Abbas DACs

Thanks for sharing this. It's very sad and I would not have know this without your post. RIP, Michael.

 

I connected Abbas with Cautes family and they are deciding what to do with the Abbas gear that Caute had in process with Abbas.

Sounds like it was an OTL amp and a DAC.

 

A simple like or heart isn't enough. From me personally, thank you so, so much for stepping up and doing this.

 

Happy to help. It's the least I could do and I happen to talk to Abbas often, because I'm enamored with his gear.

 

Came across this fine thread researching a suitable DAC for my Leben CS-600 amplifier coming from an Audio Note DAC 01.x that I sold to finance a new tube-based RIAA. I've been looking at Sonic Frontiers, Abbas, LAB12, SW1X and Trio - of out which the Abbas seems to get people most for the buck.

Two questions if you have the time: The DAC you got is the 0.11SE and not the DAC 1.1, right? And 2 - did you stick with it?

Thanks!

 

I believe caute loved the 0.11 so much he decided to upgrade.

@kasperbergholt the abbas 0.11SE is TDA1543 based, a higher end model of his would be a 2 series.
I believe it was 0,1,2,3 was the original numbering scheme but 1,4,5,U are none Philips. Dac 5.0 might be a good choice for yourself. GRANTED, these dacs tend to have issues with some transports, possibly due to the pll setup and the vintage of parts.

 

Thank you for the swift reply, appreciated! I think the 0.11SE hits the sweet spot in terms of budget and the ratio between listening to digital sources, on the one hand, and vinyl on the other.

Do you know if there's a list of transports/devices that don't function due to the older chips used?

Thanks again

 

They function, just the sonics some prefer some modified cd transports.

Think something diy like a Audio Note CD Transport level 6, but other ones are also good.

 

If possible I'd encourage you to listen to the your DACs of interest, I think there's a few of us that prefer Sonic Frontiers over Abbas including me. I think the SFD-1 and SFD-2 are just as good bang for your buck as Abbas. I haven't heard the other DACs you mentioned.

 

As a data point. I listened to Sw1x and Abbas and ended up with 2 Abbas dacs. To be fair, I did not have them in the room at the same time to do proper A/B, but I hope one day to do that . I know 2 other people who were considering Lab12 and decided to go with the Abbas. One owned a Lab12.

I have no experience using a transport with the Abbas as I just stream all of my music to it.