Oh my, oh my - Aries Cerat Helene DAC

I can't stay silent - today we received Helene DAC, "baby" DAC from Aries Cerat. What a baby, what a beauty. From the very fist second the sound was sublime, digital rarely gets better than this - in form of Kassandra DAC only probably. I am not saying this lightly, just compare Helene to all the big guns, you would be surprised. Rich, transparent sound, real body of instruments, timbre to die for, as analog as possible, but most importantly, natural music flow, touching your heart and soul. Be warned, after listening you might need to sell some very expensive equipment. But there is solution - you buy Kassandra LE, thus may be less painful.

 

I also find that the Heléne sounds best on RCA output (while I use XLR for all my other gears) - more dynamic, wider soundstage and more transparent. I don't know why honestly... Maybe the XLR output uses a transfo and the RCA is more "pure" ?

I don't know but I read the review where it basically breaks that down and says AC designs for single ended and not XLR..I think the ground is floating with the XLR connection, so it's a two pin design. Makes sense what you are saying and hearing is my point.

 

Hello gents

RCA and XLR are driven by same output, same secondary winding.

The difference in sound comes down on primarily what the dac is driving, and ground.
Also the winding has a slight edge to performance when driving unbalanced loads. But this is minimal.

Best
Stavros

 

Hello gents

RCA and XLR are driven by same output, same secondary winding.

The difference in sound comes down on primarily what the dac is driving, and ground.
Also the winding has a slight edge to performance when driving unbalanced loads. But this is minimal.

Best
Stavros

Thank you Stavros...DAC will be feeding a Audio Research preamp...I will go single ended and then XLR to the AMP. That should get the most out of it. Thank you for your reply very helpful.