Balanced Big 7 in the house

Audiophile bill

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Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
144
Hi all,

My new balanced big 7 has arrived - just set it up. Temporarily of a wood plinth before I sort a proper rack out. Listening to commence this evening but initial sound is fantastic - humongous soundstage with tonnes of slam and plenty of detail yet smooth as you like in vocals. Yum.

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Congratulations Bill! Prepare for some sleepless nights. Looks awesome!
 
Congratulations Bill! What a sweet looking DAC. I hope it brings you much enjoyment!

Ken
 
Was listening to the new album by Melody Gardot this evening - the soundstage is absolutely massive in all dimensions. Never heard a source that can do that. Also the amount of unheard information pouring forth is remarkable. I tried the unit using the balanced xlr outputs as my system is fully balanced and also using the single ended outputs - needless to say the balanced outputs sounded much superior. I am confused though how it works - I assume the circuitry is always balanced but the signal is unbalanced prior to the single ended output and left balanced for the xlr.

i have been using my AMD10 laptop to run pcm to dsd on the fly in hqplayer but it does not have the grunt to run double dsd using the polysinc filter and dsd7 settings - I resorted to polysinc short and dsd5. Anyone know what kind of power I would need to reliably upsample to quad dsd on the fly using polysinc and dsd7? Yes - my big 7 has the quad dsd option :)
 
Was listening to the new album by Melody Gardot this evening - the soundstage is absolutely massive in all dimensions. Never heard a source that can do that. Also the amount of unheard information pouring forth is remarkable. I tried the unit using the balanced xlr outputs as my system is fully balanced and also using the single ended outputs - needless to say the balanced outputs sounded much superior. I am confused though how it works - I assume the circuitry is always balanced but the signal is unbalanced prior to the single ended output and left balanced for the xlr.

i have been using my AMD10 laptop to run pcm to dsd on the fly in hqplayer but it does not have the grunt to run double dsd using the polysinc filter and dsd7 settings - I resorted to polysinc short and dsd5. Anyone know what kind of power I would need to reliably upsample to quad dsd on the fly using polysinc and dsd7? Yes - my big 7 has the quad dsd option :)

Yes it is, amazing huh. So glad you are happy. As it breaks in, it will only get better. Enjoy!
 
Was listening to the new album by Melody Gardot this evening - the soundstage is absolutely massive in all dimensions. Never heard a source that can do that. Also the amount of unheard information pouring forth is remarkable. I tried the unit using the balanced xlr outputs as my system is fully balanced and also using the single ended outputs - needless to say the balanced outputs sounded much superior. I am confused though how it works - I assume the circuitry is always balanced but the signal is unbalanced prior to the single ended output and left balanced for the xlr.

i have been using my AMD10 laptop to run pcm to dsd on the fly in hqplayer but it does not have the grunt to run double dsd using the polysinc filter and dsd7 settings - I resorted to polysinc short and dsd5. Anyone know what kind of power I would need to reliably upsample to quad dsd on the fly using polysinc and dsd7? Yes - my big 7 has the quad dsd option :)
The best i7 mono or Xeon you can get OR….MUSIC SERVER

Lukasz says it sounds awesome.
 
Yes it is, amazing huh. So glad you are happy. As it breaks in, it will only get better. Enjoy!

Yes, when I first spoke to Lukasz about the Bal Dac, he said the soundstage would increase MASSIVELY, not 10 to20% but 300%! Joe, you were the first on to confirm it for me.
 
Hi all,

My new balanced big 7 has arrived - just set it up. Temporarily of a wood plinth before I sort a proper rack out. Listening to commence this evening but initial sound is fantastic - humongous soundstage with tonnes of slam and plenty of detail yet smooth as you like in vocals. Yum.

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Thermionic goodness!
 
Yes, when I first spoke to Lukasz about the Bal Dac, he said the soundstage would increase MASSIVELY, not 10 to 20% but 300%! Joe, you were the first on to confirm it for me.

Norman,

No other source could do what the Lampi does. Blew me away! Golden Gate, here I come!
 
Been unleashing some dsd256 today - native dsd free downloads. They really are very special recordings and sound quite like nothing else I ever heard from a source before. I have moved over to foobar which seems to have hardly any cpu load at all even upsampling to dsd256. Hqplayer sounds better but my laptop just can't handle it - seems strange why it is so intensely demanding of cpu than foobar. Anyway - back to listening and happy weekend.
 
Glad you're enjoying it so much!

I guess I HAVE to hear a Lampi soon, all my friends love theirs :celebrate008_2:
 
Glad you're enjoying it so much!

I guess I HAVE to hear a Lampi soon, all my friends love theirs :celebrate008_2:

Only listen to it if you have the budget ready to go though :D. To hear is to want I warn you. It is a truly spectacular dac - the thing that gets me is that the resolution of detail is exceptional yet it does the crazy 3d soundstage and remains lovely and smooth. Often the detail machines can leave you a little cold or the soundstage is too rigid without liquidity. Conversely, typically you have to trade the finest details with valve based dacs and accept the enhanced musicality. The bridging of these camps makes it special. The soundstaging (I am a self confessed soundstaging junky) is so special - I have never heard a source do 3d like it including analogue sources. The image projects forwards and backwards by margins I have not heard before. The other thing that gets me is the purity of voices - so tactile and real.
 
I nominate this for "Post of the Year."


Only listen to it if you have the budget ready to go though :D. To hear is to want I warn you. It is a truly spectacular dac - the thing that gets me is that the resolution of detail is exceptional yet it does the crazy 3d soundstage and remains lovely and smooth. Often the detail machines can leave you a little cold or the soundstage is too rigid without liquidity. Conversely, typically you have to trade the finest details with valve based dacs and accept the enhanced musicality. The bridging of these camps makes it special. The soundstaging (I am a self confessed soundstaging junky) is so special - I have never heard a source do 3d like it including analogue sources. The image projects forwards and backwards by margins I have not heard before. The other thing that gets me is the purity of voices - so tactile and real.
 
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