Well, I finally found and implemented a digital front end that I can live with.  I have been so cynical about digital up to now that I have kept and used an old, cheap Sony player (albeit one actually made in Japan...) because up to now it seemed like anything "better" was also lots worse.  Let me explain.

Where to begin with the faults of digital playback?  It has long seemed to me that digital was the worst SS had to offer, with a near lack of harmonics, a disjointed sound spectrum and a time sense that is straight out of the Twilight Zone, not to mention The Devil's own noise.  So far any attempts to get more detail, more extension. better harmonics, etc., have always been accompanied by less sense that I was listening to music.

I heard and liked the Cal Audio 1-box players years ago, but they did not hold up in my esteem, too fuzzy, and all the new stuff that keeps coming out in the way of upsampling, SACD, etc., just seems worse at worst or at best no better. I had heard the Meitner/Museatex Bidat DAC a couple of times and liked it/them, and then I heard an IDAT in a friend's studio, and I felt like I was on to something.

Years passed.  I found and began talking with John Wright, a former associate of Ed Meitner, the original "slippery algorithm", IDAT/Bidat guy who was instrumental in the early going of DAC then eventually moved on and came up with SACD for Sony, etc.   John Wright preferred the original IDAT/Bidat as a platform and he wound up doing maintenance, repair and upgrades on old Meitner Cos. stuff, including Mielor and Museatex.  After some discussion with John I wound up getting an iDAT-44+ off Audiogon. The iDAT-44+ is +/- a very stripped down IDAT that John has worked his magic on.  Many of his "upgrades" include ripping parts out of the original gear (and NOT repalcing them...).

I got a German made Accustic Arts Drive 1 transpot because I don't need upsampling, just something stable that is in sync with the iDAT44+'s 16/44 sampling rate.  The Drive 1 is very simple and built like a tank, and it seems to be a nice transport based on the Philips Pro drive unit.  It also has a very nice remote.  The Drive 1 simply leaves my old bypassed Sony player in the dust; it does everything better-better, meaning it does more parts and also the whole better.  IMO it compares very well with analog.  It's nice to get all the "fidelity" without losing the performance or getting a headache for a change.  I hope I can ignore the Drive 1 the same way I've ignored my Sota TT for almost 20 years.

The "Big Deal" with the iDAT, as I understand it, is the smart algorithm and a totally system-synchronised power supply.  I think that's about it.

The Drive 1/iDAT-44+ combination, along with the old Belkin Synopsis digital cable, gives me what I wanted, namely more and better cues with no downside.  There is more ambience and better "harmonics" (it's still digital...), and perfect pitch, lots of nice little details that organically sugest the performance is right.  Timing is not the same as my TT but it has plenty of motivation and it is credible in its own right; most important, it serves the music very well.  It does a great job with the Music and Arts Furtwangler 1942 Beethoven's 9th, and pretty much everything else, too.

IMO, high-speed reel-to-reel master tape is the Holy Grail of sources, and this is what I used to set up my analog.  Now I have used my analog to set up this digital and it is good; not a "perfect match", but very nice.  In fact, I am presently using the digital bass to help re-dial my tonearm damping and VTA since I messed with them in misguided attempts to compensate for then-undiagnosed effects of bad electricity and bad 6N6P tubes!

The iDAT44+ unit takes a while to break in initially and it also takes 20 minutes to over an hour to get correct each session, at least it does as I use it.  The difference/improvement in the quality of the sound once it is warmed up is astounding, so bear that in mind if you audition one.

John Wright asked me specifically to try the iDAT-44+ with the wall wart PS for a while before I used a battery.  Soon I will post about results with battery powered DAC.

Best regards,
Paul S

I use to have IDAT-44 and IDAT-M (automobile version). I did not found them interesting, though they were not stock versions. Admittedly all Museatex stuff kind of “need work”, and even the stock Bidat was quite dead DAC.

It is still not know why the damn IDAT-based converters sounded so good. Theoretically it could be blamed the IDAT adaptive algorism the switches the processing architectures depends of the music speed. There are however much more advanced architecture then this, thought they not necessary sound right. So, looking at all of it I would blame in Bidat (that suppose to be Baby IDAT) the uniquely-successful output that somehow “clicked” with the given output filter – altogether producing very interesting and very non-annoying result.

BTW, I have a custom build Bidat with a custom MOSFET output stage, external PS and custom output filter stage. This custom output filter uses no capacitors – very interesting topology. If anyone wishes to have it I might let it go.

I remember there was a guy in Chicago (Chig?) who covered Bidat to battery power – I juts do not remember already what was his comments. Chig, if you still around then say Meow.

I personally do not believe in buttery powered DAC like Bidat (IDAT). Bidat sucks 29W and it is a lot for battery power. Also, what battery power does? A few years ago I converted my CD transport to battery power – and lost all dynamics…. was not good. Surely DACs are sensitive to bad electricity and Bidat is VERY sensitive. But isn’t it better to address the problem with electricity globally instead of putting one single unit of the chains on battery power? I would not mention that Bidat sound better when it completely hot and it need a few hours to reach the cruse temperate…. How long time will you heat it on battery power?

A few years back, what I had IDAT-M, although I did not like how it sounded I put THAT DAC on battery power. There were not differences…. So,l I do not buy inot it....

Paul S wrote:

… a better representation of dynamics because the broad-spectrum noise is pretty much gone… ….electricity was good today.

Paul S wrote:

… When I listen before I switch to battery, then listen after I switch, the unit starts sounding better and better over about 5 minutes, then it improves very slowly like it does on wall polwer, depending on how long I've warmed it up. As I have said, the unit sounds much better hot.

I'm not sure exactly what I expected from swapping the digital cable at this point, but what I got was not it.

Before I bought the Belkin Synopsis cable I just swapped out, I had sought out and purchased an Acoustic Revive cable, on the strength of a recommendation from a friend who then owned a small recording studio, which is the first place I heard the original IDAT.  This cable is/was supposed to be what all the hot-rod Japanese pros used to make all those recordings the audiophiles (and other recordists...) flip over; so I thought, why not? I put the cable in but never really used it much before I reconfigured my system when I wound up needing to move my CD transport, when I went from wall power to battery, and the AR cable was too short to span it.  A Synopsis cable happened to be available, cheap, so I bought it, plugged it in, and never looked back.

As we have discussed, the Synopsis cable is a low-pass filter that is mostly good because it is not bad, and it ameliorates a number of the digital problems that other cables either allow or they highlight them.  The Acoustic Revive, on the other hand, is more along the lines of the "direct microphone feed" thing that I seem to be getting a lot of these days.

One of the original mods to my iDAT was to convert it to full Class A operation.  And I suspect that one of the mods John did this time involved messing with the operating points.  The sound is as I reported above.  It is not really "hard", but it is right on the edge of hard, and I was a little concerned that the AR cable might push it over the edge.  But I went with my greedy "intuition", and this did not happen, at all.

Like I said, this is the sort of sound one gets sitting in the studio and listening right off the mics.  This means it is VERY dependent on everything being in order to get the most from it.  Given the dearth of great CDs, I am very pleased that the sound rarely sinks into stridency, as one might reasonably expect it to, even with less-than-good recordings.

The oddest thing here, according to my initial expectations, is that the HF was not made worse or too much of in any way, nor is noise more obvious than it was with the Belkin Synopsis.  The AR cable used to pass more noise than the Belkin, so I suspect the lowered HF noise now owes to John Wright's most recent mods.

Did I mention that bass is also better, on a cross-comparison basis?

Paul S

Paul S wrote:

I'm not sure exactly what I expected from swapping the digital cable at this point, but what I got was not it. Before I bought the Belkin Synopsis cable I just swapped out, I had sought out and purchased an Acoustic Revive cable, on the strength of a recommendation from a friend who then owned a small recording studio, which is the first place I heard the original IDAT.  This cable is/was supposed to be what all the hot-rod Japanese pros used to make all those recordings the audiophiles (and other recordists...) flip over; so I thought, why not? I put the cable in but never really used it much before I reconfigured my system when I wound up needing to move my CD transport, when I went from wall power to battery, and the AR cable was too short to span it.  A Synopsis cable happened to be available, cheap, so I bought it, plugged it in, and never looked back. As we have discussed, the Synopsis cable is a low-pass filter that is mostly good because it is not bad, and it ameliorates a number of the digital problems that other cables either allow or they highlight them.  The Acoustic Revive, on the other hand, is more along the lines of the "direct microphone feed" thing that I seem to be getting a lot of these days. One of the original mods to my iDAT was to convert it to full Class A operation.  And I suspect that one of the mods John did this time involved messing with the operating points.  The sound is as I reported above.  It is not really "hard", but it is right on the edge of hard, and I was a little concerned that the AR cable might push it over the edge.  But I went with my greedy "intuition", and this did not happen, at all. Like I said, this is the sort of sound one gets sitting in the studio and listening right off the mics.  This means it is VERY dependent on everything being in order to get the most from it.  Given the dearth of great CDs, I am very pleased that the sound rarely sinks into stridency, as one might reasonably expect it to, even with less-than-good recordings. The oddest thing here, according to my initial expectations, is that the HF was not made worse or too much of in any way, nor is noise more obvious than it was with the Belkin Synopsis.  The AR cable used to pass more noise than the Belkin, so I suspect the lowered HF noise now owes to John Wright's most recent mods. Did I mention that bass is also better, on a cross-comparison basis? Paul S

While I am very cynical about any PS "protecting the unit from bad AC", I do think a PS can be "better" or "worse" in practical terms.  In other words, not all PS are created equal as they affect/effect Sound.  It may well be that my iDAT has a crappy PS, or at least it might be comparatively crappy with wall power.  However, here is one example (which proves the possibility...) where the "remaining" wimpy PS is perfectly fine when the unit is driven by a battery.  In this case, the guy who "created" this particular DAC actually did recommend battery power from the start, although the unit came with a wall wart, and I had to buy and rig up the battery, etc.  But what the Hell...  Adding that stuff at the factory would have tripled the unit cost, maybe more; but designing it for battery may have lowered the unit cost, in this case.

Best regards,
Paul S