Parasound Zdac DAC
The Zdac's specifications look impressive exceptionally remarkable given its cost that is competitive - and its features help it stick out alongside its burgeoning contest. It comes in two finishes - silver and black, with only the latter-coloured units being accessible with rack-mount alternatives. The 24-bit/192kHz able design features an asynchronous USB, optical and coaxial input signal plus unbalanced line-level audio outputs, and balanced and a Category A headphone amplifier. A power amplifier can be run straight into by the style if you so want - provided your digital source part offers volume control.
In terms of sound outputs, the Zdac offers two varieties: unbalanced through phonos and balanced through XLR. Both connections are concurrently live so one can be used by you to feed your principal hifi and also the other to connect a multi-room controller if you so want. There's, naturally, additionally the headphone output via a front-panel 3.5mm jack, which features a volume control.
Sound quality
I begin my listening by joining the Zdac to my Windows 7 notebook opting to not use the USB cable that's supplied in the box, but a 3.5m Atlas Element USB. It swiftly becomes apparent that the Zdac gains from a warm up, sounding robust and more detailed as the very first few records play for their judgment. Track by track the demo of the Zdac become fuller, sweeter, more comprehensive and musically rewarding, which is most significant of all.
After having appreciated another 24-hours worth of warm up voltage, the Zdac seems more happy than it was the day before and its performance advances another stage, its sound becoming fuller, more powerful and cohesive. It becomes more believable and closer to reality: more analogue. Actually, the Zdac starts to creep closer Naim DAC.
Listening to the Mi Declaration that is agreeable tones, I'm impressed initially from control and the power . It does not have propulsive power of my Naim or the tight grasp, but it's none too far off, and does not sound at all lightweight nor distended and soft, a snare that many other DACs fall into. It is also forthcoming about the detailing, tone and timbre of all of the instrumentation featured - both percussive and strung.
The actual surprise is its performance. Driving my Focal Spirit Ones and taking an electronic input from my Naim UnitiQute, the Zdac gives a thoroughly enjoyable performance - it is unbiased, detailed, dynamic responsive and excellent enjoyment. It also includes an apparently actual full-range quality, not leaving the typical deceived feeling I tend to have after a headphone to me.
Changing to a rip of Emeli Sande's Our Version of Events, her equally dedicated and impassioned voice piano playing are movingly expressed. Despite a vocalist of Sande's class it takes over a sterling performance to prevent me from discarding the headset as soon as I could. The Zdac, nevertheless, has me flicking through my library looking for still another track to play.
I pick for Tchaikovsky - the relaxing Allegro Tranquillo (Dreams of a Winter Journey), appreciating the way the Zdac scavenges an abundance of detail from your music (a 24-bit download) without making its scrupulous investigation appear anything but completely natural. Rather the detailing is augmented by it, although it does not retrieve this information in such a way as to detract from the natural ebb and flow of the composition.
Once more, this turns out to be an absolute delight with the Zdac revelling in tone the timbre and texture, and dynamics of voices, percussion, brass and the guitars.
