XXHighEnd

For those in the US in the neighbourhood of Las vegas and who like to get a glimps of the Phasure NOS1 DAC, go to this room : Venetian: 34-204.

I won't be there myself, but "we" are trying to push out the best sound anyway.

Regards,
Peter

See first link below for a flyer.

Hi Peter,

Congrats for another great milestone!  The brochure indicated Lee Mincy. If I am not mistaken, Lee should be Minzyman on the forum working for Sonic Studio in Bay Area.

Praphan

Something like that, yes. :secret:

Hey Guys.

Actually nothing like that. I havene't worked for Sonic Studio for a few years. Am just good friends with Jon Reichbach and occasionally have a brew with him.

The Venture Grand Ultimate MKII speakers (98kUS$) are sounding pretty special in the Venetian Hotel right now, to a large extent due to the very good digital front end feeding them music. The sound is amazingly smooth, (through a very revealing pair of speakers I might add). Female voices are crisp and natural, with no sizzle on the top. Bass is so deep and tight, with church organ lows that you feel. Coherence is also obvious and I am hearing the best transparency I've heard yet from this dac and player. The sound is very natural and analog-like, with little to no digital signature, IMO.

In one recording, Pie Jesus from Ref Recordings I think, you hear the female singer's voice rise up and clearly define the music hall, which is so vast.

These speakers make good recordings sound great and bad recordings sound poor. Nevertheless, the feedback has been very positive and most ask about the digital front end, the software player and dac.

A great show for both Venture and Phasure.

/Minzyman

$98k speakers seems like a fair match with the NOS1!  :)

Here's a peek in the room.

Must be hidden somewhere.

What !?, a laptop ?


Okay then. :)

Yep, a laptop. Not my "goto" system exactly, but it worked.

Did you see this Stereophile Show Report?

"Given that my assigned "territory" for CES included new cables, power products, and accessories, I was able to indulge in a few of the big system rooms on the Venetian's 34th and 35th floors. These are the systems that many of the sightseers who came to CES for other reasons came up to marvel at. As did I.

I'm so glad that Venture of Belgium and Singapore has a new line of cabling, because it gave me an excuse to hear Reference Recordings' "Pie Jesu" from the Rutter Requiem as I've never heard it before. I was blown away by the huge dynamics, room fixture-shaking bass, mind-boggling clarity of the massed voices, and sheer beauty of the sound. Gorgeous.

The cabling, initially manufactured as internal wiring for the Venture Grand Reference Ultimate Mk.II loudspeakers ($98,000/pair), is not cheap. The Grand Reference Diamond interconnect runs $12,000/1m pair, and is, as best as I can decipher my notes, a microwave cable with a coaxial design. The balanced version ($15,000/pair) runs four lines rather than two. There is even a Grand Reference power cable ($15,000/1.8m). The bottom of Venture's line is the Black Reference III, whose RCA interconnects are $4000/1m pair.

The rest of this system, some of which appears in this photo with Venture's Hong Kong (Didi) Njoo, included Venture's V200A monoblocks ($120,000/pair) and VP100L preamplifier ($36,400). The digital front end at the time I listened was a Windows 7 laptop playing XXHighend software player in hog mode ($99), feeding the Phasure NOS1 USB upsampling DAC ($4500). The DAC upsamples to 24/768k). "

Now you know why there's so much cable and so few DAC in that picture ...

:scratching:

Peter, Isn't the Reference Recording of Rutter's Requiem of CD quality only?

You mean opposed to "hires" ?
I don't know. But it really (really) won't matter anyway. Or actually I think it's the other way around; I play (ripped) CDs exclusively (already because it is to be about that IMO).

And then STILL it will be better again. Currently I am the only one who is able to listen to it. And so I dedicate my SQ to be the best in the world at this moment.
But that won't take long ... :grazy:

Ehm... We are there you know ? ;) I feel we behave like hungry childs that want more and more... And you keep on feeding us ! I sure don't have anything to complain about by the way :)

Regards,

Alain

So the laptop/XX/NOS1 combo is by far the cheapest component of that chain even less than the LS cables... I would argue it is the most important for SQ in that room.
The source component could have easily been 10 times as expensive to match the rest of the set (not to bring you on any ideas Peter  :)).

regards, Coen

I can tell you another story which can't remain a secret anyway ...

For reference : http://www.stereophile.com/taxonomy/term-a/381?page=3 the story at the second picture.
Recognize something ?

So, this is the standard gear for source. That's more like it, right ?

Now imagine, that at a certain stage someone with the initials D.W. enters the Venture room last week. Of course the source had to be changed before that happened, into that Jason and Medea+. This is two times ~24000 USD now. Yep, 48000 USD.

Coen, you are correct, this is exactly 10 times the price of the source which was actually used when Mr D.W. was not around.

The interlinks I use myself are 1 (that is one) USD. But I am not sure whether that's per the pair or just one. :swoon:. But whether it's 6000 or 12000 times more cheap - who cares eh ?
Well, I heard that same Medea+ in my system (hands down for the other :)) but I never heard those interlinks. Good for me !

Peter

You refer to


Not possible to fully engage the listener with a 200k+ system....?! Why demo at all?
I recognise this inability to energise the room from my memory of many "high-end" demos.

Quite a different tone on this years report (It must be the cables  :grin:). No cable, amp or speaker can repair or ameliorate the crippled sound of an imperfect source.
Otoh my rather imperfect diy system sounds absolutely splendid with z8e!

Regards, Coen

"I encourage you to click on the link"

http://www.audiostream.com/content/phasure-nos1-24768-async-usb-dac (http://www.audiostream.com/content/phasure-nos1-24768-async-usb-dac)

Good advice!

Regards, Coen

Interesting how he didn't get the key, that it is not the DAC which oversamples to 768k, but the software, with the DAC not oversampling at all.  (He didn't stop to think, "Now hold on a minute, it says 'NOS DAC' but it upsamples to 768?")

Coen, 2-1 for you there. I mean, the same person eh ?
LOL
Now don't tell me you didn't see that. That will give me an extra bonus of 2. So, 1-3 then. haha.

Regards,
Peter

Careful now. He will receive a NOS1 soon ...
:yes:
But yes, I noticed that too. :1eye:

There's one other noteworthy thing to mention about this whole matter, if I am allow to say this myself :

This whole excercise, from the first start to the very end (up till today) was arranged without any verbal (and/or through phone) conversation. It was 100% arranged through email.

I think this requires a high level of trust from all who participated. And let's not forget the quite "hostile" environment, if you followed and understood the last couple of posts.

Thank you TEAM,
Peter

Peter
I commented on Stereophile CES 2013 Venture report:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/big-venture#comment-524938 (http://www.stereophile.com/content/big-venture#comment-524938)

Frank

Hi All

I just got back home from Vegas and while there I was dying to post about the Phasue NOS1 and the Venture room. I only had smartphone internet access while there and did not want to try posting with just that.

Simply put, the sound from this room IMHO was easily in the top 3 if not the best of the entire Venetian CES as well THE SHOW in the Flamingo Hotel. This includes rooms with 50k vinyl rigs, and much more expensive DAC and CDP combos, not to mention speakers which cost more than twice as much as the wonderful Ventures.

The sound was incredibly resolved, coherent and lifelike. Lifelike is the best descriptor I can use. I was completely awash in the naturalness of whatever was playing. I stayed for almost an hour which if you attend these shows you know that it is a long time if you want to see everything.

It was by far the best digital in both shows and honestly I prefered it over almost all the vinyl that was playing. It was a great feeling seeing my DAC :whistle: I mean Peter's LOL at the pinnacle of the entire show.
Congratulations Peter :clapping:

 :NY02: :NY02:  :yahoo: :yahoo:

Well, same magazin (stereophile), different writers: Jason Serinus and Michael Lavorgna.

You've got their attention!

They used to have some minimum amount of dealers policy for reviews, not shure if they still do.

regards, Coen

So, that's 1-4 for me then. Of course I got myself another bonus point for you not seeing it after I pointed it out somewhat.

So no, both the same writers. But you must look from another angle. Haha.

A Little bit late, but

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/ces2013/ces2013_venture.htm

Haha. I know it's been said before, but the NOS1 is easily the cheapest component there (much less than the cables I'm sure) and yet I doubt the sound would have been as impressive without its contribution.

I wonder if they were using phase alignment...

Mani.

Mani - sscchh don't say that you will give Peter all the wrong ideas .

I ran into some footage:

http://youtu.be/7BVlUVxiun4

"The DAC is a Pleasure NOS1..."

Regards, Coen

I think a "zero" was missing ;)