… into Bill Evans “Stella By Starlight” on “Conversations With Myself,” and I knew that the Sentinel went way beyond what the Cascade I traded in for it could do!
Mike and his crew from Suncoast Audio were scheduled to arrive at 11 on Friday. I invited a my audiophile friends over at 9:30 to have one last listen on the Cascade, just to refresh themselves on its sound.
It was, of course, quite a bit of work doing the replacement. And to complicate things Mike, on Thursday, stopped by the VAC factory to pick up my VAC Statement Phono preamp to install on Friday along with the Sentinel.
His crew was efficient and meticulous, wore gloves when handling the Sentinel and made sure I, and everyone, else knew that handling the Sentinel required gloves.
The very first thing that hit me, I think gobsmacked me is better description, was the finish…. it is outstanding! My friends felt the same way. Youtube videos don’t do it justice… the Champange with Rose Gold is stunning when you see it in person. I’m so glad I picked this finish.
The rack the Sentinel sits on is a little different.
Putting the DAC and Power on the rack was a bit delicate because the spacing is tight and in an awkward location. I am glad it was Mike’s team doing he install , they planned and excuted the placement with precision doing nothing touched the surface of the Sentinel.
The rack is constructed out of 8020.net aluminum extrusions. If you were going to build a guard structure around a robot arm or table for a few 1000s of pounds of tooling in a factory you would go to 8020. So, to me, it sounded like the ideal material to make the Sentinel rack out of. 
I wanted a kind of open structure, with a floating DD. The result was a rack with a somewhat lightweight appearance but that had the muscles of a tank.
And in the end, after checking and rechecking dimensions with Daniel, everything fit perfectly. I couldn’t have gotten such a good fit without Daniel’s help. MSB is a great company deal with.
Aluminum conducts vibration pretty well so I had to do something to mitigate that. I designed foot pads specifically for the Sentinel to convert vibration into heat… EPU 40 is one of the best plastic material for absorbing vibration, but it is not stiff enough to support the Sentinel without cold flowing.
TPU 88A is also very good at absorbing vibration, but not as good a EPU 40. But TPU 88A has a lot of structural strength, so it contains the EPU 40 plug and attaches to the rack.
There are other materials for absorbing vibrations and one of the best is called gray cast iron. As much as I would have like the pads to be like iron pillars from the Parthenon, it wasn’t practical to do that. Instead I included a thick disk of annealed copper. Annealed copper is copper in its most soft form and is not work hardened in any way. If you have bought any high end audio anti vibration feet for speakers or equipment, they most likely include a disk of annealed copper.
By a little after 1 O’Clock we were ready to try the Sentinel. I chose Bill Evans “Conversations With Myself” album, and the track “Stella By Starlight” for no particular reason other than I like it.
Instant WOW… Sound of the pianos. Then the middle piano appeared clearer than I had ever heard it before. Wait, was I hearing foot pedals?… yes I was. I don’t think I have ever heard them on this track before. Imaging was great.
My audiophile friends agreed with me, that the Sentinel was way beyond the Cascade in terms of, well, everything.
Then I played Mingus “Ah Um”/”Goodby Pork Pie Hat”, (Stereo) with Saxophones in the left and right channels. I’m pretty sure it is John Handy in the right channel and I’m not sure who is on the left with Mingus a pretty much fully in the right channel.
The sax’s play in unison at the beginning in perfect harmony. Even so you can easily hear the distinct timber and mouth sounds of each. These are clearer and more real sounding than on the Cascade. The , sometimes, slight hesitation in the start of the note on left and right sax’s is clearer on Sentinel. Often times a sax recording has a grating, irritating sound, which is not present on a live sax. Cascade is great at producing the real sax sound, but Sentinel is much better.
I didn’t make a playlist for this listening session but here is one more. My friends are Kraftwerk fans and are very familiar with their recordings. When they first listened to Kraftwerk on the Cascade they said they heard details that they had never heard before in Kraftwerk recording before. When they listened to some Kraftwerk tracks on Sentinel, again, they heard detail they had never heard before.
In the end we all agreed that Sentinel is a huge step up for a simple, unmeasurable reason, it just sounded so good. But it wasn’t all just feely kinds of things, we could all point to details in sounds, imaging (off the charts), and clear and well defined bass as specifics where Sentinel was way ahead of Cascade.
Even though MSB developed a statement, cost is no object DAC, I don’t know how they made such a big leap over he Cascade.
Dan