Zanden 5000 Limited Edition DAC

PRICE REDUCED!

Here’s your chance to own a truly special and extremely rare piece of equipment.  The Zanden 5000LE is a truly limited edition – only around a dozen were produced.  I purchased this unit on AudioGon as a standard 5000 MkIII DAC in 2004.  In 2006 I had an opportunity to upgrade the unit to a 5000LE.  The upgrade (done by Zanden Japan) replaced *all* of the electronics.  The only parts of the original DAC are the box and the switches! So what is the LE?

The LE uses the central technology from the ~$15,000 Zanden Signature DAC (the DAC board is the same).  Like the Signature DAC, the power supply was moved from inside the DAC to an exterior unit.  This isolates the supply and gives more space for larger transformers and allows for a generally superior quality supply.  How does the Signature/LE DAC section differ from the 5000 MkIII?

Zanden uses a unique and patented design for digital to analog conversion.  Instead of using very sharp cut-off anti-aliasing filters, the Zanden DACs use a series of notch filters at 44.1kHz and higher harmonics (see image).  The main advantage of this approach is that the phase distortion in the audio band is greatly reduced.  Rather than doing filtering in the digital domain, all Zanden DACs use analog filters for a super clean, airy and life-like presentation.

Key to the performance of the system is the tuning of the notch filters.  In the 5000LE/Signature version of the DAC, the components used in the filter stage are very carefully matched to very tight tolerances by individually measuring their values.  The results are astonishing (and noticeably better than the original MkIII).

Note that the 5000LE does differ from the Signature DAC in two ways:  First, it does not support Zanden’s proprietary digital transport interface.  Unless you own the Zanden 2000P transport this isn’t an issue.  Secondly it does not have a 0/180 phase selector.

Both 6moons and Stereophile have done nice reviews of the Zanden DACs.  This has been a flawless and wonderful piece of equipment.  Every minute of owning it has been a pleasure.

NOTES:
The unit is given an 8 for age and minor cosmetic reasons.  There are light scratches on the main unit.  A few on the top corners of the gold anodized front and rear panels (see photo - be careful putting the cover on!) and some very light ones on the mirror-finish top that are impossible to photograph.  You have to be very close to see any of them.  The power supply is pretty much flawless.  Everything functions absolutely perfectly. The unit has always been used in a smoke-free environment.  Shipped in original box with manual, power cord, etc.  This DAC has no remote control function.

Both the power supply and DAC are tube-based.  The DAC uses a 6922/7308 output tube.  I’m including a NOS Amperex tube (~$120 value) as well as a newly produced JJ and Sovtek tubes.  My personal favorite tube for the DAC is a NOS Philips “SQ” E188CC (6922 compatible – not included but a recommendation).  The Amperex is actually almost identical and I estimate its at 10-20% of its ~5,000 hour life. Also included are several spare Philips NOS 6X4 and 6CA4 tubes for the supply.

It has 3 RCA and 1 AES input.  There is only one pair of single-ended outputs.

Note that the Zanden’s filters are optimized for ‘red book’ 44.1kHz recordings.  Despite this, I have used the unit with DVD sources (48kHz movies and music DVDs) for many years and found the performance excellent, though not technically supported.  It does not deal with DSD/SACD.  I used it with a SONOS digital source with wonderful results.

This is a spectacular DAC.  Sonically it is almost magical in its natural, lifelike and effortless presentation.  Its the first DAC I ever heard that didn’t have ’digital slime’ in the sonic image.  The mirror finish on the enclosures is visually stunning.

I’m more than happy to answer questions.

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