Zanden 2000.....

[ash_dac]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ZANDEN-2000-TR...QQcmdZViewItem

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/zanden3/digital.html

Anyone listened to one of these setups?

[Ulas]

Originally posted by ash_dac
Anyone listened to one of these setups?

Not those particular setups but I heard the Zanden 5000 MkII DAC at Srajan's place a couple times.

[ash_dac]

Originally posted by Ulas


Not those particular setups but I heard the Zanden 5000 MkII DAC at Srajan's place a couple times.

Did it sound good ?

I think I would buy an Audi instead.

[Ulas]

Originally posted by ash_dac
Did it sound good?

I didn’t care for it and neither did Srajan but you’ll never read that in his reviews. Srajan told me Yamada-San was so pleased with the Six Moons review and helping to put Zanden on the audio map, as it were, that he, Srajan, got to keep the DAC as a gift.

At the time I heard the DAC, Srajan was piping its analog output through an Ortho-Spectrum AR-2000. He thought the AR-2000 restored the “dynamics, punch, and grit” (his words) to the reproduction. I thought the sound was just awful, just like first generation digital audio. As I understand it, the AR-2000 first sends the input signal through a LED/photodiode opto-isolator to “remove the contaminants carried by the noisy digital ground” and then through a brick-wall, analog filter to “remove the high frequency crud left over from the D/A process.” It’s not surprising the result sounded like the worst digital audio you can imagine.

At one point we were listening to a Flamenco recording featuring a male singer with the kind of rough, gravely voice that comes from a lifetime of chain-smoking Turkish cigarettes. Overall, the recording didn’t sound particularly good but the sound was authentic. My father played Flamenco guitar and I grew up with that sound all around me. The singer sounded like an authentic, chain-smoking gypsy and the guitars had the crisp sound of a Cypress-bodied, Flamenco guitar.

I asked Srajan to let me hear the Zanden without the AR-2000. The unadulterated DAC sounded completely different. The guitars sounded like mushy classical guitars, and the singer sounded like Dean Martin. I was not familiar with any of the performers on the recording so perhaps the singer, in real life, did sound like Dean and perhaps the guitars were Classical guitars and not true Flamenco. I don’t know, but I agreed with Srajan; the Zanden didn’t sound real.

I understand Srajan no longer uses the AR-2000. Maybe his listening preferences have changed or maybe he was told that Yamada-San was not pleased with the way he was using the DAC. (Do you think Srajan bought his Zanden transport with his own money?)

[SSassen]

Srajan told me Yamada-San was so pleased with the Six Moons review and helping to put Zanden on the audio map, as it were, that he, Srajan, got to keep the DAC as a gift.

And that did not result in red flags going up? C'mon, are you that gullible?

Best regards,

Sander Sassen
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com

[Ulas]

Originally posted by SSassen
And that did not result in red flags going up? C'mon, are you that gullible?

What red flags? Do you mean Srajan was lying when he said the DAC was a gift? If so, how does that make me gullible? I'm just reporting what I heard.

[analog_sa]

That's by far the greatest story i've read on diyaudio in a long while. Many thanks Ulas.