The 502CA arrived today! The one week turned into 4 weeks but they finally made it. One guy bought the 211 (lucky him) and I asked about several products like the 512C preamp but I was told they will not be selling either the 512 or the 519 for a year because they are field testing them for a year to be sure there are no problems before they roll them out. Holy Overkill? No price information on any of the new stuff
The owners are Chinese not Korean so that matter is settled.
One brother sells the classic series of products (everything that is a Western Electric remake you can kind of see the different - the LM212 that is as big as the Chinese girl etc). He runs a plant in an entirely different city. The other brother runs the plant where the Silver and Gold series are made that most of us are likely to be able to purchase - there is a BIG price difference between the two plants.
I opened up the box and the Gold finish is really nice in person and I am pleased but the overall build construction and quality of the finish. The DAC comes with a 13amp fuse power cord but no other cables so you have to have your own cables. It would have been nice to be supplied a cheapo USB cable and COAX and RCA cables because it may be someone's first DAC. Perhaps US models will have these cables included.
My instruction manual of course is all Chinese so it will take me some time to figure out how it works or if there are any sneaky modes like SHA and SLO but I doubt it. Why? Cause the 502CA does not come with a remote.
Switch on and a the read out says waiting (to allow the tubes to power up - about the same time as the LM 215). I am using the coax out to in and a fairly pedestrian cable. Right out of the box the first notes on the Japanese Re-Master of Schindler's List and it is right - so very right.
I tried the SS mode for about 20 seconds went back to tube and pretty sure that is where it is going to stay. SS is SS but I will try it again at a later time. Both transformers are in play at the same time and you can switch back and forth immediately at the push of a button (cool). There are input buttons left and right (the usual high quality steel press button not the crappy plastic buttons found on the majority of stuff out there. The switching feature is nice because you really can hear why SS is hated so by tube fans - when you push the tube input you immediately hear the reverberation and ambiance of the hall Perlman recorded in. It's not added distortion or noise - the result is dead quiet - no hum no hiss no noise or spurious mush.
There is body and soul - SS from 20 seconds gutted all that for a caricature of leading edge and sterility. But before I rant I must remember to let the thing break in and it may be that the SS side takes longer to break in (different output transformer in a Torroid as opposed to the EI used for the tube section).
So far it's doing a beautiful job on this recording. The AX Twos absolutely love acoustic instruments.
I highly recommend the K2 HD Remasters - they are utterly superb. I wish they were around 15 years ago - they would have likely stopped SACD in their tracks and would have really hurt vinyl's biggest advantage which has generally been ambiance. The Remasters are fairly expensive though running $40 each. But many are numbered with only 1000 copies. I was browsing today and the lower numbered prints were selling for 4-5 times the higher numbered copies. Which is kind of bizarre since I can't imagine they would sound the least bit different - but I am sure some audiophile will tell me that the first out of the print has the best pit imprints or whatever.