The Auteur’s “underlying technicalities” are certainly up to the task!
Now back on topic, the Verite Closed is a great choice for the OP. I personally preferred the sound of the softer wood on my Manchurian Ash VC more than the harder wood on my Olive VC. I think the speed of the beryllium driver is nicely balanced out by a softer wood. Then again, I would still advise you to choose wood-type based on what you like better cosmetically. The differences are quite small in my experience between wood types on the same ZMF model.
Agreed, pads make a much larger difference than wood type. After trying a few options, I ultimately preferred the stock Auteur Lambskin pads on the VC.
I bought my VC Olive 100% because of how it looked and how much I liked the olive run vs other wood options available on the second hand market as I was patiently waiting for what I would want to show up. Zero regrets.
I also bought my Olive set based on looks. I already knew I liked the VC, so the Olive was an impulse buy based on a great used price and the look of the grain on the particular set. I either buy my ZMFs used or during ZMF November so I get to see the exact set I’m buying. I can’t bring myself to buy new and just hope I like the look of the grain when it arrives.
I probably wouldn’t do much more than swap some tubes in it, I’m sure you could upgrade some capacitors and resistors but I’ve not tried that so I can’t give you any information there
idk i just saw some post where someon atted me on a used and modified one and the modified one said it was enhanced and upgraded and removed some issue in quicksilver’s humming/buzzing noise
A few Quicksilver owners have indeed changed some caps on their amps. If anything, I’ve read that some of the modded amps have a hum issue. I don’t believe the cap mods were done to address hum. They were meant to upgrade the amp by using more expensive capacitors. As a point of reference, my stock amp has no issues with hum whatsoever.
lmao. idek how to describe. Just sounds good and better. Good sound stage in comparison to my old ones as well. I believe the quicksilver amp is doing a lot of good things for this as well.
I would say the next upgrade would be potentially swapping the tubes in the QS and experimenting there (potentially also interconnects), but a more meaningful upgrade in my mind would be to move up to the next tier of dac from the bifrost, the quicksilver can scale pretty well and there’s a lot of options as well, but a lot of the options are pretty expensive to get a solid upgrade
I think it really depends on how you want to tilt the sound toward. What do you like about it right now, and what would you change about it? Just to narrow down what you’d be looking for. And generally what sort of budget would you be looking in for a new DAC?
Tube wise I’d check the quicksilver thread on here since there’s some good info on what tube pairings were good options. Cable wise, we also have a good list of options in the more budget cable thread (although when it comes to cables, I’d likely only explore that after you mess with tubes and/or the dac)