Merging + NADAC @ the Pacific NW (this week) & SoundStage review

[Bruce B]

I disagree.

No, it's not as good as my Cavalli Liquid Gold but it does a commendable job!

 

[amirm]

I think this is pretty clear, Amir. Your ears are all that you need for this kind of evaluation. The interesting thing to me is that others mentioned the easily heard differences between the upsampling rates and digital formats, but did not mention the differences between the analog sources. You discussed the opposite. Perhaps that is what bonzo was referring to. And you mentioned the one analog source and who owns it but not the other.

Answering the latter, it was easy because Philip mentioned it was Steve's system. He did not put a name to the other analog system. So no mystery there.

On the other bit, prior to playing the two LP captures, Phillip said he was confident half the people would like one and half the other. Seems to me then, there were supposed to be differences there. As to sample rate differences, I admit to my failings to be able to perform such evaluations. To my ears, there were no such differences. Clearly there were abundant ones to Bruce, Gary and many of the attendees there.

Maybe if Phillip comes back we can see if he can offer the samples for members to evaluate.

I think a more complete report about the listening session, a better description of the source of the vinyl rips and the audible differences between the various digital upsampling rates/formats would be helpful information in such a thread and tell us a bit more about this Merging/NADAC product which seems to be getting a lot of attention lately.

Please note that I was there to enjoy the event as much as everyone else. The thing that would have negated that would have been me acting like a court stenographer . I took a few pictures and notes but mostly I was there to socialize with friends, meeting new ones like Phillip, and listen/enjoy music. This was NOT a scientific shoot out or some kind of work project to document in this manner.

Phillip has all the information you are asking about anyway. Please look to him to provide it.

 

[ack]

Certainly nicer than the Alpha dac...

Internally? I would strongly disagree with that. I don't care about external looks (they don't make music).

 

[amirm]

Here is the Berkeley Reference:

 

[Andrew Stenhouse]

No, it's not as good as my Cavalli Liquid Gold but it does a commendable job!

Yeah I suppose Bruce it depends what one thinks as acceptable in a high end product. When I posted my thoughts about the Nadac I likened it to the headphone out of the iPhone 6, which in my view does a a commendable job, but when compared to eg the Manhattan I had on hand, I didn't rate it all. I also compared it to a Speed + Crack head amp and it didn't perform nearly as well as that amp with a pair of HD 800's and HD 600's or the Beyer DT 1770 Pro's. It was ok with my trusty Sony MDR 7506's -but then again so is my iPhone 6

The headphone out of my Luxxie amp is, by comparison, very commendable - does a great job for late night listening.

I suppose I was a little disappointed in what was supposed to be a statement piece from Merging. If they were going to do it, I would have liked one really good class A head amplifier in there, rather than two pretty ordinary 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch ones - I assume they were Class A head amps? Overall I thought - why include this?

Out of interest did the group listen to the Nadac being used as a pre amp/volume control?

 

[amirm]

Yes, all the testing was with the Nadac acting as the pre-amp and volume control.

 

[Andrew Stenhouse]

Yes, all the testing was with the Nadac acting as the pre-amp and volume control.

Oh, sorry I read your statement:

It is driving a Genesis Class-D amp directly acting as both pre-amp and DAC.

As meaning the Class D amp was a preamp and a dac (which I thought odd btw). Now I understand: the verb "acting" was being used in present not past participle tense. I suppose, for the pedants among us, an alternative construction may be:

It ^ was driving a Genesis Class-D amp, ^ and acted as both pre-amp and DAC.

Ah well then, it certainly may be a counter view to mine - that is that to perform well, the Nadac should be used with a preamplifier, as I would expect it to be.

 

[PeterA]

Ah well then, it certainly may be a counter view to mine - that is that to perform well, the Nadac should be used with a preamplifier, as I would expect it to be.

When we evaluated the NADAC, we ran it through the Pass XS Preamp and then listened to it driving the Pass XS amps directly with long XLR cables using its volume control. The difference was not subtle. It sounded much better with the preamp, though that is a mighty good preamp. I suppose it would matter how transparent a separate preamp is. For convenience, space and cost savings, I could see using the NADAC as a DAC/pre driving a Class D amp directly, as was the case in this demo. Whether it is the best way to hear it is dependent on the rest of the system, IMO.

For quad DSD material and a simple system, this NADAC offers good sound quality for not that much money, in relative high end terms. Again, IMO.

 

[Fiddle Faddle]

No, it's not as good as my Cavalli Liquid Gold but it does a commendable job!

I've really being enjoying this whole thread (sorry, nothing to contribute) and as soon as the headphone output was discussed, I started looking for them on the unit. I'd originally assumed the bottom socket was actually a 3.5mm one and the top thing was a power light. I had to go to the Merging site to actually see the detail of the two outputs. Lucky I did (and reading Andrew's post about the two sizes of socket) because otherwise I was thinking this was a desktop unit without a 1/4" output! But it is actually quite a lot larger in real life than I think the photos convey.

I don't want to derail this too much but since the manufacturer does go on about the headphone section being an integral part, has anyone compared that section of it to a Sennheiser HDVD800 which is the best solid state headphone amplification I've heard at this point.

 

[Al M.]

When we evaluated the NADAC, we ran it through the Pass XS Preamp and then listened to it driving the Pass XS amps directly with long XLR cables using its volume control. The difference was not subtle. It sounded much better with the preamp, though that is a mighty good preamp. I suppose it would matter how transparent a separate preamp is. For convenience, space and cost savings, I could see using the NADAC as a DAC/pre driving a Class D amp directly, as was the case in this demo. Whether it is the best way to hear it is dependent on the rest of the system, IMO.

For quad DSD material and a simple system, this NADAC offers good sound quality for not that much money, in relative high end terms. Again, IMO.

Yes, I would confirm that. Let me add that the Pass preamp as volume control sounded better not because it might have sounded 'nicer'. The preamp did not add any audible colorations to the sound -- it seems remarkably transparent to the source, sort of an amplified straight wire. Rather, when we listened to the Yarlung string trio on Quad DSD, the astonishingly high timbral resolution of the instruments seemed compromised through the NADAC's digital volume control (bypassed through the Pass preamp), though it was still very good. As Peter's comments suggest, you would hear the difference only on a highly resolving system, such as Ian's.

 

[PeterA]

Yes, I would confirm that. Let me add that the Pass preamp as volume control sounded better not because it might have sounded 'nicer'. The preamp did not add any audible colorations to the sound -- it seems remarkably transparent to the source, sort of an amplified straight wire. Rather, when we listened to the Yarlung string trio on Quad DSD, the astonishingly high timbral resolution of the instruments seemed compromised through the NADAC's digital volume control (bypassed through the Pass preamp), though it was still very good. As Peter's comments suggest, you would hear the difference only on a highly resolving system, such as Ian's.

Al, now you have me confused. I had thought that we plugged the long interconnects into the NADAC output directly and bypassed completely the Pass preamp. Are you saying that the NADAC was run through the theater bypass input of the Pass preamp set at unity gain and then onto the amps? I can't remember that detail and might have to ask Ian for confirmation.

Ian are you reading this?

 

[MadFloyd]

Al, now you have me confused. I had thought that we plugged the long interconnects into the NADAC output directly and bypassed completely the Pass preamp. Are you saying that the NADAC was run through the theater bypass input of the Pass preamp set at unity gain and then onto the amps? I can't remember that detail and might have to ask Ian for confirmation.

Ian are you reading this?

Yes, I'm reading this. We did NOT use the HT bypass in the Pass XS Pre, we physically bypassed the unit altogether. One benefit of that was one less set of interconnects, but as both you and Al mention, the sound was better through the preamp and we assumed it was the difference in volume control.

 

[Al M.]

Yes, I'm reading this. We did NOT use the HT bypass in the Pass XS Pre, we physically bypassed the unit altogether.

Now I am confused. I didn't even know the Pass had a 'bypass' function. I meant that when using the Pass preamp we bypassed the NADAC''s digital volume control because the NADAC was set on max gain, and the gain feeding the power amp was controlled solely by the Pass preamp.

Does that clear up things?

 

[Andrew Stenhouse]

You may be at cross purposes Al.

This is way I read this - there were two ways you listened to the Nadac - one through the Pass Pre (digital vol set to 100%) and the other way with the Pass pre physically not connected ie Nadac straight to the Power amps via XLR.

My own experiments with Edgar Kramer showed the the former (ie use of a pre amplifier) was superior to the latter (use of the Nadac as a volume control/pre amplifier). In Ed's system we hooked the Nadac up to his JC 1 Monoblocks via XLR, and it wasn't great. Inserting the Supretek back into the chain brought back the life and space to the music.

My own system also benefitted from insertion of a pre amplifier into the chain, though less so than Edgars. Then again, Edgar's listening space is large and very, very good acoustically. And of course his speakers are much more expensive than mine. So the differences were perhaps magnified.

He liked it very much for DSD, btw. As with you particularly natively recorded DSD. Less so with PCM, although I would not expect him to say that in print. His review should be out shortly.

 

[Al M.]

You may be at cross purposes Al.

This is way I read this - there were two ways you listened to the Nadac - one through the Pass Pre (digital vol set to 100%) and the other way with the Pass pre physically not connected ie Nadac straight to the Power amps via XLR.

Exactly.

 

[Philip O Hanlon]

Here are some of the tracks I captured using music recognition on my phone: https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tlboa7c6cht5rp7thzencnsqqyi?u=0#

This was the Depeche Mode track that pushed amp past its comfort zone by far: https://play.google.com/music/preview/T6jvze5vh7wke6m3chtp33k5fde?u=0#

https://play.google.com/music/preview/Ta4ho2cs476uqi3upksyaphurx4?u=0#

The Sax in the above was excellent.

This is the Cat Steven's track/album that was used for the comparison of DSD vs PCM: https://play.google.com/music/preview/T4on5b53paigomiy5tc3b3pka6m?u=0#

This is the album/track that was used to step through all the PCM sampling rates: https://play.google.com/music/preview/T5moolgonchlbmmbbunjv3ekdnu?u=0#

As always the above may be the wrong editions but the album/track names are likely to be correct.

Many thanks for the hospitality, it was a fun evening. I was surprised that we managed to get good sound; my sincerest thanks to Gary Koh & Rene Jaeger. Good enough to hear the differences between 24-96 versus 24-88.2 !
I played principally off of Demo XVIII, you can check out the complete Playlist at http://onahighernote.com/blog/2016/01/05/philips-demo-playlist/

The Cat Stevens comparison was from a couple of downloads from Acoustic Sounds, the original was DSD64, the one I bought last week was DSD128, we compared this to a PCM 24-192 download..

The PCM Comparisons were courtesy of The Tape Project's Paul Stubblebine who originally made these comparisons with a Pacific Microsonics Model 2 of Bruch's Scottish Fantasia performed by David Oistrakh for the Symposium Conference a few years ago, organized by Chris Connacker . These were individually transferred from the DECCA analogue tape @ 24-48, 88.2, 96, 176.4 & 192.

I'll return over the summer, when the road works to the Shunyata factory is complete and we can have a fantastic listening session with Caelin Gabriel's Giya G3 in his reference room - should be a lot of fun.

Thanks again for the hospitality

Philip

 

[opus112]

My own experiments with Edgar Kramer showed the the former (ie use of a pre amplifier) was superior to the latter (use of the Nadac as a volume control/pre amplifier). In Ed's system we hooked the Nadac up to his JC 1 Monoblocks via XLR, and it wasn't great. Inserting the Supretek back into the chain brought back the life and space to the music.

This is a very interesting datapoint Andrew, thanks for sharing. Especially since it contradicts one of Blizzard's claims elsewhere about the NADAC. But yours has details which can be examined and cross-checked so its more scientific than a claim out of thin air.

My hypothesis is that the NADAC doesn't drive the JC 1 poweramp load very well, but that the preamp has higher input impedance. Does anyone have the input impedance specifications to hand for these two devices?

 

[Philip O Hanlon]

Definitve's 11'th Music Matters / 40'th Anniversary


Who would believe that a HiFi dealer would draw such a crowd waiting to attend their event ?


A delicious seafood ice sculpture


Dan D'Agostino presented his new "Progression" mono block amplifiers.


Pete McGrath was proud to debut the new Wilson "ALEXX" loudspeakers.


Merging+ NADAC was prominently displayed both visually & sonically.

It has been almost a decade since we were last invited to Definitve's Music Matters, which has to be the best organized, best attended Dealer Event in N.America. Definitve pulled out all the stops this year to celebrate their 40'th Anniversary.

We were fortunate to be invited into the reference room, where Dan D'Agostino presented his brand new "Progression" power house monoblocks, delivering a cool 800wpc into 8ohms, doubling down to 2 ohms. ($39,000 @ pair, retail). Wilson Audio debuted their new ALEXX loudspeakers, while 2" shorter than the MAXX 3, they have an adjustable head like the XLF ($109,000 retail). Bruce Brown has ordered a pair already.

The flagship AMG turntable was in use with a Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridge feeding the new D'Agostino "Momentum" phonostage ($29,000). One of the sonic treats I found was the DECCA reissue from Speakers Corner of Jean Martinon with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra playing Saint-Saens Danse Macabre, glorious rich tone, beautifully laid out orchestra playing an enchanting piece of music.

A hundred or so dignitaries were invited for a small cocktail party on Wednesday night & Peter & I shared DJ honours. I played a lot of high rez files from a PC; system sounded great; punchy as all get go. Amazing actually how the big Wilson's can play so well in such a small room. We played the Momentum amps on Wed night and the Progression amps on Thursday.
Thursday night was the main event open to the public & 500+ attended, though only half were able to sample the reference room. 25 guests every half hour, demos ran from 5:00PM until 10:00PM. As Peter McGrath prefers to conduct his demos using his CD collection, we used an Audio Research CD 6's digital output into the NADAC and swapped the SPDIF cable so that he could play a few of his own recordings from his solid state recorder. There was actually less than twenty minutes to play music, so Peter abbreviated all the songs, to give the listeners as diverse a palette as possible as to the system's performance. Regardless of the format or resolution, the NADAC delivers tremendous resolution without adding any etch to the high frequencies. Quite a difficult balancing act.

A member of the audience pointed out to us that they were familiar with Merging Technologies as the Seattle Symphony Orchestra has four of Merging's Hapi digital audio workstations running Merging's Pyramex software for recording, mixing & mastering their performances. Pretty much most classical venues I have been to recently are using Merging's gear.

To those lucky few who managed to enjoy the set, I look forward to seeing you again next year. To the rest, at least you will get a chance to savour the set in the comfort of your home, via Tidal. link to the playlist tidal.com/playlist/82c700fd-a9ec-4ab0-b956-39d2887e95b0

Music Matters 2016 Playlist (Courtesy of Peter McGrath)

Bach / Jacques Loussier Trio - Gavote in D major
Handel / Rene Flemming - Sleep why hast thou deserted me (SACD)
Leonard Cohen - Never Mind
Carey Bell - It's So Easy To Love You
Christy Moore - Shine on you Crazy Diamond (Philip's Demo XVIII)
Keith Richards - Words of Wonder
Depeche Mode Welcome to my World (Philip's Demo XVIII)
Cecilie McLorin Salvant - John Henry
Stravinsky - Histoire d'Soldat Deutsches Kammerorcherstra (SACD)
Mathias Eisenberg - Num Komm, Der Helden Heland Organ Choral BW659,
Dubzanne - Roxanne
Puccini - Tosca. Conclusion (PMG original recording)

Rickie Lee Jones - Showbiz Kids (45RPM Vinyl)

 

[Kingsrule]

Internally? I would strongly disagree with that. I don't care about external looks (they don't make music).

I don't care about internal looks (they don't make music) The NADAC is much more musical than the Alpha dac.....

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I don't care about internal looks (they don't make music) The NADAC is much more musical than the Alpha dac.....

not sure that it's even sensible to compare those two. unless you have some music that is native in both digital formats

one is native dsd, the other native PCM.

I've heard PCM through the NADAC and was not impressed. my perception of PCM through the Alpha dac was much better (if not quite Trinity dac level).

I have not heard dsd through the Alpha dac but am skeptical of it......dsd was superb through the NADAC.

so since any comparison would not be strength to strength......they are just different.

and the whole up-sampling subject one digital format to the other is murky at best.......i'll give the nod to PCM upsampled to Quad dsd of what I've heard.....although I'm not sure how doable/flexible that is with the NADAC interface.