PPang V3 USB Card

[Sligolad]

Finally got the Paul Pang (PPA) V3 USB Card yesterday after it travelled around the world for the last 2 weeks!!

Disconnected the JCat USB card from the PCie Riser which has a tapped in 3.3 Linear supply from a Teddy Pardo Supply and connected the riser cable to the PPA V3 Card.
Then connected an Anker Battery (the big one) for the 5v supply on the Molex connector and powered up.

Initially it took a few boots and minutes for the OS to see the card which may be down to the Oven Clock taking time to get up to temperature and boy is it an Oven, it gets warm but you can still touch it and it is about 8 to 10 times the size of the Temperature compensated clock module on the PPA V2 card which surprised and amused me when i seen it, the pictures do not do it justice in terms of size.......not that size should matter :-)
The NEC 30230 (i think) driver i use for the JCat USB card worked for the PPA V3 card so no installing of drivers required so at least I can switch back and forth between both with a quich change and rebooot.

It sounded good right out of the box and initial thoughts were it was as least as good as the JCat if not maybe a little better.
After an hour I was going WOW as it did seem to be getting much better, by the end of the night all I was interested in was putting on loads of different music and enjoying it all again.
Need a few more days with it to conclude but I am seriously thinking now about getting one of these big Oven clocks for the Motherboard.

Cheers, Pearse.

[nige2000]

wow thats a bit of a beast

didn't know there was a v3

[randytsuch]

Do you have a link?

Or maybe you can take a picture of your clock?

I was curious to see what it looks like, but couldn't find it on Paul's website.

Thanks
Randy

[tony]

http://ppaproduct.blogspot.ie/2013/07/a ... -card.html

Scroll down the page.$429 special offer at the moment
Note -But burned by higher voltage is not including.

[randytsuch]

http://ppaproduct.blogspot.ie/2013/07/a ... -card.html

Scroll down the page.$429 special offer at the moment
Note -But burned by higher voltage is not including.

Thanks for the link, I didn't scroll down enough before.

Interesting idea

[Sligolad]

Seb brought round his Paul Pang V1 USB card yesterday and we went through swapping and listening between these 3 cards:
Paul Pang V1 USB.
Paul Pang V3 USB.
JCat USB.

All were tested in the same Audio PC with Server Essentials 2012 R2 in Core mode with JPlay 5.2.1 and AO 1.30.
All were playing into the Big7 DAC with PPA Red USB cable.
Both PPA V1 & V3 cards were fed with 5v on Molex from an Anker Astro Pro2 20000 mA Battery.
The JCat had no 5v connected as the Big7 did not need the 5v line and all filtering was off on the card.
The PCI riser had the 3.3v supplied off a Teddy Pardo Linear supply for all 3 cards.

My impressions were:
PPA V1 had similar but probably better analogue sound than I remember from my V2 card and very similar to the latest V3 card but for me the V3 just had more warmth but still all the detail, so much so you tend to just focus on the music when you hear it through the V3 card.
The JCat has what appears to be a more defined brighter sound but after a while you really miss that warmth and musicality of the V3 card.
Some might prefer that sharper brighter presentation of the JCat card but the V3 is a clear winner for me with the V1 not too far behind.
I expect the V3 card will continue to improve over the coming days as I had only about 20 hours on it so far.
Cheers, Pearse.

[nige2000]

does the v3 look the same as the v2 with a ocxo?

wonder what the ocxo would sound like on the jcat?

unfortunately all the suitable ocxos ive come across for experimenting with are €80+
bit much for a clock

[sebna]

First of all thank you Pearse for very nice afternoon. Hope you got your PC working in the end after all the swapping of USB cards! :)

Nige answering your questions:

V3 seems to use exact same PCB as V2 just different clock and possibly some other stuff which Paul adds but also have same hand made transformer.

V1 is older PCB using older NEC chipset.

Jcat different PCB then V2 and V3 but same NEC chipset.

I have both V2 and V1 at home and have them both in my PC so just swapping USB cable between ports. V1 is more detailed and more in focus then V2 (by some margin). Both share same analogue house sound if you like to call it this way.

From my observations it looked like this:

V1 - detailed and in focus, but peaks of the highs with most brightish tendencies out of the 3 cards (we used only one test track). Still the overall music experience did not cause obvious fatigue and had nice analogue feel to it.

jCat - detailed and in focus. IMHO, best bass control and peaks of highs organic and not bright where v1 had tendencies to get brightish but what I found surprising and disappointing was that even though it was not bright it was causing quickly a fatigue and music was slightly less involving and perhaps from lack of better word - mechanical - in compare to PPA cards. However mechanical is probably not the best word here as it is too strong. It just lacked something that PPA cards have and in the end it lead to quick listening fatigue in compare. Still would like to hear it in my system to do a bit more of comparing with different jumper settings and so on.

V3 - at this stage detailed as rest of them but possibly minimally less in-focus then V1 and jCat but by far and without a doubt the most musical and analogue sounding out of the 3 cards. It has very impressive flow to it. Taking in account how long it took for my v1 to burn-in I am pretty sure we did not hear full potential of V3 yet (and we will not for some time) and that once it reaches it it might be completely out of reach for the other cards as it already is in some departments.

Cheers,
seb

[nige2000]

thanks seb

as with many clk upgrades/mods better timing has provided a more analog type sound and a gain of detail this is probably the removal of jitter

what powers the oven?

wonder if the current load provides a more stable ps?

[tony]

I think I will do Fran's PFM favourite imatation on this one. LALALALALALALALALALALALA hands in the ears I am not listening