helps.
I have no such equipment so I cannot conduct the test. Am happy to learn what you find out, however. I do not claim to be an authority and am only reporting what I have observed and what I am told. Thanks.