Bel Canto DAC 1& 2 HIGH PERFORMANCE modifications: Reference Audio Mods


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	Reference Audio Mods Worldwide 17255 Vista Del Lago Dr. Riverside, California 92503, USA Contact: Kyle Takenaga Tel: 951-454-4842 Email: referenceaudiomods@yahoo.com

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Bel Canto DAC 1& 2 HIGH PERFORMANCE modifications

Quantity in Basket:none
Code: Bel_Canto_DAC2
Price: $0.00
Shipping Weight: 0.00 pounds

Power Supply Mods and Silver Wire Harness
($250 installed)

Audiocom Superclock 4-S Upgrade
($295 installed)

DAC Board Input/Output board Upgrades
($275 installed)

Quantity:

Bel Canto DAC 1 & 2 Modification Inquiries:

WorldWide Service:

Kyle Takenaga RAM(Riverside, California) referenceaudiomods@yahoo.com phone (951)454-4842

Modifications are applicable to both the Bel Canto Dac 1 and 2 (all versions and revisions).

Modification Descriptions

-Power Supply Mods and Silver Wiring Harness ($250 installed)
Replace all diode bridges with RAM custom handmade exotic silver diode bridges to remove grain/glare and increase resolution and bass. Replace all capacitors in circuit with the exotic Jensen 4-pole and Rubycon ZA/ZL series capacitors for far less noise, faster reacting circuits giving way with much more headroom. We wire a custom Silver wire power harshness from the power supply board to the DAC board. Point to Point topology, no connectors for the best voltage signal integrity.

Audiocom Superclock 4-S Reference Clock Upgrade ($295 Free Install!!)-
We add a reference quality jitter reduction circuit called a Superclock 4-S , this a major improvement in overall sound! This replaces the master clock on the DAC and offers much lower jitter rate than the stock cmos type oscillator. This brings much more focus and detail to the music. A must!

DAC Board Input/Output board Upgrades ($275 Installed)
We replace the input coaxial RCA and Analog Output RCA connectors with the new WBT NextGen High performance RCA connectors. These are an eddy-current free design using very little metal and offer more of a "straight peice of wire" sound, rather than the grainy, itchy sound from the metal bulky stock connectors. Even aftermarket RCA's like vampire or cardas are not even close. We wire the WBT NextGen RCA's with Audio Consulting Silver wire and Cotton tubing. We replace about a large number of capacitors across the board with the incredible Rubycon ZA series caps. This really brings more life/speed/emotion into the music!

Customer Reviews

Send us a review and share your thoughts with other customers

Reviewer: Ken F. from NY
Mods done to clients DAC2:
Power Supply Mods and Silver Wire Harness ($250 installed), Audiocom Superclock 3 Upgrade ($295 installed)
Date: June 6th, 2006

I received my BelCanto DAC2 back from Doug Jesse about 3 nervous weeks after dropping it in the mail to him. I had ordered mod 1 & mod 2, mod 1 consisting of power supply mods (including a fat Jensen electrolytic glued to the power supply board, some other cap replacements and a nice pure silver point to point wiring harness) and mod 2 being the addition of a superclock 3 to drive the dac chip.

Now, things like this are always a gamble. Some people are just not gonna take the chance of blowing a chunk of cash on something that there is almost zero chance of auditioning before buying, not to mention the fact that their beloved component is coming back different, for better or worse. I did a little research, liked what I heard about Reference Audio Mods around the audiogeek community, and figured what the hell.

For those who like the "long story short" version of my aprisal of what I got for my gamble and investment; There are dents in my butt cheeks from kicking myself for cheaping out and not going the whole nine yards with the mods. People, have patience. When I got the unit back and installed it sounded really awful. Unbelievable sibilance, the bass was flabby and muddy, the midrange harsh, and cymbals sounded like a cat hissing. Don't freak out. If you have the strength of character, stick your modded unit in a spare room, plug it in, stick in a cd on repeat or whatever schema is necessary for the break in of the type of component it is, and forget about it for two weeks or so. I didn't do this, I forced myself to listen through the break in period, which still causes me to disbelieve that it sounds as good as it does now. It takes a while. By day 9 things were getting better. Still a bit edgy and bright sounding in the upper midrange, but some of the BelCanto creaminess seemed to be returning. At the end of the two week period, when the unit was fully broken in, I would find myself listening slack-jawed, utterly amazed at the difference the mods had wrought upon the units performance. I always thought that the DAC2 sounded great, and I suppose that was true, but the changes Doug made turned it into something else, something much, much better.

Resolution is through the roof. A rough estimate would be 25%-35% more actual information in the program material. It's like the difference between HDTV and regular NTSC broadcasts. Everything is much more defined, accurately placed and wonderfully rendered. There is wood in stand up basses. There is brass in cymbals. Drums have skins and vocalists have throats and chests. Dynamics are vastly improved. The sound is far less compressed than it was. Bass lines march along with authority and peaks and valleys in the soundscape are more realistically represented. The bass is where most people notice improvement when upgrades are done, I suppose because frequency and tonality are approaching parity (i.e., 75 HZ difference in frequency is more than an octave at 100hz , but at 2000hz it's only a small fraction of an octave) and the same held true here. The bass improved in taughtness and definition by a large measure.

Overall, the units sound is far more realistic, more analog than the stock unit. Vocals are easier to understand, instruments are better defined and void of the fog that surrounded them before, bass- well, we've just been through that. Ambient retrieval is crystal clear and decay is natural. It's a bloody monster. The bottom line, for about half of what you paid for your DAC2, you can turn it into a top-notch performer, bettering anything you can pull off the showroom floor shelf for less than 5 large. These gurus are out there, making it happen, and Doug at RAM is one of the best. Remember: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.