Soulution 760 D/A Converter

Alpinist said:
Jock,

I think Le Roy is very happy with his Soulution 541 players, aren't you Le Roy? Just in case, can I come over and listen with Jock too? :D

Best,
Ken
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Ken, I am very happy with the 541 player with hi rez streamer.

For the record you and Jock and any other fellow shark is invited over to listen when you are in Chicago in the summer or Austin in the winter. :D
 
Odyssey said:
Ken, I am very happy with the 541 player with hi rez streamer.

For the record you and Jock and any other fellow shark is invited over to listen when you are in Chicago in the summer or Austin in the winter. :D
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Thanks Le Roy! That's really nice of you. I'm glad to hear that your 541 players and streamers are exceeding expectations. They are extremely fine components. There is a lot to be said for going straight Soulution from source to amplifiers. The benefits are huge synergy. Have you brought your 501's up to Chicagoland yet? I'd be interested to hear about the improvement you gain bi-amping the D5's with the 711/501 amp combo versus running just the 711 amp.

All the best,
Ken
 
wisnon said:
The GG you heard was less than a week old and the Mundorf caps in it are notorious for taking 4+ months to break in at a minimum. That is why Mike and another GG owner have reported PCM improvements and I suspect that NO one will be able to tell where it will end up before August, as by then the first GGs made will have hit 5 months old. You also went on Friday and late Sat according to reports is when Ryan fixed his Perfect Storm speakers and all finally clicked.

Besides, we already know what DSD sounds like on the GG and for 30% of the Soulution price, you could get a DSD only GG with the Copper case (best RFI shield material) and it would be quite an achievement if ANY DAC can beat that for any price.

Finally, it seems the core of the Sol. Dac is the anagram tech filtering. I will have you know that the CH guy was one of the founding memebers of Anagram and his Dac is far less costly, so...

Frankly, I cant see the value of the 760, but will keep an open mind and will make sure to listen extensively in Oct at the Zurich Show.

Soulution is trying to catch up with their Swiss counterparts…Goldmund/FM-Acoustics/CH Precision and Dartzeel are all bigger companies by sales. Not sure if they are bigger than Nagra.
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Hi Norman,

I agree with your points about the break-in of the Lampi GG in your first paragraph. It certainly should sound better with more break-in time. However, it doesn't make much sense to try and pass judgement in any way on the Soulution 760 until you've had the opportunity to listen to it firsthand. Based on my experience as an owner of the Soulution 520 Pre and 501 mono amps, I would expect top notch performance out of the Soulution 760 DAC, especially considering how great the 541 sounds. But until I hear it for myself, I won't really know either.

Ken
 
My comments were more about what the HOOK was for them. They are more amp guys and their key selling point here was for the Anagram filter. First thing is that no hardware filter yet beats Jussi's software based DS modulators running on POWERFUL dedicated SERVER architecture. The other key points were phase flipping control and power supply capacitance, but the latter is already in many top Dacs at lower prices.

CH is run by an ex-Anagram founder, so he would know that Tech as well as anyone and it would be in his Dac.

$55K demands absolute SoTA performance and so to even begin to consider that, my intellect MUST be engaged to see what the Unique Selling Points are and if they represent unique/extremely rare tech and implementation breakthroughs. Now, granted that if you already have full Soul.. electronics, I could see a certain attraction, as one could asssume high synergy by design...but still theprice of entry is very high.

For Trinity, which also is very expensive, I see the Unique story of mechanical oversampling (Lianotec sp?) using expensive clocks and extremely high chip rejection rates...much like FM acounstics that sometimes rejects 90% in any given batch. But then again, as with FM and Soul., the retail pricing is Asia based where a min. 30% discount is mandatory (no one buys without negatiation) BUT they demand a HIGH retail price for bragging rights. True street pricing for a $50K box is more like $30K. Aplly the channel margin and you can easily see that BoM is a significant part of what the manufacturer gets...and they still have to contend with the Channel pushing for MORE margin, or distributors selling direct to undercut dealers. LoL

Brands that sell mostly direct thus have much better pricing, but may suffer image losses there due to low sticker pricing, and so survive based on MUSIC lovers adopting their products based on SQ and little else.

Having said all this the 760 may be so well implemented, especially in a full Soul. setup that it could sound astonishingly good. I just dont see the acclaimed tech innovations that piques my interest and would justify 50 large!
 
Just out of validity Norman, how many of these components have you lived with in your system? I understand about knowledge, i have a touch every now & then, but firsthand is the denominator between real & smoke....
 
I am talking to several designers all the time and reading a lot about the tech. No-one has heard the 760 really yet, But I have heard the Trinity for a weekend and have had private Demos for PBD, CH, LHC-208, etc.

The issue is is 50 large!! That is not chicken feed. If it was say up to $30K, then no problem, but 50K is outlier pricing and demands a HOOK, in my book. I am just not seeing the hook. As I said, it MAY sound great in the proper setup, but at 50K it should also make breakfast and clean the house. LoL

Even if it happens to synergize with one particular system, that in itself is no proof of anything, as at 50K there will be tons of potential cheaper subsititutes. It has to "break new ground".

Its just a hobby and I am only giving my opinion. Not gospel and people are free to take the plunge if they feel the desire. I do feel i have heard enough half a million $+ systems to be able to discern quality though.
 
wisnon said:
I am talking to several designers all the time and reading a lot about the tech. No-one has heard the 760 really yet, But I have heard the Trinity for a weekend and have had private Demos for PBD, CH, LHC-208, etc.

The issue is is 50 large!! That is not chicken feed. If it was say up to $30K, then no problem, but 50K is outlier pricing and demands a HOOK, in my book. I am just not seeing the hook. As I said, it MAY sound great in the proper setup, but at 50K it should also make breakfast and clean the house. LoL

Even if it happens to synergize with one particular system, that in itself is no proof of anything, as at 50K there will be tons of potential cheaper subsititutes. It has to "break new ground".

Its just a hobby and I am only giving my opinion. Not gospel and people are free to take the plunge if they feel the desire. I do feel i have heard enough half a million $+ systems to be able to discern quality though.
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Norman just reserve such statements until you have heard the friggen dac! You have no idea about anything you are saying until then. I know you swear you have no financial interest in Lampizator but sometimes your zealotry is unbearable. Suffice it to say if it were to ever come out to the contrary vis-à-vis your relationship with Lucasz that would be a very bad thing.
 
Huh?

I said a $50K Dac has to do a (Hell of a) lot to justify its price. There are tons of cheaper Dacs, not just Lampizator, LH, CH, Berk ref…to name just a few. Trinity costs about the same. What is there to disagree about that? I TOLD you that the Principal of CH was a founder of Angram, so you should connect the dots yourself. NONE of us has heard the Soulution, so none of us should say anything about it then (including you)? Why pick on only me? We should all diligently wait until we heard it a home for months on end before a single comment, though I see you have commented on many pieces of equipment long before you heard them. Clearly because things about them did or didnt appeal to you.

Do you work for Soulution? If I were to say something ridiculous like that (I know better, as do you) how would it come across to you?

And NO, I dont work for CH either.
 
wisnon said:
Huh?

I said ta $50K Dac has to do a (Hell of a) lot to justify its price. There are tons of cheaper Dacs, not just Lampizator, LH, CH, Berk ref…to name just a few. Trinity costs about the same. What is there to disagree about that? I TOLD you that the Principal of CH was a founder of Angram, so you should connect the dots yourself. NONE of us has heard the Soulution, so none of us should say anything about it then (including you)? Why pick on only me? We should all diligently wait until we herad it a home for months on end before a single comment, though I see you have commented on many pieces of equipment long before you heard them. Clearly because things about them did or didnt appeal to you.

Do you work for Soulution? If I were to say something ridiculous like that (I know better, as do you) how would it come across to you?

And NO, I dont work for CH either.
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C'mon Norm you said a little bit more than it "has to do a (Hell of a) lot to justify its price." You made direct statements about the 760's technical merits and value. I just don't think judgments about a product are very useful until you or someone's who's ears you trust intimately has heard the product. Maybe I am being unreasonable but what happened to SQ as a criteria?

wisnon said:
You really think it will beat a burnt in GG for a third of the price? The copper shielding alone should make Soulution blush...
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wisnon said:
Frankly, I cant see the value of the 760.
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wisnon said:
I just dont see the acclaimed tech innovations that piques my interest and would justify 50 large!
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wisnon said:
Even if it happens to synergize with one particular system, that in itself is no proof of anything, as at 50K there will be tons of potential cheaper subsititutes. It has to "break new ground".
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I am sorry for being a little dull here, but how can anyone make any of these statements credibly without hearing the product? It's akin to looking at the chemical make-up of paints used by da Vinci when he painted the Mona Lisa and then judging the artistic value of the painting prior to even seeing it.

In addition, when someone couples these sorts of comments with your role as the planets number one Lampi fan, it just makes a person ponder things. I am sorry if I was insulting in that regard; in retrospect it was not very thoughtful on my part.

Finally, when you state that "I comment on many pieces of gear long before I have ever heard them," can you indulge me a bit on this? I am not sure to what you are referring.

Thanks,
 
Yygdrasil, Hugo, Dave, Allnic Dac, 2ute, Trinity, BMCPure Dac, Direct Stream, Ariesetc and these are just Dacs. Amps: Jobs, Graaf, Arions, Viva, Rowen monoblocs, Lampi GM70 and 211s, Kondo, Telos 5000, Lansche, Onda Liguera, Fisher and Fischer,Kaiser Kawero, etc. Same for speakers,Polymer, Tidal La Assolutas, Goldmund Apologue and Metis Tower, Vox Olympian, etc.

Some I have managed to hear, all piqued my interest for some technical reason or another. Some disappointed and others not.

For 50 large, with the quality of gear out there, breakthru in some area is demanded and HAS to be translated in SQ. There are $200 Chinese Dacs out there that none of us has heard, but no one here is clamoring to hear. Price alone should not be an arbiter of interest...the design should stimulate interest and promise commensurate SQ as a result. Frankly, the Yggy hype seems more interesting from a technical POV and you seem to have ignored the part where I said my mind was not closed and I suspend judgement until I hear it in Zurich in October.

If not for this thread, I would likely not even bother, as the only think outstanding so far that I have read about the dac is the price.

Go ahead and buy one, as it should be a good synergy with the rest of your Soulution gear and the price doesn't seem to give you pause.

You keep referring to Lampi, AS IF THAT HAS ANY RELEVANCE HERE. Pretend as if Lampi disappeared as a brand tomorrow...how would that change my view? The Berk Ref is $16K, The Bricasti is $10K, The LH DaVinci is $30K, Nagra Dac is $40K, The Chord Dave is $12K, Lindemann is also far less, as is te Italian La Scala, the Phase Nos A1 is way below $10K, CAD is about $10K, the latest Empirical Audio Dac is about $11K ...I could go on and on. All acclaimed Dacs for a fraction of $50K.

Chris at CompAudio went as far as saying the Ref Dac is the best Dac out there and its 16K. THAT is an absolutist statement that I didn't make!

I will end here as this is getting circular and my point has long ago been made. Let us reconvene when one of us has heard it. At least THEN we will have more to take about than the spec sheets and marketing literature in the public domain.
 
Alpinist said:
Hi Norman,

I agree with your points about the break-in of the Lampi GG in your first paragraph. It certainly should sound better with more break-in time. However, it doesn't make much sense to try and pass judgement in any way on the Soulution 760 until you've had the opportunity to listen to it firsthand. Based on my experience as an owner of the Soulution 520 Pre and 501 mono amps, I would expect top notch performance out of the Soulution 760 DAC, especially considering how great the 541 sounds. But until I hear it for myself, I won't really know either.

Ken
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Ken that is fair enough and if you read my post again, you will see this part:
"but will keep an open mind and will make sure to listen extensively in Oct at the Zurich Show."

This clearly showed that I passed judgment on the public domain info, features, specs and price ...BUT NOT FINAL judgment.
How is that unfair?
 
wisnon said:
Yygdrasil, Hugo, Dave, Allnic Dac, 2ute, Trinity, BMCPure Dac, Direct Stream, Ariesetc and these are just Dacs. Amps: Jobs, Graaf, Arions, Viva, Rowen monoblocs, Lampi GM70 and 211s, Kondo, Telos 5000, Lansche, Onda Liguera, Fisher and Fischer,Kaiser Kawero, etc. Same for speakers,Polymer, Tidal La Assolutas, Goldmund Apologue and Metis Tower, Vox Olympian, etc.
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I am not sure what this is about. You said "I see you have commented on many pieces of equipment long before you heard them." I ask you to elaborate on when I have done this and you respond with examples where you have done it not me. I am confused.



wisnon said:
You keep referring to Lampi, AS IF THAT HAS ANY RELEVANCE HERE.
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Dude you are the one that referred to the Lampi GG 6 times in your first two posts on this thread. I just made note of you doing so.



wisnon said:
I will end here as this is getting circular and my point has long ago been made.
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I completely agree about the circularity and I am happy you made your point.
 
Bringing this thread back on its original track, I am going to make a point of auditioning the 760 DAC at a local Soulution dealer as soon as he gets it in his showroom. I'll do a head-to-head comparison with the 541, which we already know is a terrific sounding DAC in its own right, and I'll report back my findings. It should be a very interesting comparison, plus it will give me an excuse to sit in his high-end room and listen to the 725/711 preamp/amp combo again. :D

Ken
 
My new babies arrived !!!
4bf3b1e7a73ee5a1e93dc0936466afa8.jpg


Burn in time
:)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
highEndguy said:
Just to burn them for 200hours


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Congrats! Those are incredible amps. I love the 701 monos. What speakers do you plan to connect to them? I have the 520 preamp and their little brothers, the 501 monos, hooked to Raidho D3's. I can't say enough wonderful things about Soulution components and their synergy with Raidho. I'm so glad I went in this direction.

Ken
 
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