Valves and flac files

[rivendell]

As i am new to this forum, in fact any forum i thought i would let everyone know what iam up to. Over the past few years i have moved my entire album collection onto hard drive (well when i say album, i mean cds, but im off that age where album still sounds right!).

This little project was fine until a friend gave me a loan of his valve amp, because my beloved naim power amp of some 10 years packed up.

All I thought i needed to do was source another naim power amp and i was back to normal, HOW WRONG I WAS!

Now here's the thing i owned a quad valve amps almost 30 years ago, and have been listening to transistor amps ever since. Myself and 3 like minded souls were stunned to say the least, that valves work REALLY REALLY well with flac files.

To cut a very long story short, i had to give my friend back his amp, so after much searching i bought an icon integrated, and so has one of my friends, in fact we have all been on the upgrade path changing dac's, interconnects, speakers, stands the lot. We have been at this as a group for probably 4-5 months testing different equipment on each other systems, comparing and discussing its like a regular boys club!

For the record we are all using JRiver software, all having tried various other packages from media monkey, squeeze box, etc, it seems that this is the most flexible piece of software that we have found to date. I just cant get over how well valves and digital media seem to be suited. Talk about the old meeting the new.


My wife summed this up very neatly after a recent get together of "the boys" "you had valves when we first got married almost 30 years ago, you have just come right back to square one and at you age you lot should all no better"

If anyone is looking at dacs, usb cables etc i would be happy to pass on my opinions for what there worth

[Ali Tait]

What dacs have you tried then?

[rivendell]

Rega dac, arcam, v dac 1 & 2, musical fidelity M1A dac, moon 1, the only one i dint get a chance to hear from my short list which included all of the above was the shangling. Also had chance to listen to usb cables from chord, audioquest, wireworld and nordost.

For the record, i have just sold an Audio Note DAC 1X signature, wireworld ultraviolet usb cable, musical fidelity v link and nordost silver shadow digital cable and replaced the lot with the new musical fidelity M1A dac and Nordost Blue Heaven usb cable. Sounds fab thro the Icon.

[pre65]

You need to try one of the AK4392 or AK4396 DACs.

They are cheap on e-bay but punch well above their weight once they have burned in for about 100 hours.

Then you spend a few pounds on a better op-amp and they get even better.

Add a suitable valve output stage then they really shine.

[Ali Tait]

Yes, they are rather good.

[colin.hepburn]

Originally Posted by Ali Tait

Yes, they are rather good.

Yes i will second that i am going to get an other AK4396 DACs and add a valve stage to it

[justin brown]

Hi All,
Is it advisable to burn in the dac first before adding the mods...

Justin.

[Ali Tait]

The 96? Well I'd certainly use it for a while to get used to the sound, you then have a baseline for judging any changes you make.