I recently was asked to to ship my upgraded DAC back to Wyred 4 Sound to fix the odd noise issues when playing DSD files. I got the DAC back and I am happy to report that the DSD noise issues are completely gone! This is good news for me since I have a large collection of DSD based files.
I tried to up-sample CD resolution files to DSD256 with no issues. I played every bitrate I had: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz, 352kHz, DSD64, DSD128 and DSD256. Again, I had no problems whatsoever. The Wyred 4 Sound team fixed all of the problems. Kudos to them AND they fixed a broken RCA output jack for free.
I have been listening to the DAC-2v2SE even though it only has around 120 hours on the new ESS 9038PRO chip. Here is a summary of the improvements I hear as compared to the DAC-2 DSDse before the upgrade:
- instruments are better articulated; there are nuances revealed that were not easily discernible before or very hard to hear
- the sound stage seems to be a bit wider
- sounds in general are fuller than they were before
- sound stage has more layers than before making my Martin Logan SL3s disappear which is a hard thing to do especially in my 'room'
- bass is tighter
I haven't had a chance to play with all of the filters yet. My last listening session had the IIR set to 50K and Filters set to Apodizing fast rolloff, linear phase. Volume is set to FIXED as I am using a pre-amp and USB input MAX is set to 64 so I have more leeway with the pre-amp's volume control. Jitter is still set to the default of '***'.
This is very nice upgrade and well worth it IMHO. Of course, I no longer have my DAC-2 DSDse with the 9018 chip to compare. However, I do have an OPPO BDP-105 with the same chip. The OPPO had a similar sound to the DAC-2 DSDse. Sometime soon I will compare the upgraded DAC to the OPPO.
Now, I have to say that I am not using my under powered laptop to play music as I was before I shipped the DAC a second time to Wyred 4 Sound. I am setting up a new laptop to replace my wife's laptop. It is a Windows 10, I7 based laptop. I will have to use the older laptop to see if any of the sound stage changes are due to the new laptop.