Perp Tech P3A + P1A + Monolithic PSU on eBay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3047751200

£995 "Buy it Now" - a bargain IMO. That lot would cost you at least £1800 new in the UK.

Michael.

 

Worth a put here boys, tis good fair price too and just minor tweeking to turn form good into rather good (op-amps in the P3) and some P3a power mods.
If any of you guys buy it I have an Audio magic I2S cable to enable 192khz if you wish £80 ono go on you know you want to.WM

 

Has anyone listend to the Perp Tech setup back to back with a DAC64? I'd love to know how they compare.

 

Me too

Michael.

 

So Michael, are you going to buy it or am I, just to satisfy our curiosity? (and who's going to explain that to the wife)

 

Mike areadys knows this Tom, But add an upsampler/src to the dac 64 and it ceratins goes up a notch or 2.
The Pet Tech combo is very good, I perfer over the 64, but they can be improved further for not too much dosh, plus you can use the I2S interface . A good money buy WM

 

Tom - I'm completely skint at the moment so no can do. Also, the wife thinks my DAC64 cost "the same as my DAC20 - it was a swap, honest..."

If you did buy it I think you could probably sell it on for the same amount though...

Michael.

 

I'm always a bit dubious about upsamplers - surely they introduce more jitter and are only as good as the interpolation software?

 

I'm in the same boat having just had my RLD-1 improved to revision A status by Steve McCormac. (I just didn't tell my wife how much the DAC64 cost - I hope she doesn't read his board):MILD:

 

The Monarchy upsampler allegedly also massively reduces jitter. The jury is still not 100% decided on the Monarchy Yes, I like it, but three things about it concern me:

1). It's upsampling to 96kHz. That isn't a direct multiple of 44.1kHz so there must be some form of interpolation going on and, from a purists point of view, you're getting further away from what was on the CD to start with.

2). How well does the DAC64 cope with a 24bit/96kHz signal? Does it function equally well at all frequencies or was it optimized for 16/44.1? The time delay when using the 4s buffer reduces to about 2s (becuase of the increased amount of data presumably) - is that affecting the buffer's ability to reduce jitter?

3). The DAC64 seems to be running a lot hotter when using the Monarchy than it used to. Now that may well be because we're going through another heat wave here (it's 30deg indoors, even at 22:30 at night ) but it could be the DAC is doing more work.

The proof of the pudding though is in the eating and I want to hold off any final judgement until I get my Teac T1 here. Then I'll do a proper evaluation of whether the Monarchy is really worth having in the chain or not.

Michael.

 

Clearly, yes but I guess you've got to go back to the question of whether it sounds better (to you of course)

Interesting thought, I hadn't considered that

My DAC64 is never switched off and even here at 22 degrees it still runs so hot that it's quite umpleasant to touch. Hasn't started smoking yet though

I look forward to your thoughts on the monarchy when you get it set up.

 

All of them run very hot, mine was exactly the same, until you bypass the SMPS and run external PSU.

 

Ah - so your's runs as hot as mine, that's reassuring - I won't let it worry me any more

Weekend of Oct 4/5 is when I'll have the T1 back here and I'll let you know what I think about the Monarchy. Certainly using my old Marantz CD50SE (with a Trichord digital output board) it's an improvement.

The other issue I forgot to mention of course is now you've got two digital cables and all the potential variations that can bring!

Michael.