| Due to this thread, I called the friend upon whose boat I heard the Vox Olympian in order to find out precisely which DCS DAC he was using with his TLOX to get the sound that I found so remarkable. It turns out that whilst the DCS unit was indeed present, he had given up on the thing - finding it too "clinical" in combination with the TLOX - and was running the TLOX into the decidedly old-fashioned Kondo DAC that I mistakenly thought was a power supply for the pre - or power-amps or something. So, I am nowhere nearer to knowing what was going on than before, since the remarkable results could have been the result of the Vox Olympian, the amplification, the transport and/or DAC, or the synergy of the whole thing. It does tend to lend justification to Romy's assertion that the TLOX is best employed with DACS employing more anachronistic topologies than I might consider if buying a DAC to use with hi-res computer files or a new universal player. It would have been nice to compare the Kondo to the DCS in said system, but since I didn't know what was going on at the time, I didn't ask for such a comparison. Furthermore, I cannot home-audition anything Kondo in Toronto - not that I would want to spend that kind of money on a DAC anyway - and cannot shop-audition the TLOX with the Kondo. So, what I have learned/had confirmed, is that the TLOX is most likely best employed with a specie of DAC that I don't want to afford anyway. I am increasingly of the belief that I should go the universal route with a DAC optimized for that unit, and accept some compromise in the playback of Redbook CD, which is compromised in and of itself. Thanks. |
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