Audio-GD Singularity 19 DAC - Comprehensive Review and Impressions

Is it weird that I'm slightly jealous of you bastards who get to hear this abomination?

 

Ha! Exactly. Kind of like not being able to pull your eyes away from a car wreck and you drive by...

 

Purely by chance, and only very briefly, I got to hear another Singularity 19 this weekend (I didn't even know the chap that bought it was interested in audio/music). I'll be borrowing his unit in a week or so to give it another listen in my normal evaluation setup. I've not, as of yet at least, managed to convince him to let it go for long enough to get it measured though.

However, first impressions of his unit are not any different to the those I had of our loaner program unit.

I believe his is the more basic configuration, with the XMOS U208 interface and standard oscillators (I need to confirm this - he wasn't 100% sure and it wasn't a situation in which I could open the thing up to check), but with the same neutral tuning option.

 

Is this fellow new to hifi in general? It's a bummer that inexperienced people dropping serious coin on an inferior product seems to be the norm these days.

 

To be fair, many will get their first taste through websites like head-fihype-fi and massdrop where you see a lot of esoteric and meh stuff. I had a conversation just about a week ago with a co-worker looking to enter audio and yeah, without spending time to read up on it carefully/someone in the hobby to talk to its easy to get really confused.

 

We (as a group) may want to create an easy to follow "so you're new to hifi!" tutorial thread. Discuss product performance / price ratios, diminishing returns, set expectations for what improvements can be found and which components are most critical, discuss input / output impedence matching for amps and phones, general myth-busting like Marv's discussion on balanced amps, offer a few good synergy headphone and speaker setups for three or four price tiers. I can't do it all myself but would be interested in contributing.

 

No, though I didn't know he had any interest in such things at all until this weekend.

He just has a PhD in gullibility, a tendency to form beliefs based on the last thing he read/was told and an attention span that doesn't always last a full sentence.

 

So just like the rest of the lumps of protoplasm walking around the earth (and I unreservedly include myself in this category).

 

No, not really.

 

Guess we will have to agree to disagree re: the human condition.

 

it may make it sound better actually.

 

No one on HF could complain we didn't burn it in enough.

 

Make sure you use 93 octane though - always the best to optimize SQ (searing quotient, that is).

And if you really want to have fun, add a little liquid oxygen to the mix...

 

For those with half an interest still in the S19 saga, here's one of the existing owners on HF:

I'm wondering if they've got a unicorn of sorts, however unlikely.

 

I've seen people that like the HD700 out of a O2. It's entirely possible he just really likes the S19 sound.

 

If he's happy with the dac, good for him. Just remember reading any of his reviews that his preferences don't necessarily align with many of the reviewers here.