Trading Up my Parasound Preamp to P% HALO

[Jamesroy]

I'm going to trade up my Parasound 2100 Classic Preamp to a Parasound P5 HALO which has a DAC in it. Should I the internal DAC in place of my ifi NANO iDSD and if not should I continue to use my REGEN and connect it to the back Of the P5 HALO. Thanks

[Jay-dub]

The DAC in the Halo P5 is not considered state-of-the-art. It doesn't support async USB, doesn't support higher than 24/96 through USB, and has a Burr-Brown chip that is no longer in fashion (compared to AKM or ESS chips). In addition, the Stereophile measurements identified significant nonlinearities in its output. The Halo integrated has its preamp section closely modeled on the P5 in every respect, except for a brand-new DAC. On the other hand, the DAC in the P5 sounds good to me, and I think I have reasonably high standards. It certainly has an adequate analog lowpass filter (-9dB at 60kHz) to attenuate the ultrasonic noise from delta-sigma modulation adequately, unlike a lot of audiophile DACs out there.

 

Also, the USB input is robust. My Schiit DACs play fine with some USB cables, but have dropouts or fail to play with other cables. My P5 has played perfectly with every device and cable that I've tried with it, except for one time that the laptop wouldn't play with any USB DAC and needed to be restarted.

 

My advice? It's almost inconceivable that you'll have a use for all of the analog inputs on your P5. Might as well keep your iDSD Nano hooked up to one of them. You can try the Regen on both DACs and see where it makes a bigger difference. The iDSD will have higher bandwidth than the built-in DAC, as well as DSD support. You may find that, depending on file format and mastering style, different recordings sound better on different DACs.

[Jamesroy]

The DAC in the Halo P5 is not considered state-of-the-art. It doesn't support async USB, doesn't support higher than 24/96 through USB, and has a Burr-Brown chip that is no longer in fashion (compared to AKM or ESS chips). In addition, the Stereophile measurements identified significant nonlinearities in its output. The Halo integrated has its preamp section closely modeled on the P5 in every respect, except for a brand-new DAC. On the other hand, the DAC in the P5 sounds good to me, and I think I have reasonably high standards. It certainly has an adequate analog lowpass filter (-9dB at 60kHz) to attenuate the ultrasonic noise from delta-sigma modulation adequately, unlike a lot of audiophile DACs out there.

 

Also, the USB input is robust. My Schiit DACs play fine with some USB cables, but have dropouts or fail to play with other cables. My P5 has played perfectly with every device and cable that I've tried with it, except for one time that the laptop wouldn't play with any USB DAC and needed to be restarted.

 

My advice? It's almost inconceivable that you'll have a use for all of the analog inputs on your P5. Might as well keep your iDSD Nano hooked up to one of them. You can try the Regen on both DACs and see where it makes a bigger difference. The iDSD will have higher bandwidth than the built-in DAC, as well as DSD support. You may find that, depending on file format and mastering style, different recordings sound better on different DACs.

Thanks for the reply. I'm a little confused. In the first part of your reply you seem to say the internal DSD is not goo but then you say the P5 DAC sounds good to you. Then you say "My advice? It's almost inconceivable that you'll have a use for all of the analog inputs on your P5. Might as well keep your iDSD Nano hooked up to one of them."

[Jay-dub]

I'm saying the internal DAC is not buzzword compliant but still sounds good. I've got mine hooked up to a Bluray player at optical, an Apple camera adapter or laptop at USB, an SACD player at analog 2, and a Schiit Modi Multibit at analog 1. The Schiit is what I use for TV and spinning CD's; I prefer the P5 internal DAC when I'm playing 24-bit content or material that's been upsampled by my computer. I don't have any DSD files, so its lack of support for the format is not an issue for me.

[Jamesroy]

I'm saying the internal DAC is not buzzword compliant but still sounds good. I've got mine hooked up to a Bluray player at optical, an Apple camera adapter or laptop at USB, an SACD player at analog 2, and a Schiit Modi Multibit at analog 1. The Schiit is what I use for TV and spinning CD's; I prefer the P5 internal DAC when I'm playing 24-bit content or material that's been upsampled by my computer. I don't have any DSD files, so its lack of support for the format is not an issue for me.

Thanks for the explanation. This is my setup:

WD usb2 2 TB external HD Only Music aiff’s on it

connected thru KANEX usb to Thunderbolt

MacBook Pro 2013 8GB RAM 256 internal Flash drive usb3

AudirvanaPlus_2.2.4

Regen

ifi DAC nano

MusicLink Transparent Interface cables

Reference B&K 200.2 S2 Power amp 225W RMS

Oarasound 2100 Classic Preamp (for now trade up coming this month to the P5 HALO)

Paradigm speakers Studio 100 V.3

Thanks