Grant Fidelity Audio - Read Only

[cavangates]

Usual disclaimer: my ears, my setup, YMMV.

I recently purchased a DAC 09 and wanted to share my impressions. I set it up and started listening with my Grado GS-1000 headphones. It sounded good right out of the box. I compared the headphone output to the RA-1 amplifier and found it to be decent. The grado amplifier came out on top by being more solid in its presentation and more even accross the frequency spectrum. The built in amp gave a little treble heavy, slightly less full performance; however, it performed very well for the price point.

Next, I went to a friends to compare the DAC 09 to his Cary 306/200 cd player. That setup consisted of s/pdif cables from the Cary to the DAC, then to a Musical Fidelity A-300 (Gold trim) integrated, and finally to B&W 705 speakers. After listening for a while, we began comparing the dacs. The DAC 09 was surprisingly close to the presentation of the Cary! They both sounded very full and detailed, but the Cary was more refined. This led to a tighter sound from the Cary with more separation. That being said, we really had to listen to pinpoint the differences which you generally don't have to do when comparing a $400 dac to a $2000 (used) cd player. As expected the Cary won the day, but if you don't have $2000 and already have a decent transport, the DAC 09 is very good value.

[igrant]

Thank you for the comments, it is great to get confirmation of what my ears hear too, the damn things

Our forum is now over at www.AudioKarma.org, it would be great if you could start a thread there for your TubeDAC-09 impressions. Have you hooked it up to your computer yet?

AudioKarma is an excellent wealth of information and a good place to yap audio.

Cheers,
Ian
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