Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

Though my new updated Bidat is too fresh but considering that I know very well how the Nichicon KZ progress with sound I think I can make some preliminary observations about the revised sound of my Bidat.

The change was not a large, less than I expected. The main objective was to get the very lower bass and I think this task was not accomplished with the last DAC revision (primary Bidat’s PS). The lower bass DID became deeper with new PS. Bidat formerly sounded absolutely identical at 16Bit as Pacific Microsonics. Now running bout of Pacific and Bidat into the same preamp and switching the line on prams via a remote control it is clear that the new Bidat has slightly deeper and slightly more articulate bass. (Here is where it is very nice to have a preamp with identically sounding inputs – how many of them out there?) However, the change with Bidat was roughly at the same time as I changed the PS on my Lavry DA924.  Running Bidat along with the new Lavry DA924++ it is clear that Badiat can’t compete with DA924++ in lover bass – what DA924++ does in lover bass is nothing short of untouchable.

There is one very interning and very positive change that I do observe in the updated Bidat. The new Bidat looks like slightly better cares HF that are presenting along with bass and midrange. It feels like the intermodulation lever was dropped. It is not a strong effect but notable and very positive.

OK, now about what is important:  as it is now, can the new DA924++ be the only DAC and to substitute Bidat – this is the question of questions to me. So far, the damn Bidat resists.

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=7038#7038

The Bidat has that “something” (thankfully that was killed by the recent PS modifications) that still, even with objectively inferior sound make it to sound in a way very interesting. That Bidat’s something might be described as 3 major characteristics:

1)   Absolutely different transients then other DACs. They are not “too good” or “too bad” they just “there” and you would never ask or question their appropriateness. Lavry for instance is a “brutal force” DAC and you can sometimes recognize the Lavry transient efforts. With Bidat it is never about “efforts” and the Bidat’s efforts are behind the scene.

2)   Very smartly rolled off HF. Bidat is not the most advanced HF performer but any other DAC that I heard (you can put here a long list of the best DACs you know off) are too bright for my taste. I do feel that 16Bit digital shell be intentionally rolled off. With FM that delivers excellently musical HF we have nothing above 15kHz -16kHz, so what? Anyhow, something is very right done in Bidat in HF rolling. I presume that it might be the accidentals properly of the op-amps the John Writhe chose to use, or the way how they are used… Who knows…

3)   The lower MF. Still, after all very positive changes in lower MF in my DA924++ the Bidat came and show off why I have been using this DAC for 10 year. The Bidat has that absolutely freakish “lower MF noise” that sets it apart from anything else. You read correctly it is “lower MF noise” or some kind of “lower MF dither” that makes sound very soft in that region but at the same time saturate that region with a lot of “meaty noise” , only this time word noise is more like an output of a hyper-sensitive microphone that picks up too much information. It is certainly not noise in a normal scene but it is rather an injection of some sort of excessive harmonic richness but this harmonic puffiness exist at the very prodigiously defined region somewhere in lover MF and very top of upper bass. I cannot define where it is exactly it is but it not there in midbass and it is not there in MF. I have no idea what it is – it might be an accident or a fault in analog stage, I know that among all Bidats that I owed this specific unit has the maximum amplitude of this “lower MF noise” problem – and… I enjoy each second of this fault.  BTW, all Bidats have it to one or another degree - so I think it was not designed characteristics but perhaps some sort of non-premeditated “boo-boo” of some kind of internal component or element.

What is very important that the latest PS modification looks like did not affect of damage any of the Bidat’s most valuable for me characteristics. Now, let see how it behave after the Nichicon-mandatory 30 days. So, far, with all the improvements on my DACs the total balance remains rightly the same as it was before of the improvements:

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=1877#1877

…with Lavry slightly move up from where it was due to the very positive reduction of the Lavry’s HF energy

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site