E.A.R. Acute III

[zerung]

I would like to request views from any one who has tried (Or not) the E.A.R. Acute III CDP. I am interested in the following:

1. Rich heritage of the designer TpD.

2. Acute II had a good review and a good CDP.

3. Transformer-coupled tube line output stage

4. Has a 24/192 DAC, digital in (Wolfson 24/96 oversampling DAC).Ok for me.

5. USB input. Not sure about the implementation?

6. Vol Control . (Not important for me)

 

EAR link below. Sad to say that the manufacturer website gives very little support information.

http://ear-usa.com/ear_sources.htm

 

Positive feedback's Robert Levi's review. Very promising in all fronts.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue54/ear_acute.htm

 

Earlier discussion on CDP with digital in link below.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/1-how-use-CD-player-DAC-2-How-use-CD-player-output-data-computer

 

My aim is to achieve what the 2009 discussion above could not be realised. i.e. achieve CDP/CAS union with out the outboard DAC. Thank you

 

 

 

[agentsmith]

Hey zerung

 

Good to see you here.

 

I was also looking at that but never get to audition it.

 

The other options in more or less price range to consider include Playback Design MPD-3, Opus 21 Cantana Music Center, AMR CD-777. And a "think out of the box" option is a used dCS P8i with a USB Adapter.

 

Or you could take my dCS and connect up one of your CD transports

 

[zerung]

Mate,

The Playback Design MPD-5 is very interesting, perhaps priced out by the Acute III. The Opus and the 777 is very good system I had looked at. Perhaps back to the drawing board?

Thanks for the offer of the dCS loan. Planning to get rid of transport in lieu of a combined Transport/DAC/CAS unit. Hope this works out.

 

[agentsmith]

Was just half joking about the dCS

 

Let's go audition some of these babies some weekends

 

[ted_b]

of the shows...in fact, really the E.A.R. rooms in general. However, when visiting this piece at RMAF (or CES) I seem to remember Daniel talking about that Tim did not design the DAC piece, it was added on by a 3rd party of sorts. And that E.A.R. is announcing a new DAC (DACute) that has more of Tim's DNA (although on paper it looks simply like the same DAC with the Tim designed analog stage...i.e no cd drive). I could be very wrong, though. I will check a few things out and update this post if needed.

 

[zerung]

ted_b

The DACute is on sale. It has a different TX/Tube coupled output stage. The information on E.A.R. site on the DAC section is enigmatically limited. Perhaps designed this way to hide the thunder from what you may have vaguey remembered Daniel noted. I suppose TpD would have sourced the best for his units?