Weiss 202 - a few thoughts.
Posted by: james n on 26 July 2010
Ok i though it was time to put fingers to keyboard now that i've had a few days to play with the 202.
My DAC history up until now has been the n-Vi internal DAC, The Lavry DA10 and then the Weiss DAC2. I'd seen a review in Hi-Fi News of the Weiss Minerva (the DAC2 in fancy clothes) which got me interested. A quick chat to Keith at Purite got me a loan of a DAC2. My DA10 went to its new owner (who now has a DAC2) and the DAC 2 took it's place.
The Weiss via optical from the Mac was not that different to the DA10 and I could have quite happily gone on living with the DA10 which to me combined all the virtues of a Naim sounding front end married to the convenience of iTunes. Via Firewre it was a whole different ball game the Weiss clearly better than the DA10. Amarra and Pure music have been icing on an already rather nice cake and up until a few weeks back i'd arrived at a rather fine sounding front end.
Enter the 202. I'd not been too interested in this thinking it was just a minor update of the DAC 2 with the addition of a nice front panel display and remote control. Not much benefit to me i thought. A Google around found some internal shots - the DICE Firwire implementation is the same but from there on - Twin transformers for more isolation of the digital section and a completely new DAC / Analogue stage using the Sabre ES9018 DAC chip. The 202 like the 2 / Minerva keeps the DAC section in a screened 'quiet room' - good to see in a device with a lot of high speed digital noise flying around inside its box. The 202 has two built in, user selectable filter settings, A and B. Filter A has a steeper frequency response than B and more filter settings will be added in future software updates. The other nice feature is the transparency checker which uses the playback of test files to check out whether the playback chain from the test file stored on the computer to the the DAC is bit transparent (of which Amarra and PM are when volume is set at 0dB)
Last year i popped over to Joe Bibb's to have a listen to his DAC2 / Berning / Art Emotion Signature system and we had an enjoyble day listening to his system - its a fine system and it also changed my mind with regard to valves. Like me, Joe had used the DA10 and moved onto the DAC2 so i found we had pretty similar tastes. I know if he's discovered something then its worth giving it a try. When Joe got his 202 and mailed to tell me how good it was i thought i'd better get one and have a listen.
The sound ... if you like the DAC2 then you'll love this. It just takes all the good things of the DAC2 and builds on them. A number of things really stand out on this DAC on familiar music. The sheer clarity for a start - all sorts of minor inflections in a voice are just so clear, cymbals just shimmer and have a very natural sheen and minor instruments way down deep in a mix are clear and easy to follow. I've also noticed that vocals that sometimes could be indistinct are now crystal clear and just sound so real. Close miked Cash (American recordings) or Shelby Lynne sounds superb. Tracks that may have originally have sounded harsh are now clear and detailed - its not a bright sounding DAC. The other thing of note is just how quiet the 202 is - it has an extremely low noise floor which translates to an inky blackness which particularly noticeable when a track is coming to an end and is slowly faded down - musical information is still there even though it can be just a whisper right up until the track stops. It just drags up low level detail i've not heard before.
You can probably tell i'm pretty pleased with my new purchase and if you already have a DAC2 and like the Weiss way of doing things then it's well worth a listen. The DAC2 is still a very fine DAC and with the Fiewire connection to the Mac its a neat plug and play solution.
How does the 202 compate to the Naim DAC ? - to be honest I dont know as i've not heard the Naim DAC for a while now but i'm sure given the level of engineering that's gone into the Naim design its a very fine DAC and in full battle configuration with the 555PS i'm sure there would be little to choose from between the Naim and the Weiss - its down to personal preference / system matching in the end.
Hope that's of interest to some
James
My DAC history up until now has been the n-Vi internal DAC, The Lavry DA10 and then the Weiss DAC2. I'd seen a review in Hi-Fi News of the Weiss Minerva (the DAC2 in fancy clothes) which got me interested. A quick chat to Keith at Purite got me a loan of a DAC2. My DA10 went to its new owner (who now has a DAC2) and the DAC 2 took it's place.
The Weiss via optical from the Mac was not that different to the DA10 and I could have quite happily gone on living with the DA10 which to me combined all the virtues of a Naim sounding front end married to the convenience of iTunes. Via Firewre it was a whole different ball game the Weiss clearly better than the DA10. Amarra and Pure music have been icing on an already rather nice cake and up until a few weeks back i'd arrived at a rather fine sounding front end.
Enter the 202. I'd not been too interested in this thinking it was just a minor update of the DAC 2 with the addition of a nice front panel display and remote control. Not much benefit to me i thought. A Google around found some internal shots - the DICE Firwire implementation is the same but from there on - Twin transformers for more isolation of the digital section and a completely new DAC / Analogue stage using the Sabre ES9018 DAC chip. The 202 like the 2 / Minerva keeps the DAC section in a screened 'quiet room' - good to see in a device with a lot of high speed digital noise flying around inside its box. The 202 has two built in, user selectable filter settings, A and B. Filter A has a steeper frequency response than B and more filter settings will be added in future software updates. The other nice feature is the transparency checker which uses the playback of test files to check out whether the playback chain from the test file stored on the computer to the the DAC is bit transparent (of which Amarra and PM are when volume is set at 0dB)
Last year i popped over to Joe Bibb's to have a listen to his DAC2 / Berning / Art Emotion Signature system and we had an enjoyble day listening to his system - its a fine system and it also changed my mind with regard to valves. Like me, Joe had used the DA10 and moved onto the DAC2 so i found we had pretty similar tastes. I know if he's discovered something then its worth giving it a try. When Joe got his 202 and mailed to tell me how good it was i thought i'd better get one and have a listen.
The sound ... if you like the DAC2 then you'll love this. It just takes all the good things of the DAC2 and builds on them. A number of things really stand out on this DAC on familiar music. The sheer clarity for a start - all sorts of minor inflections in a voice are just so clear, cymbals just shimmer and have a very natural sheen and minor instruments way down deep in a mix are clear and easy to follow. I've also noticed that vocals that sometimes could be indistinct are now crystal clear and just sound so real. Close miked Cash (American recordings) or Shelby Lynne sounds superb. Tracks that may have originally have sounded harsh are now clear and detailed - its not a bright sounding DAC. The other thing of note is just how quiet the 202 is - it has an extremely low noise floor which translates to an inky blackness which particularly noticeable when a track is coming to an end and is slowly faded down - musical information is still there even though it can be just a whisper right up until the track stops. It just drags up low level detail i've not heard before.
You can probably tell i'm pretty pleased with my new purchase and if you already have a DAC2 and like the Weiss way of doing things then it's well worth a listen. The DAC2 is still a very fine DAC and with the Fiewire connection to the Mac its a neat plug and play solution.
How does the 202 compate to the Naim DAC ? - to be honest I dont know as i've not heard the Naim DAC for a while now but i'm sure given the level of engineering that's gone into the Naim design its a very fine DAC and in full battle configuration with the 555PS i'm sure there would be little to choose from between the Naim and the Weiss - its down to personal preference / system matching in the end.
Hope that's of interest to some
James
quote:ROTF s/pdif and aes are inherently flawed, read up on async transfer.
Eliminating of S/PDIF is definitely a good idea. I believe the future DACs will go this way (ethernet or USB/Firewire). It will mostly go down to ethernet vs USB game. No surprise if Naim will go USB way and Linn will continue ethernet approach.
But this does not negate a technical fact that S/PDIF reproduction can be FLAWLESS. If transport produces a low jitter bitstream and DAC recovers the clock with PLL or re-clocking the data transfer can be almost jitter-free. Scarlati is a good example. We can enjoy S/PDIF with nDAC for a while.
I wonder if DAC202 really sounds better than fully charged nDAC
I think it will survive and be supported as long as my Mac G5 - good old PowerPC chips - now how do I run Snow Leopard?quote:Firewire will be FULLY obsolete
Firewire isn't dead, it just smells funny.
quote:Originally posted by pcstockton:quote:Originally posted by JYOW:
Async Firewire even better
Yeah because those are on so many computers these days
Hmm I currently have 4 computers at home, thinkpad X61, R60, MacBook Pro and a MacMini
All of them have FireWire ports built in
May be you've been using the wrong machine?
I know a lot machines have fw built in withoutthe users noticing. I didn't know until I checked
quote:Originally posted by DHT:
Theoretically async ( firewire,usb ,ethernet) offer the best way of transferring timed data.
Fact.
Right. How so, when compared to the Naim DAC's S/PDIF buffering/re-clocking architecture?
Is this simply an alternative way of getting to perfection, or does it actually fix some flaw you have discovered in the Naim DAC design?
Thanks.
Hook
PS - Am a little confused by you starting your sentence with "theoretically", and ending it with "fact".