Yamamoto YDA 01 DAC

I didn't realize my email to Charles' inquiry would end up here but why not. It remains my understanding that the chips Cees is using (good for 24/176.4 streams) remain unidentified. In my exchanges with him he stressed that to his knowledge this chip has never been used in hifi before and that it took him two years to sort through his non-audio chip sources to 'discover' it.

The more important point Charles makes here is listening and listener preference/bias. Dan and I have quite different systems and rooms. Each of us has both a NWO-M (Dan gave me mine as a gift) and a Metrum. If we preferred the NWO-M, why would we listen to the Metrum?

And if we prefer the Metrum, do we care about specs and claims that the NWO-M is wildly superior?

At the end of the day other listeners present to hear either system could have a different preference. The *thing* that got us was simply that to our ears these converters perform on the same level. We preferred the Metrum (in some configurations in my home I prefer the NWO-M as I did in a recent review of Nelson Pass' SIT amp), someone else might prefer the NWO-M. But I'd be quite surprised if anyone in these sessions would point at the cheapie and call it "not even close".

That's really the only point of my email to Charles. I can understand that Alex might be disappointed in such an opinion but to wave spec'ular superiority claims in the air as thought they prove we couldn't possibly be hearing what we do (or respond to it the way we do) is simply silly.

And even if engineering *could* prove it (which it can't) - there's no arguing personal taste -:)

Hello,

Srajan, I only decided to post your email reply to me once I saw it in the public letter section of 6 moons. com. Otherwise I`d kept it private.
Best Regards,

Srajan,

Can you provide us with some insight as to the original question in this thread. When you take a DAC with a beautiful analog section- the Yamamoto- and feed it an uber-clean digital signal from the Stello U3, how does the sound stack up against the newest computer digital greats. Is it in the same league?

I passed on my Yamamoto to Joel Chevassus on staff so I don't know how the YDA01 would stack up to the current crop of DACs I've had through.

What I do know is that Joel compared his Yammy to the fully discrete French R/2R DAC by Vince Brient. Vince sent me the same DAC for a 2nd opinion. There I had a chance to compare it to the Metrum. It was very much the same flavor but the Frenchie perhaps had the slight advantage. That makes me think the Metrum surpasses the Yamamoto by triangulation - but that's just an (educated) guess.

The U3 improves upon the OEM hiFace built into the NWO-M; upon the USB receiver of the Burson DACs; and even the Zodiac Gold (arguably the least on the latter but still audible).

There will probably be DACs that *won't* benefit from the U3. And there probably are other USB-to-S/PDIF boxes like the Audiophilleo, KingRex et al that match the U3's victory lap of improving high-quality DAC with good USB implementations.

I'm not sure yet *why* the U3 works as bloody well as it does. The XMOS chip inside is apparently very trick. But the real 'magic' could be that, A/it's external and B/ that it's bus powered. I noticed that designer Simon Lee didn't integrate the U3 into the mother board of the Eximus DP1 I currently have in for review but left it separate (piggy-backed) though obviously in the same enclosure.

I'm usually more in favor of integration and less cables. With the U3, I stand corrected. The Yamamoto of course has no USB input so the U3 or something like it becomes required for streaming files. I was simply surprised that the U3 would be superior to what's inside machines of NWO-M/Zodiac Gold stature (i.e. *everything* I've got in house).

There's probably something going on we don't know yet. Other listeners have posted similar findings elsewhere with Steve Nugent's equivalent interface...

I would be interested to know how the Metrum compares without a low jitter stream and without upsampling – not that I would be opposed to purchasing something like the Empirical Pase Car, but even that doesn’t upsample.

So if anyone has comments…thanks.