The HDACC arrived yesterday and I have discovered a few thing different from what I expected. The HDMI version appears to be up to 2.0 compatible at least in some if not all functionality.
It is too early to give a conclusive report but I suppose preliminary impressions are OK provided they a viewed in that light and not taken as gospel truth. It's just today's opinion OK.
I did some setting up and testing, I very likely don't have all the settings optimised at this point in time. Amplifier is Yamaha A700 and speakers are Polk Audio 10B stereo pair. I connected 2 paths from my AMC CD8a to the amp, RCA direct to the amp or coax to the HDACC and then RCA to the amp. This enabled me to listen to CD tracks from the same source, either through the AMC internal DAC or through the HDACC by selecting inputs at the amp. I played some folk music and some Gregorian Brothers guitar tracks. There was practically no discernible difference between the two DACS at 44kHz except perhaps the AMC direct may be slightly fuller sounding. In blind testing, my son consistently picked the AMC over the HDACC. However, such a slight preference could easily be due to unnoticed signal level differences. Note, up sampling the HDACC was not used.
Then I played some HD content on the cheap Sony BD player, DHMI passing through the HDACC to the TV. The HDACC handled the HDA significantly better than the Samsung series TV’s internal DAC. Much more detail, expressive and pleasantly smooth and natural musical sound. This is now high end audio quality as good or better than I have experienced before. A definite and very obvious improvement.
Next I compared PCM Stereo against 5.1 using the double sided Fleetwood Mac DVD on the Sony BD player. The 5.1 via the TV DAC sounds thin, lacks sound stage and dynamics but the HDACC played it very well however PCM stereo still seemed to have a crisper clearer edge over the 5.1 data stream.
We tried one of my sons CDs that had guitar used almost like percussion, very little tonality. Upsampling noticeably improved resonance and tonality. Guitars now sounded well “guitary” (his word). So contrary to what many people say, Upsampling does appear to improve music, at least for some things. I was skeptical as how can you put back something that's not there to begin with? Well I suppose it's a fictitious interpolation inserted between the original bits that is somehow just more pleasant to listen too. I don't pretend to understand it but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.
As a preliminary impression, I guess the differences can be pretty subtle depending on the content, source definition etc. It may be hard to define exactly what the differences are but it just seems more pleasurable and immersive.
A note on the AMC CD8a:
I find it very interesting that the HDACC sounds so very similar the AMC CD8a internal DAC at 44.1 kHz output. I suspect though I’m not certain, the HDACC may have the edge with up sampling. I need to compare more tracks. I chose the AMC CD8a about 1997 so for a well-regarded DAC to offer such similar performance in 2016 may say something about AMC. To put the CD8a in perspective, I had listened to every CD player in the HiFi shop in 1997, some were noted for their flat response but lacked dynamic expression across the spectrum, some were expressive in either the top or lower end but the AMC CD8a had it all. Its dynamic musical expression across the full spectrum stood out above everything else I heard and this was the reason I chose it, to my ears, it simply had the most expressive and engaging sound. Though the HDACC is not an obvious winner at 44.1 output, I am very pleased to have an acceptable HD upgrade and CD replacement path.
Regards,
Ken
