Many may remember I bought a used PCM II earlier this year to compliment my restored Cyrus 2 + PSX and Cyrus mk2 tuner. So other than speakers, essentially what I have is Mission Cyrus' "ultimate" system from the late 80s and very early 90s; one that I dreamed of owning new as a young man when I still had a thin stomach and hair.
Maybe I've been affected by rose-tinted myopic vision (hearing?) but even having tonight completed the most scientific tests I can reasonably muster at home, it turns out I much prefer to listen to the PCM II than the HRT II+ DAC, which I would expect to at least equal it. I think the HRT is more detailed (but can't swear to it), but at the expense of being less smooth, warm, approachable and listenable long term than the PCM II; these qualities (defects?) no doubt brought about on the PCM II by the influence of its far more complex analogue circuitry, spread across two boards.
Listening was conducted through Sennheiser RS180s directly from the amp's tape outputs, which are passively connected directly to the line inputs via the 'record' selector (the amp doesn't even to be on, nor was it). I accept by the nature of their digital wireless tx / rx, the headphones probably influence the sound more than corded headphones, but with that as a given, the PCM II and HRT were equally affected.
'Blind' assistance came from Mrs Fubar, tasked with swapping the source-select on the Cyrus, CD swapping, and making sure each song I listened to didn't begin with the same source. Level matching was conducted through speakers beforehand using an SPL meter app on my phone and a test-tones CD I created ages ago, using 1kHz as a reference. Test CDs included tracks from Phil Collins Greatest Hits, Queen Night at The Opera, Vangelis' China, Air Guitar Vol 1, David Bowie Dark Star and Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells 2003, along with lossless rips of the same. The test was across 11 songs. On 9 of 11 songs, it would turn out I preferred the Cyrus.
It would be interesting to see how much money one would need to spend on a DAC which returned the PCM II's smoothless and all round listenability with the extra clarity and transparency one would expect from a modern DAC, constructed in this 'post CD' era where all that technology has supposed to have long matured. Alternatively, it could even be the HRT II+ is in fact perfectly accurate and I prefer the skewed rosetinted presentation from the Cyrus...
Maybe I've been affected by rose-tinted myopic vision (hearing?) but even having tonight completed the most scientific tests I can reasonably muster at home, it turns out I much prefer to listen to the PCM II than the HRT II+ DAC, which I would expect to at least equal it. I think the HRT is more detailed (but can't swear to it), but at the expense of being less smooth, warm, approachable and listenable long term than the PCM II; these qualities (defects?) no doubt brought about on the PCM II by the influence of its far more complex analogue circuitry, spread across two boards.
Listening was conducted through Sennheiser RS180s directly from the amp's tape outputs, which are passively connected directly to the line inputs via the 'record' selector (the amp doesn't even to be on, nor was it). I accept by the nature of their digital wireless tx / rx, the headphones probably influence the sound more than corded headphones, but with that as a given, the PCM II and HRT were equally affected.
'Blind' assistance came from Mrs Fubar, tasked with swapping the source-select on the Cyrus, CD swapping, and making sure each song I listened to didn't begin with the same source. Level matching was conducted through speakers beforehand using an SPL meter app on my phone and a test-tones CD I created ages ago, using 1kHz as a reference. Test CDs included tracks from Phil Collins Greatest Hits, Queen Night at The Opera, Vangelis' China, Air Guitar Vol 1, David Bowie Dark Star and Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells 2003, along with lossless rips of the same. The test was across 11 songs. On 9 of 11 songs, it would turn out I preferred the Cyrus.
It would be interesting to see how much money one would need to spend on a DAC which returned the PCM II's smoothless and all round listenability with the extra clarity and transparency one would expect from a modern DAC, constructed in this 'post CD' era where all that technology has supposed to have long matured. Alternatively, it could even be the HRT II+ is in fact perfectly accurate and I prefer the skewed rosetinted presentation from the Cyrus...
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram