Audio Research DAC 9

[PlanarSpeakerFan]

Originally Posted by gadawg

Just got the email from my dealer that my DAC9 is waiting for me. Yeah!!! Guess where I'm going tomorrow ... :-)

Congrats! Great news.

Ken

[gadawg]

Just got it home and burning in...sounds pretty darn good right out of the box but I do have the same problem I had at the dealer in that it won't play DSD at all on my Mac. Going to try JRiver on my Windows PC shortly as that is supposed to work according to Audio Research.

[PlanarSpeakerFan]

Originally Posted by gadawg

Just got it home and burning in...sounds pretty darn good right out of the box but I do have the same problem I had at the dealer in that it won't play DSD at all on my Mac. Going to try JRiver on my Windows PC shortly as that is supposed to work according to Audio Research.

Congrats on the new unit! For USB, I believe you need to load the provided driver for Windows. The Zip file is on their website along with instructions.

Windows PC Software Installation Instructions
Installation of the DAC USB Audio Device drivers is only necessary when using the USB 2.0
HS input on the DAC9. Software installation is not necessary if only using the Toslink,
RCA, BNC or AES/EBU inputs.

Best of Luck,
Ken

[gadawg]

Just a quick update on DSD playback ... or the lack thereof! Got JRiver setup on my Windows Laptop running Windows 10 and installed the driver per the manual. Got every other sampling rate to work but cannot get it to play a DSD file. Interestingly enough if I setup JRiver to Upsample to DSD X 2 the DAC 9 shows that (2XDAC lights up) and actually plays it. If I set Audirvana on my Mac to upsample it also plays on the DAC 9 but in that scenario no sampling rate shows at all so I'm not sure what its doing. Just won't play a native DSD file on either OS right now. I've sent an email to Audio Research support to see what they are saying about native DSD playback. I'm sure it will all get worked out in time ... there are dangers of living on the bleeding edge! :-)

Meanwhile the burn in continues. Will see how it sounds in the AM after playing all night!

[PlanarSpeakerFan]

Originally Posted by gadawg

Just a quick update on DSD playback ... or the lack thereof! Got JRiver setup on my Windows Laptop running Windows 10 and installed the driver per the manual. Got every other sampling rate to work but cannot get it to play a DSD file. Interestingly enough if I setup JRiver to Upsample to DSD X 2 the DAC 9 shows that (2XDAC lights up) and actually plays it. If I set Audirvana on my Mac to upsample it also plays on the DAC 9 but in that scenario no sampling rate shows at all so I'm not sure what its doing. Just won't play a native DSD file on either OS right now. I've sent an email to Audio Research support to see what they are saying about native DSD playback. I'm sure it will all get worked out in time ... there are dangers of living on the bleeding edge! :-)

Meanwhile the burn in continues. Will see how it sounds in the AM after playing all night!

Thanks for the update! I'm sure ARC will get the DSD sorted out via USB. New ground for them. Please keep us updated with your progress. I believe an ARC DAC will be in my future in early 2017.

Best,
Ken

[gadawg]

After only 24 hours of burning in here are my initial impressions ... WOW!!! :-)

I think the biggest thing I'm noticing so far is just a sense of rightness with everything I'm hearing. Instruments just seem more natural like how a Sax has a sense of body when you hear it live ... I'm getting a lot of that with this DAC already. The sense of air around instruments is getting better by the hour and the sense of depth is kind of what I expected since I have a PH 8 for Vinyl. Voices are certainly front and center and really stand out from the rest of the music if that's how it was recorded. The detail is really good but I'm not going to call it hyper detailed by any means ... again just seems right. One other thing that I've noticed that for me is huge is that usually listening to digital can induce listening fatigue for me pretty quickly even at lower volumes. With this baby I'm not getting any sense of fatigue setting in a all. Not to say that the highs aren't there because they certainly are ... just no etch or edginess to them at all. Back in the early 90's I bought a California Audio Labs Aria Mk III and at once I realized it was very special. The DAC 9 immediately gives me that same sense of being very special that I've only really experienced once oh so many years ago so needless to say I can't wait to see how good it can really get after breaking in all the way. Once I get 200 hours on it I'll report back and do some comparison between some of my hi-res files through the DAC 9 and Vinyl with the PH 8. What I can say already is that out of the box it is in an entirely different world than my old Mark Levinson No 360s which was no slouch up to 96k. Merry Christmas everyone!

[1KW]

Did ARC and Aurender work out the issue with the usb ? Can you play a Aurender N100H with the ARC DAC 9 ? Is this DAC MQA certified ?

[audio bill]

Not sure whether they've worked out the compatibility issue, but ARC DACs do not (currently) support MQA decoding.

[gadawg]

The DAC9 doesn't currently work with anything based on Linux that I'm aware of. I think they are working on an update but its not out yet. Since I really like using MDP on Linux I tried the Berkeley Alpha USB and really liked the results. Doesn't allow for DSD that way but up to 192 sounds amazing.