Gerdac V1.xxx review

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I eventually did some comparative tests with the original Gerdac and the newer version over the weekend.
To set a reference point, we listened to some CDs using my Marantz 5001 CDP, using a selection of songs from different artists(and of varying quality) Suffice to say that I will never be able to listen to music on the CDP without a Gerdac. The music sounded like a thin wall of sound without much depth and very little separation of instruments depth wise.

Using the older Gerdac brought an immediate improvement and the music sounded more spacious and more layers were revealed in the sound. Changing over to the newer Gerdac brought a further improvement as even more layers are revealed and voices seemed more natural. A female artist I quite enjoy(and yeah, she may not be everyone?s cup of tea, but I don?t really care) is Laurika Rauch. On the CDP her voice seemed to sound ?processed? and although the older Gerdac brought some changes, the newer version brought a ?breathy? quality out in her voice. Having heard her live without amplification, that is exactly the way she sounds. We had the same experience with an old recording of Frank Duval, but here the backing vocals became more pronounced and not just some background noise. On a CD by Strawbs(circa 1991) I heard sounds that I never knew existed, particularly percussion instruments. A song that really loves the new GerDac is Connie de Villiers? ?Katedraal? from the Weerlig oor die See CD, to me one of the most beautiful songs ever sung in Afrikaans and I am by no means a lover of Afrikaans music!

One two songs we heard an ?echo? at the end of a sentence that was not evident previously(with CDP and older Gerdac). The last word seemed to echo for a fraction of a second.

Other CDs used for the comparison were Kate Bush?s Aerial and Massive Attack as well as some Classical CDs. In every instance vocals seemed to have a more natural sound and percussion instruments are much better defined. On ?lesser? setups Massive Attack can sound like a cacophony of sounds, but particularly with the revised DAC there is better separation of sounds resulting in the overall sound to be more coherent than before.

It may be my imagination, but I felt that the bass has better definition as well, but that could be due to better definition of higher frequencies, thereby reinforcing the lower notes.

Okay, I have tried to convey the experience in words, albeit in some clumsy way and could wax on lyrically for a few pages, but suffice to say that I think the money spent on the Gerdac(older and revised versions) is worth it quite a few times over the asking price.
 
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