Beresford Caiman

I have just had on loan a Chord QBD76 dac from a local hifi dealer.  I had a demo in the shop which allowed me to listen to the Chord and my Beresford Caiman through high end equipment as well as a 3 day home trial.

In brief there were some very subtle differences not always favouring the Chord and at home virtually no perceptible difference.  £200 versus £3000 - no contest.  Well done Stanley Beresford.

So the Caiman has arrived courtesy of Stan,

Out of the box this sounds simply superb and miles ahead of my prevoius DAC made by Chord Electronics. The first thing I noticed was the details of effects on instruments that it picks up on i.e. echo and reverb. Then there is fantastic seperation of instruments. There have been people who compare the Caiman to the sound of a turntable, and I can see why because it has a very natural sound. I am not sure how to say this but it sounds like it has given the music a great sense of timing and fluidity.( well I know what I mean).

It has turned my Marantz Cd player into a fantastic bit of kit. Connected to Spotify (at the higher bit rate) is also very,very,very good......that is very good!

The most satisfying thing is, that according to other users, the Caiman improves dramaticaly with hours under it's belt. This is going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

ok,final thoughts..........For ???245 this is simply an absolute bargain.........I honestly can't compare it to the DAC Magic because I've never heard one and never likley to own one now.

You'll probably not hear the difference between 24 and 16 bits -- still it will be a technical bottleneck.

You WILL hear the hum if you've got ground problems. You might be lucky -- but any copper lead between your PC and your hi-fi system puts you at risk. Optical wiring is a simple and effective way to avoid that sort of problem.

Because millions of people use USB from their PCs or laptops and never require anything more than 16bit and 44.1khz anyway.

Optical's superiority over USB is arguable. (I have compared both USB and optical through my TC-7520 - with our iMac 20" and Apple lossless on iTunes as a source - and found no difference.)

But why is the second TOSlink of the original Beresford DAC still replaced by a USB jack?

USB is an inferior connection, that's limited to 24bits/48kHz and introduces noise. I would want a TOSlink for my Mac, as well for my Apple TV/AirPort Express.

Great review. Thanks.

I completely agree with what The Anglo American says. Stan Beresford must be one of the most approachable and affable guys in the industry. His service is absolutely second to none and you always get the impression that he just can't do enough for you. This and his excellent products have got me going back for more.

I have owned a TC-7510, a TC-7520 and now a Caiman and I've been over the moon with all three. The fact that Stan does not sell through the shops means that he's cutting out a lot of overheads and middlemen, so what you get may look like a relatively simple box but in sound quality times, you'd have to spend a lot more money to get anything else comparable.

There are a few things about the Caiman (and indeed the 7520) that the review does not mention:

First and foremost, headphone listeners take note: I've never taken headphone listening that seriously - even having owned a pair of Grado SR60s and a pair of Sennheiser HD280Pros for the last few years - headphones were for use when there were other people around who didn't want to be disturbed. Well, these DACs have changed all of that. The headphone amp is incredible, seriously addictive in fact. I never realised headphones were capable of such listening pleasure until I plugged mine into one of these. It gives even dedicated headphone amplifiers a serious run for their money.

Secondly, anyone who likes to perform the odd 'tweak' to their equipment will be rather excited to learn that the odd 'modification' for the purposes of squeezing even more performance out of these DACs is not only published on various forums, but is positively encouraged by Mr B. himself. I have spent quite a bit of time trying out different power supplies and changing chips inside the box (the Caiman has socketed op-amps which can be replaced easily without even requiring anything more than a bit of common sense). Some mods provide definite improvements, others merely tailor the sound to fit your system or personal preference, but even so, what other products can claim this?

Last but by no means least, the Caiman has allowed me to drop my taste for expensive CD players forever. As a vinyl junkie (still), it took a long time and a LOT of expense to find a CD player that I could actually enjoy music on, even then I was never 100% happy and always preferred to buy the vinyl version of an album if it was available. These days I simply have a Mac using iTunes connected via one of Stan's optical cables (and this is another hearty recommendation - these cables are fantastic and very keenly priced) into my Caiman and I no longer worry about which format I buy my music on as the Caiman sits next to my Well Tempered Classic V turntable and they complement each other beautifully. The difficulty these days is what to play, not what to play it on.

The edited version with limited punctuation!

In a world, where most of British Hi-Fi is owned by somebody else, it refreshing to find a product like the Beresford Caiman. Equally impressive is that if you call the company there is a good chance you can talk to the designer himself, Stan Beresford, who is happy to engage with the public.

And a quick chat reveals that this is an electrical engineering company driven by enthusiasm for hi-fi. There are no layers of management, marketing departments or, their powerful masters, the management accountants. This means value for the customer since you are not paying for a fleet of BMWs outside the office. The likes of Jim Rogers {BBC monitor speakers} and Peter Walker {Quad} would have been proud of Stan.

When it comes to the Caiman there are going to be two types of reviews, depending on whether they truly burned it in or not. And I am not talking about hours. It takes days. Do not even think of listening to it until it has at least four sunsets under its belt. If you do, you may end up questioning the dynamics. In fact it sounds so awful you think thre is something is wrong. But with sufficient burn-in time the changes in loudness offered by a recording {in other words, dynamics} are everything you would wish for.

Clearly your views about the Caiman are going to be influenced by your chosen source. My understanding from people, who like their music to come from virtual files, is that it is a stunning piece of kit. Otherwise, the benefits depend somewhat on how good the in-built DAC of your CD player really is.

I used a Marantz CD Player CD6000 OSE. A good deck in the Marantz tradition but just old enough to need a shot in the arm.

And so it proved to be. The most impressive virtue of the Caiman from what was missing. No cd fatigue. I found myself listening to cds for hours at a time as you would with a good record deck.

Initially I found the upper registers somewhat subdued as if a filter was at work creating, a contrived warmth. But by changing to silver wired interconnect {output from the Caiman} this filtering effect completely disappeared, revealing an expansive and detailed soundstage. I tried the same cable directly from the Marantz player  {omitting the Caiman} but the sound was far too brash for my Quad pre-amp {of all things} to make any musical sense of it. The Caiman makes its case.

I had hoped to connect the Caiman up to a Densen but it was not to be. So I cannot report the benefits, if any, when hooked up to a class act player. Others will have to report on the Caiman when pointed towards a computer. But for the rest of us, with reliable but aging cd players, the Caiman offers a worthwhile up-grade.

But only when you truly burnt it in!