Phasure NOS1 vs. Pacific Microsonics Model Two - Round Two

[manisandher]

I'm now a month into the NOS1's burn-in period. In this time, the sound seems to have fleshed out a bit, though changes in my hardware and of course XX itself mean that it's difficult to assess this with complete accuracy. Hence why it’s so useful having another DAC (which I’m very familiar with) acting as a reference.

Over the weekend, we had a friend staying over. Although not a professional musician himself, Paul plays many instruments (very well) and has also spent some time in a professional recording studio. I trust his judgment and have used him on many occasions in the past as a sounding board (pun intended).

We played a number of tracks that he’s very familiar with. He really, really liked the NOS1. He said that he’d heard things in these tracks that he’d never ever heard before. The NOS1 gave him an insight into the recording/mixing/mastering process in a way that he’d never experienced.

He also liked the Model Two, but in a very different way. His exact words were, “My head is saying the NOS1 is better, but my body is saying the Model Two is better.” He went on to explain that what he means here is that the NOS1 sounds more accurate and is certainly technically better. But it doesn’t make his body want to move to the music – there’s no feet tapping going on for example. It’s almost as if he’s too drawn into the technical elements of the sound – the placement of musicians, the microphone techniques used, the overall realism of the instruments/voices. In contrast, he forgets all this with the Model Two and engages more with the music. We tried loads of different types of music and he always gave the same response. At one point, he said that he felt guilty because he thought I’d be disappointed that he hadn’t obviously liked my new DAC better than my old one.  But I explained that I was pretty impartial actually. On the one hand, I would love the NOS1 to be the better DAC – its internal design fulfils my own philosophy and in any case, I would love Peter to succeed in his endeavour. On the other hand, I would be quite happy if the Model Two is the better DAC – it’s almost impossible to obtain nowadays, and it’s nice knowing I’m one of the ‘lucky ones’.

After the session, I asked Paul a hypothetical question: He’s just walked into a hifi store which has a NOS1 and a Model Two for sale at exactly the same price. Which one would he buy? He said that he’d want to take the NOS1 home because he knows that his whole collection would sound totally different through it – he would finally be hearing what’s really on his recordings. However, for listening to and enjoying music, he’d buy the Model Two.

Is the NOS1 the World’s best DAC? I’m not sure we could claim this with certainty. The World’s most accurate DAC? Probably. The World's best value-for-money DAC? Yep, I reckon it could well be.

Mani.

[Chriss]

Excellent review Mani!
Criss.

[tuyen]

Interesting review. I have to admit, my interest in trying this NOS1 DAC (with XXHighEnd) against my current full valve NOS TDA1541s2 dac grows immensely after reading your review, Mani.

Thanks for sharing

[Marcin_gps]

Mani, thanks for the review. You could have both at the same time - realism and pleasure. The first one doesn't exclude the second one.

Marcin

[PeterSt]

Hi Mani - Thank you for this beautiful description. Of course, at this moment I can't tell to what degree this would match your own ideas about this all, but it may be good to tell a bit about my own experiences on this. Why ? well, because this is so true :

He went on to explain that what he means here is that the NOS1 sounds more accurate and is certainly technically better. But it doesn’t make his body want to move to the music – there’s no feet tapping going on for example. It’s almost as if he’s too drawn into the technical elements of the sound – the placement of musicians, the microphone techniques used, the overall realism of the instruments/voices.

... if not careful. So, a few notes if I may - not to make this untrue afterall, but for better (future) interpretation. Ok ?

First of all, I experienced a couple of occasions of people listening to the Phasure NOS1 for the first time, and observed them so to say. From there I could see all the ohhs and ahhs which won't come into my own mind anymore, just because I am used to it all. Well, apart from a new OS sometimes, a next XX tweak, and all you know about yourself. But, the leap to the NOS1 is larger of course, maybe depending on the OS / XX version and settings used. Or maybe I could even say that the latest changes (starting at W7-SP1) are even bigger than one NOS1 can accomplish. In any case :

I hope I am allowed to use Eric as an example (and he may chime in himself), at observing him listening to the NOS1 for the first two hours. I could say it was near a continuous waterfall of notices and and pointing outs and explanations towards me in the mean time, of all he could observe as "new". Rather technical things amongst them, and he being an instrument player himself also talking from that angle. IOW ...
How can one ever listen to music in such a situation ? It would be a tough job I think.

While this is one "reason" - and please remember that I'm not dismissing any possible truth here - there is the most obvious 100 reasons that it is as 100% true, but now because of environmental parameters. I mean, if I'm only allowed to refer to just over 12 months back, and point out how "as happy" everybody in here was with Engine#3 ... *and* knowing now what the actual reason is nobody uses it anymore ... what can we say ? Engine#3 was (is) a complete "technical thing", and it is no coincidence I started seeking for the "emotional engine" which (Engine#4) emerged only one month after I was pointed out that indeed Engine#3 could not incur for any foot tapping. At all. Btw, this was done by a couple of well respected people in Audio-Netherlands, and I took it for granted. Only then I knew what this was about : Engine#4 (indeed) did not *allow* for looking into technical merits. It just wouldn't work, because music was first now.

With this I only want to say (before I'm going into the below) that I know exactly what this is about. And no matter what will be in the below, I will keep on believing that Paul may be able to judge this better than I can. Maybe his boots are more heavy so foot tapping is more difficult in the first place, but don't forget, I know what this is about, and do everything and all (for the past year) to let exactly this happen (foot tapping).
Add to this my ever "search" for letting Special Mode work (which is the more technical thing), and notice how many times that failed. For that same reason. And in the end, heaving the experience, it is quite easy to detect foot tapping : not by watching your foot, but by observing yourself looking into details or new things etc.; when that happens, foot tapping won't. Well, *I* think it is that easy ...


So, with having said the above, I now use Special Mode. It can only be because I fairly explicitly know it can be done for me, or otherwise I would not. Btw, that I use Special Mode is unrelated to the subject within itself, so I don't mean "you should have used that". It only prooves to myself that I am not bothered with wanting to look into details and such - and that I can listen to music.

Assuming levels of foot tapping exist, it could be the question whether it is that, or that it is your own determination of how settings should be. IOW, your own foot tapping senses. Or the other way around : your senses and interest for razor sharp accuracy, vs. something which is maybe less, but more foot tapping. Because remember, it are *your* settings, and do they matter ? hell they do. They do 100 times more than anyone could have expected some 6 months back.

NOS1 or otherwise, I guess it is these settings which make the sound in the very end. Not the other way around. And worse, if all is how I think it is myself, the settings will even interfere more once something like an NOS1 can represent the "accuracy" of whatever it is that settings incurred for.
Look at my own post from not even one week back, and see how things change within days, in all cases that NOS1 not being changed. And don't get me wrong ... these changes are quite similar as replacing your valued system by a complete new 100K one. Well, who doesn't know this (by now).

Despite all, it is and remains true that for a technical apparatus like the Phasure NOS1 - and that piece of hardware trying to push out something which is just 1:1 as a means for good sound (there really isn't more to it !) - it is maybe more difficult to get the sound towards music itself. I mean, I recognize this from the start, and *if* people complained, it was about this. But luckily we have XXHighEnd, and luckily my ever attempts (remember, this is how the NOS1 started its life) to remove the software influence failed. And so this is now just our chance.

At this moment I am in lack of exactly nothing. All sounds as if it is real, and per my post in the 0.9z-4 topic, it sounds honest.
But didn't I say that 2 months back already ? Yes, I did, although the "honest" as a phenomenon wasn't invented at that time. Why ? well, it wasn't there. Still I was in lack of nothing.
But one week back ... it seems that I was in lack of everything that could be. Still all should be better for theories. Then theories changed somewhat. "Filters" emerged, and before such a theory was ever applied by the masses, it looks like it is going to be a new future. Whether it smoothens harshness, or finds its way back from unbearable transients (as how I perceived it) to "the great suck of music", it seems key.

Summarized, if only the NOS1 could be a device which is completely transparent to everything and all, that by itself allowing for "over the top" when just that is fed to it, there's always the opportunity to dial back in (XX) smoothening factors up to just that level needed. The other way around won't go.


Lastly for now, we may wonder when is the time to judge it all; How long is it ago that we all went back from W7 to Vista, introduced RAMDisks, and from there, overhere a full two days were spent with a couple of additional good ears to judge it all - a Vista/RAMDisk clearly being the winner. If I listen to that now, it must be my system from 30 years back, so much of a difference. But this is one week ! How can I ever have found optimal settings within these radical changes ? How can other people, not even able (yet !) to get some proper "straight Contiguous" ehh, contribute to this all where no single person can on his own ?

Peter


PS: But I sure want all people to read Mani's post how it was written. And this is how it was. Period.
For now.

[Nick]

Mani hi,

This is an interesting result, I had a similar experience when I coupled my Audio Note 4.1 NOS DAC to the SPDIF output of the NOS1. I posted some observations on this here http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1523.0.

The Audio Note put in very engaging musical presentation, more so than the NOS1, however the NOS1 was in a different league for perceived “correctness” and detail transparency. The NOS1 is clearly better in the comparison when you think about elements of the music but somehow the Audio Note got my toe taping and created a bit more of a “musical event”. These findings were based z3 so they need to verified using z4-0 , and I do fine z4-0 has a much more musical presentation already with the NOS1.

Generally I find NOS DACs,

1) are VERY susceptible to the quality of the input data stream you feed into them. IMHO they can be the ultimate cr*p in cr*p out devices and disapoint BUT with a good input data feed the transparency immediacy and sense of performance is altogether better than filtered DACs.

2) the characteristics of out put stage, including the IV conversion stage and the active output buffer, play a large role in shaping the overall presentation (more so than with oversampling DACS)

I forget which PC interface you use into your Model Two but it would be very interesting if you could eliminate differences in the PC interfaces from your Model Two / NOS1 test by using the SPDIF output of the NOS1 directly into your Model Two. This would help isolate the contribution of the DAC and output stages of your Model Two towards the musical presentation you experienced. I am not sure how practical test would be for you, I seem to recall you have AES inputs and external clocking on your Model Two.

The NOS1 SPDIF output is VERY good, so well worth the time to try if you can make it work for you.

Regards
Nick

Ps I have just read this back to myself and want to avoid any misunderstanding.
NOS1 vs AudioNote overall conclusion ? For me there’s no question it the NOS1 every time.
My comments above are meant to highlighting one interesting aspect of playback where the Audio Note DAC performs well.

[manisandher]

Thanks guys.

You could have both at the same time - realism and pleasure. The first one doesn't exclude the second one.

Yes, I totally agree (see below)...

Btw, that I use Special Mode is unrelated to the subject within itself, so I don't mean "you should have used that".

I've just tried the settings in your signature Peter, and I think they sound a lot more musical than the settings I was using over the weekend. Perhaps I should have used them...

Mani.

[manisandher]

I forget which PC interface you use into your Model Two but it would be very interesting if you could eliminate differences in the PC interfaces from your Model Two / NOS1 test by using the SPDIF output of the NOS1 directly into your Model Two. This would help isolate the contribution of the DAC and output stages of your Model Two towards the musical presentation you experienced. I am not sure how practical test would be for you, I seem to recall you have AES inputs and external clocking on your Model Two.

The NOS1 SPDIF output is VERY good, so well worth the time to try if you can make it work for you.

Hi Nick. Yes, I would love to try this, but as you suspected, it won't be possible with the Model Two unless I find a way of converting spdif to dual-wire AES. At the moment I'm using a Weiss AFI1 interface, though I also have an RME AES-32 here which I sometimes use. My experience with AES interfaces/cables is that they are incredibly important - they ultimately determine the SQ that you can get from an AES DAC. I've been told that the Merging Mykerinos is the best AES interface (and of course it should be for that sort of money!). When I'm next in the States for work, I might drop in on Tim Marutani - he has a Mykerinos feeding a Model Two. Meanwhile, I'm hoping to improve the Weiss AFI1 when I replace its stock SMPS with a Paul Hynes power supply, which should arrive in a couple of weeks time.

But actually this is a pretty moot point now, as I've decided that the NOS1 will be my main DAC. The Model Two will be resigned to ADC duties only. I really don't think I'll miss the sound of the Model Two, great as it is. With XX configured 'correctly', I'm getting what I consider to be a very musical sound now.

Mani.

[music33]

I recently had 3 direct lines put in with different receptacles (Oyaide and Teslaplex).  When I plugged in my amps to the Teslaplex, the sound completely transformed (by far the biggest change I have ever heard in my system from changing something).  You could hear every detail, very similar to descriptions of the Phasure.  I have a tube based CD player and preamp and the sound completely changed from being warm to being analytical.  I then changed power cords (LessLoss) and connected them to the Oyaide both known for warmer sounds and things were warmer than with the TeslaPlex.

My reason for writing this is that what I have found is that the receptacle and power cord used for your amp makes a *huge* difference and you maybe able to get the 'foot tapping' experience by trying several different receptacles and power cords with your amp.  It would also be interesting to know if different power cords and receptacles influence the sound of the Phasure

How and why power cords and receptacles alter the sound, I have no idea.  But at least in my experience it is substantial and is another way of sculpting the sound to your preference.

[manisandher]

I'd like to point out a few comments made by Peter and Nick that I think are interesting:

... the settings will even interfere more once something like an NOS1 can represent the "accuracy" of whatever it is that settings incurred for.

Despite all, it is and remains true that for a technical apparatus like the Phasure NOS1 - and that piece of hardware trying to push out something which is just 1:1 as a means for good sound (there really isn't more to it !) - it is maybe more difficult to get the sound towards music itself. I mean, I recognize this from the start, and *if* people complained, it was about this. But luckily we have XXHighEnd, and luckily my ever attempts (remember, this is how the NOS1 started its life) to remove the software influence failed. And so this is now just our chance.

Summarized, if only the NOS1 could be a device which is completely transparent to everything and all, that by itself allowing for "over the top" when just that is fed to it, there's always the opportunity to dial back in (XX) smoothening factors up to just that level needed. The other way around won't go.

Generally I find NOS DACs... are VERY susceptible to the quality of the input data stream you feed into them. IMHO they can be the ultimate cr*p in cr*p out devices and disapoint BUT with a good input data feed the transparency immediacy and sense of performance is altogether better than filtered DACs...

As Peter pointed out, most of us have switched to Engine#4, even though Engine#3 appears to be technically superior. It'll be very interesting to see how XX changes in the future to make highly transparent DACs such as the NOS1 more musically engaging. It'll also be interesting to see if these changes also sound good on OS DACs... I mean, who still uses Engine#3 even with an OS DAC?

Mani.

[manisandher]

My reason for writing this is that what I have found is that the receptacle and power cord used for your amp makes a *huge* difference and you maybe able to get the 'foot tapping' experience by trying several different receptacles and power cords with your amp.  It would also be interesting to know if different power cords and receptacles influence the sound of the Phasure

Yes, we should remember that we can 'manipulate' the sound not just through the XX settings but also through hardware changes. My feeling is that we should strive for ultimate transparency on the HW side and use XX settings to 'manipulate' the sound to one that is musically engaging - otherwise, things might start getting very complicated.

Mani.

[pedal]

Hi Mani!

What is your current system?
Still using the Pass Labs and the new Quads?

[manisandher]

 

Hi pedal, my main system has changed a bit over the last year or so.

My Quad 2805 speakers have put on a bit of weight and grown to the Quad 2905 speakers (I use the smaller 2805s in my office system). One of the (many) things I like about the Quads is that they are crossover-less, so I've sold my Pass Labs XVR1 crossovers - they were excellent though, and I would highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for an analogue x-over.

I use a 'Sanders Magtech' power amp. This works really, really well with the Quads. The designer, Roger Sanders, is an electrostatic expert and really knows how to build an amp optimised for them.

I still have a Pass Labs X1 preamp (I used to have X600 monos also), but this is bypassed nowadays with the DAC (either the NOS1 or Model Two) driving the Magtech directly.

Overall, I like the sound I'm getting - it's very coherent. My only desire would be for more of a low-down 'kick', which I'm simply not going to get unless I introduce a sub or two. But no sub on the planet will keep up with the Quads, and I'd prefer a cohesive sound to one which gives me a LF thrill once in a while.

But bringing the subject slightly back on topic, I think this system is capable of getting the best out of the NOS1. It's a fast system, which is what I think you need with the NOS1.

Mani.

[pedal]

Thank you Mani, and compliments with a superb system.
I think the Quad stats always has been concidered as the Royality by UK enthusiasts. And the latest topmodel is said to be the very best version, especially in the bass. But of ocurse, a full-range ELS will never give you quite the same bass kick as cone speakers. I guess your Quads superb transparency and impulse handling really let the NOS1 shine.

All the best!

PS: My previous spdif driven DAC was sold and shipped before the NOS1 arrived. And the NOS1 itself doesnt accept spdif, as you know. (Suddenly spdif became old fashioned to those lucky enough to get the NOS1!  ). So my listening experiment with your cabel has been delayed. But I will do some cable evaluations when I get the chance, and report back afterwards!

[music33]

Yes, we should remember that we can 'manipulate' the sound not just through the XX settings but also through hardware changes. My feeling is that we should strive for ultimate transparency on the HW side and use XX settings to 'manipulate' the sound to one that is musically engaging - otherwise, things might start getting very complicated.

Mani.

Unfortunately I think it is complicated, regardless.  It seems like electricity and it's conductors have a major influence on the sound.  So when a manufacturer is striving for ultimate transparency for their equipment; their tuning can be influenced by the electrical source, receptacles and cables they are also using.  And hence when people use that piece with different electrical source, receptacles, cables you get varied opinions/reviews on equipment.  I do believe the very high end manufacturers (like MBL) try and take out the dependency on the electrical source and somehow reshape the electrical signal to be always consistent.  Perhaps that is why their amps are so big and costly.

I would be interested if anyone has tried the Phasure with different cable, receptacles, direct or non direct lines and how that affected the sound quality. 

Peter when you did your development on the Phasure did you experiment with any of those things?  It would be nice to know if the Phasure is minimally affected by the things I mentioned.