Latest posts of: Gerard

Wednesdy 25th of August

After months of attempts we (Gerard & Leon) get in the car on our way to Peter.
Our aim ……….listening for the very first time to the Phasure NOS1 DAC and with
a bit of luck admire the machine. Gerard promised Peter to arrange the lunch and
so we went on our way packed with all kind of bred, sandwiches and anything
you can think of to put on top of the bred.

Thanks to the Tomtom we easily managed to find Peter’s place and at about half
past twelve we arrived over there. Worthwhile mentioning is that Peter had this
house being designed according his own architecture and when you first see the
place you cannot help but admiring it, what a beautiful place to live.
In order to get to know each other a bit we talked to Peter, Ciska (his wive) and
their son, of whom we must admit have completely forgotten his name (sorry
Peter), prior to the lunch. There was plenty for everybody, so soon we had an
animated conversation between the family and ourselves. One of the items we
discussed during lunch was Peter’s fruitless attempt to incorporate a volume
control into the DAC. Let’s not try to explain all the different ways he tried to
achieve his goal, just important however was that even the day prior to our
meeting he made another attempt, resulting in first a completely disfunctioning
PC system and after resolving that matter a system with audible less SQ than
before. Talking about this we made the remark that working with digital music
you handle bits and bytes which is an exact science, so in other words you should
be able to solve that by measuring stuff. Peter’s answer was a kind of a snoring
laugh and the remark that we should not forget to put that in writing ea the fact
that it is an exact science. Well ……… what do we know!!! However, we all know
how important the SQ thing is for Peter, so the volume control was disabled for
our listening session.

After lunch it was time to listen to the output of the Phasure NOS1 DAC. whistle

First we had a look on the oddly but very functional shaped unit. Remember, the design
never should compromise SQ therefore the design of the unit is somewhat
different from what you would expect from a standard DAC. The PC and the
whole sound system is set up in the living room of the family. And what a place to
listen to music! It’s big, without too many obstacles and various places where you
could stand or sit down to enjoy listening to the music. Peter pointed out the best
place to have the music coming to you in the most balanced way, which
coincidentally turned out to be the bar. drinks

Being very docile people we immediately
followed his advice Wink

We were being asked what kind of music we would like to listen to and
immediately explained that no matter what, he would start the session with some
music he himself had chosen for us. These turned out to be recordings from “The
Beatles” Not particularly the kind of music you would expect, but he did it for a
good reason. So we started the session with listening first to Get Back and
secondly to Yellow Submarine. What happened was that you actually could
believe you were there in the studio while the music was recorded. The details
and the way the sound came to us made a rather poor recording quality quite
acceptable and nice to listen to. As example you could actually hear the separate
voices coming to you from different places during the simultaneous singing of
John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The biggest surprise for us was with Yellow
Submarine, closing your eyes you would totally accept having the Beatles in front
of you while playing with their feet in the rolling waves of the Northsea,
unbelievable.
As said befor, Peter had a meaning with letting us listen to the Beatles. He
wanted to prove that with the right equipement it is possible to have a very
acceptable SQ with even very old and/or poor recording quality. Well, he
definitely made his point, despite the fact that the Beatles are neither the taste
of one of us, it was definitely not a burden listening to it. On the contrary it made
very clear the value of the DAC.
After discussing the first part we were asked to point out some music we would
like to be played. We came up with “Dead Can Dance” the song Sanvean,
Bubbling Under of the album Motion Picture of Yello some numbers of John Lee
Hooker and a Case of You from Diana Krall. Now something strange happened
and for me (Leon) totally unexpected. The song “Sanvean” didn’t moved me, at
all. The sound was all right and basically I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the
voice of Lisa Gerard didn’t spring out the way she normally does. This song is one
of the most beautiful songs I know from Lisa Gerard and the number never seizes
to touch me, even when I play it at my own place with a definitely lesser system
compared to Peter’s. But not this time. Even Peter, not knowing this song at all
was not happy with the way it sounded. In fact he asked me if this was the way
her voice should sound and if knew the violins were actually synthesizers. Now
personally I don’t mind much whether they are violins or synthesizers, it’s the
voice doing the trick for me and the emotion she gives me with this song and the
emotion just wasn’t there.
In order to check things out, Peter chose a number of Emma Shapplin, I think it
was “Un Sospir’di Voi” of the album Etterna, again a woman’s voice as biggest
part of the music, This song we know all three and we agreed that also Emma
Shapplin didn’t sound the way she should. Also her voice didn’t spring to live the
way we know. Strange and it was obvious for us that did was somewhat
unexpected and annoying for Peter.
After these women, it was time for the other selections and this time the DAC
never failed. Regardless whether we listened to the blues of John Lee Hooker, the
by piano supported jazz of Diana Krall or the electronic of Yello it all came to us
in rich details and very very well balanced. With wonderful placing of the
instruments in the space and an extreme purity from the lowest low to the
highest high.
Between our selections Peter played also his choices, so we also had the pleasure
listening to tracks from Jan Akkerman, Ben Harper, One Step Closer van Shulman
en Taj Mahal.
One thing we both concluded afterwards is how different audiophile people listen
to music playback compared to ordinary mortals such as us. Someone like Peter,
who is used to listen mercilessly critical to quality of recordings and quality of
playback, notice details we are totally unaware of unless clearly being pointed
out at. This makes judging the new DAC not an easy job. Peter expects the
highest level criticism where first we have to deal with a set of equipment which
is not comparable with the systems we have at our respective homes, and
secondly you talk with a guy who works professionally with music recordings and
has a very clear goal to achieve with his DAC. That goals is make the best DAC
ever for any kind of music, regardless if it is classical music, hip hop, trance or
just ordinary rock. After several tracks we were asked quite direct to express
what we thought, felt or noticed while listening to the track. Now we don’t know
whether is was the Schumann Synchronizer or just the way we normally would
respond, but we tried to adjust our way of listening to all the tracks to the way
Peter is obviously judging his own system. One thing is for sure however, despite
the Schumann Synchronizer we never heard it rain throughout the whole
afternoon rofl

.
There is one more thing to tell about our experiences this afternoon. Peter told us
that he recently had learned a lot about what goes wrong at recording studios
and how that of course affects the SQ of playback. For that reason he recorded,
at his own home, his son playing drums and cymbals. For me personally (Leon) I
congratulated myself with not giving my son a drum set when he grew up. But for
showing the capabilities of the NOS1 DAC it was very convincing. Playing the
recorded session and us standing outside on the porch it was as if his son was
actually playing the drum set inside the house, you just couldn’t tell the
difference. The cymbals just sounded the way cymbals do when you hear them
real live. Truly remarkable!
Okay, so now it is time to get back on these two women who didn’t want to do it
our way, Lisa and Emma. The day after our visit we got a mail from Peter
telling us what he did after our session. We told earlier in this report the fact that
Peter was not happy at all with the SQ of the tracks of Lisa Gerard and Emma
Shapplin. We also told about Peter’s attempt to get his DAC the best answer for
ALL different styles of music. So he mailed us that he decided to rule out every
possible influence of the volume control by totally disconnect all of it from the
DAC, including the power. As we understand that made a big difference.
Peter explained it to us in Dutch, so down below you will find our translation of it
into English (Peter, sorry if the translation isn’t exact as you wrote it)

First put on Sanvean (which I didn’t know before). Well, it took me less than 10
seconds to make my judgment. First the “violins”, clearly audible now as having
way to much the same vibrato for being real violins, obviously a real synth. But
further? brrrr, I definitely should listen more to her. The whole room filled up now,
say just like with Yello. After that it wasn’t possible anymore to listen specifically
to the “violins” caused by that overwhelming voice. Very full and definitely a lot
bigger than yesterday. Well, this is how it is supposed to be I thought.
A little while later I realized that yesterday I squeezed down the volume a bit,
thinking “maybe they find it too loud” You know (Gerard) … Irritant. Well, this
time “I had her” finally on the same level as Yello without any second feelings
about it and so I just thought of this.Than Emma ... I don’t know (Leon) if you know
that specific track, but what I totally didn’t understand yesterday was why her voice
came up from the right speaker.
I never experienced that before, very odd. And now? Just from the midst of the two
speakers, the way it should be. The “thunder” from the beginning of the track, all
of a sudden was real thunder again and after listening for 20 seconds the shivers
ran down my spine. Flat? …… never. Just powerful as ever (the reason why I put
this track on opposite to Sanvean in the first place, but, what amazingly, didn’t
work at all)

We believe Peter on his word when he writes this. The quality of what we heard
yesterday makes it hard to believe that this system would not be capable of
dealing with powerful women voices. Nevertheless Peter we sure wouldn’t mind
convincing ourselves again by listening to Lisa and Emma a bit further.
We like to conclude this report with our wish to try the Phasure NOS1 DAC at our
own place. From what we heard throughout the day we are convinced this DAC is
potentially one of the best and will upgrade the way we enjoy listening to music
to a new level.

We like to thank Peter and Ciska for there hospitality! thankyou