DACs and bass response?


I'm auditioning dacs in my system. One (COS) was way to analytical, overall, but had very tight bass. Another (Aqua La Voce) is what some would describe as "musical"  and sounds  terrific in all aspects except bass. My cdp alone does better in that regard. I have monitors and no subs. Can I expect that dacs that are hyper-detailed will also offer tighter bass as a rule?
stuartk

Showing 6 responses by georgehifi


Take a deep breath Stuart away from this, and smell the roses. and come back in a few days.

Cheers George 
stuartk DACs and bass response? Aqua La Voce

The Aqua La Voce uses the R2R Multibit PCM1704, a killer D/A converter especially in the bass. Used by Naim555, LinnCD12, ML39 ect all which have killer bass.
  
The La Voce I/V stage after the 1704 should be fine and the output buffers should be fine, all that is left is the cheap blue coupling Cap. As I pictured before, or even better go direct coupled.

Cheers George
stuartk OP158 posts
georgehifi: forgive my ignorance, but would installing such a cap likely void warrantee? Also, is this something I could purchase from say, parts conneXion? Briefly, what is involved in installation? Thanks.

Hi Stuart, if you need to ask this. Better off getting some one to do it, it’s not hard.

Cheers George

PS Stuart just found a good internal pic, click on the pic and it enlarges again, and the two blue plastic caps are the ones near the output rca's, but unfortunate they are already 3.3uf and are quite big enough, but of cheap industrial quality, this is why some owners are changing them for more upmarket caps, maybe this also could help the bass??
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/aqua/9_big.jpg

Cheers George
If its 1uFd or more, this should be sufficient for most preamp and amp loads to deliver bass. No bass roll-off will occur.
Your assuming it's 1uf if it is (and it's plastic looking at the net pics) and it's look at maybe a class-D which many are 5kohm input the the bass roll off is going to be -3db at 32hz. If the cap is only .47uf the the bass roll off is going to be around -3db at 64hz.

As I said before there are many owners putting in big plastic caps in place of what there from the factory which seem to be small in physical size, but still plastic.  

Cheers George  
stuartk 
  Darko described the Aqua La Voce as "cool" but it sounded terrific in my system, except that I found its bass response severely lacking.

As I mentioned in my first post, it has output coupling caps, that's why many owners on the net are changing that cap.
  
If that cap is too small in uF (microfarads) it will roll off the bass too early giving a shallow subdued (cool) bass, increase this cap 3 x in uF and it should fix the problem and give you a deeper stronger bass.

Or my preference is to direct couple, but you need a tech for that. 

Cheers George
Looking at the inside of the Aqua La Voce, it’s looks to me as it has a capacitor coupled output stage, as many owners are doing cap change mods to it.
Being an opamp based output stage on it from what I saw, it is very possible with a tech who knows what he’s doing to trim out any dc offset to make this a direct coupled output stage, remember for everything not just for bass the best cap is no cap.

Cheers George