Beresford DAC

The Beresford DAC is good for the money, I had one for a little while although IMO its nothing special.

What are you thinking of using it for, digital out from your PC sound card, or to upgrade a CD player with?
 
wij said:
What are you thinking of using it for, digital out from your PC sound card, or to upgrade a CD player with?
Click to expand...

Upgrade output from Virgin Cable TV Box, and to experiment with CDs ripped to flac.

I have a Quad 77 stack driving a pair of German tower loudspeakers Quart 980s. An ageing setup, but still very good. The Virgin Box as-is matched the Quad 77 FM sound, although that might not be entirely fair, as the Quad tuner is taking ist sRF input from the cable. I have moved to a marginal reception area - so its cable sat or nowt.

Does anyone know how Virgin code their radio output?
 
Last edited:
The industry I work in would generally regard Behringer as means of spelling really **** backwards :) That unit does however have the advantage of doing some more advanced things than the Beresford can and will accept more sources, although to be honest I certainly wouldn't trust it to accurately do any kind of SRC for me in a professional environment, I prefer my dCS converters for that or something made by Prism/Apogee.

You can pick up the Beresford DAC's on eBay normally at pretty good prices so you probably wouldn't stand to lose much if you found it didn't suit you, think I only lost about £15 when I sold mine on after postage etc.
 
haha i can tell you he doesnt prefer it for it's looks :p again all i can say is that Mr_Sukebe prefers the src2496 over the 7510 having heard both. thats all thats important really, especially when they are the same price @ around £100. The guy knows his stuff, thats for sure.
 
Last edited:
As already mentioned, I've owned a mk6 7510. Functionally it was very good for the dosh, with 4 digital inputs, built in headphone amp etc. IMO it really wasn't that great for sound, coming across very dry, infact very similar to a cut price Benchmark DAC1. In some systems, you might like that, personally I didn't.
 
Good price, ain't heard one though, and would like to.

Benchmark DAC1 is pretty special though, attached to a meridian G08 and feeding a graham slee solo with senn HD650s. I did get very extremely aroused with this setup :D
 
Labarum said:
And how does the Roland compare to the M-Audio Transit?

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html
Click to expand...
In terms of sound I don't know as I haven't heard either (yet!), but I picked the Edirol because of the RCA in/out and headphone volume control.

I figured my Onkyo 605 probably has a better DAC than the Fubar/Beresford, or that at least keeping the signal digital right to the amp would be best.

If it doesn't work out that well I'll grab a Beresford / other DAC and use the distance selling act to send back the one I don't like :)
 
Beansprout said:
I figured my Onkyo 605 probably has a better DAC than the Fubar/Beresford, or that at least keeping the signal digital right to the amp would be best.
Click to expand...

The actual digital chip in the Onkyo might genuinely be better than the silicon in say the Beresford. Having said that, from what I've seen it's more important to do a good job on implementation, than having the best chip.

Ref keeping the signal digital until the Onkyo, that has a lot going for it, apart from the fact that the Onkyo is an AV amp festooned with the latest features. It's probably one of the biggest drawbacks that you have in the system as I've still yet to hear an AV amp that I like the sound of with music.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
The actual digital chip in the Onkyo might genuinely be better than the silicon in say the Beresford. Having said that, from what I've seen it's more important to do a good job on implementation, than having the best chip.

Ref keeping the signal digital until the Onkyo, that has a lot going for it, apart from the fact that the Onkyo is an AV amp festooned with the latest features. It's probably one of the biggest drawbacks that you have in the system as I've still yet to hear an AV amp that I like the sound of with music.
Click to expand...
For £40 I thought it had to be worth a try - especially since it's a travel-size thing which runs from USB power so I can listen on the train/plane via my spanking new triple.fi headphones :D

If there isn't a vast improvement I'll have to try a ~£100 DAC but I'd still keep the travel-size box for laptop journeys. Didn't know they existed until I saw them while looking for the Fubar II :)

Next steps are to replace my 685s with some decent floorstanders so I don't need my sub to enjoy (most) music, and then to replace the 605 with an 8x5 and send the preouts to a proper stereo amp. Moral of the story is don't go for demos in hifi shops! :D
 
Interesting, i was thinking about a DAC. Beansprout can you use the roland with a soundcard already installed in your pc? I mean I know the roland would be independent to the soundcard but would it be possible to have both installed on the same system?
 
I have had a beresford for about a month now and have to say im worried it was a waste of money. I just installed an audigy 2 zs and actually like the sound from the analogue outputs better than what I'm getting from the beresford. It might be because its slightly bright but it does sound nicer and more detailed to my ears. Im wondering if the pc cd drive just isnt showing off the beresford as much as a dedicated cd drive might. Im still left miffed though.
 
B&W said:
Interesting, i was thinking about a DAC. Beansprout can you use the roland with a soundcard already installed in your pc? I mean I know the roland would be independent to the soundcard but would it be possible to have both installed on the same system?
Click to expand...
Far as I know it just appears as an extra device, yup.
 
THe latest Beresford Version MK6 Version 3 (Beresford is always incorporating updates into the product) competes with hifi DACS/ cd players up to a grand and more.

Google "Hifiwigwam" + Beresford DAC.

I have one in my system, never going back to a CD player again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom