Heya Nick! Thanks for such a detailed and humorous reply and review - above and beyond the call of duty - much appreciated!
Glad to hear that about the weight - I was just concerned if this was one of those 80 pound behemoths that I can’t really lift! I was going to buy an Ampsandsound Nautilus till I saw what it weighed. I’m 70 years old with back issues! I can see that the main box and the power supply are big, but I’ve got a lot of room on this big ‘L’ shaped desk I’ve got, so there’s more than enough ventilation room - I have high ceilings so the heat rises up from the tubes, and none of my gear warms up any of my rooms.
I am somebody who reads the instructions at least twice before I do anything with new gear, so no worries about setting switches!
As a non-handy person who knows less than nothing about electronics, I would never, ever ‘pop open the covers and work on the innards’ - I’d send it back to Craig, first! In this case, I needn’t be concerned with screws, right?
Hiss on a noise floor doesn’t bother me that much as I have tinnitus and have built-in hiss anyway! Sometimes it’s not noticeable at all, sometimes it’s very noticeable, but I’m used to it.
Once it’s up and running, I shall wet the tip of my finger with my tongue before touching the metal should I need to do so, so as to avoid an ouchie….
I just acquired a Chord DAVE and an M Scaler - I used the DAVE alone for the past week and just put the M Scaler in the chain yesterday. I have never heard any audio component do what the M Scaler can do. It’s pure audio magic. I can put on headphones and listen and I could draw a picture of the room and just where each instrument and vocalist is, with pinpoint accuracy, width, depth, and height. The sound stage becomes more a theater stage with all the depth and space involved. And everything is just so PRESENT. I was listening to a song yesterday and at one point a piano came in; I JUMPED! It was like suddenly a piano instantly appeared right behind my shoulder! But when you upsample a 44.1kHz red-book CD to 706kHz, that’s whatcha get! You need a Chord DAC to get the 706kHz, but it will take any DAC up to something like 384kHz. With cheap gear, apparently this doesn’t make much difference, but with quality stuff, look out below! And this is through my Quicksilver amp - it should Crazy Eddie when he arrives!!
Do you listen mostly to pop, hip-hop, and EDM? If I had to pick a favorite genre, it would probably be post-punk/indie (I used to be in the music business from ’74 - ’84 when all this started), but I also love punk, hard rock, good quality metal and roots/dub reggae, and iconoclasts like Frank Zappa. I was a blues fan as a teenager but then lost interest in it! And I don’t do country and I don’t get much closer to jazz than the Grateful Dead. I do like modern pop, hip-hop, and EDM, I’m just not exposed to that much of it.
Have a great 4th of July!!! Lars….