Higher End DACs
My impression of DCS mirrors David’s sonic description. However I acknowledge there are listeners such as 4425 who find DCS sound quality simply superb. This is an expected and logical outcome. Different presentations appeal to different ears. This is why High End audio is gratifying. Something available for every conceivable taste. Charles |
Charles1 dad, When you play at this level all of these dacs are superb it will come down to features, philosophy, and sonic profile. We have chosen the T+A SDV 3100 as our reference dac for a number of reasons: 1: T+A is the largest high end electronics manufacturer in Europe with an engineering staff of 14 including 2 PHD for a total staff of 110. The ensures the companies long term stablity as well as their ability to keep pushing the art of technlogy further. 2: The company is a pioneer in creating all their own technologies which include: HV circuitry designed to emulate the sonic qualities of vacumme tubes by employing High Voltage rails and running transistors at their most linear operating state Native rate high speed USB DSD 1024 interface this dac is the only dac currently on the market which can input native DSD 1024, this required an ultra high speed bus, and proprietary chips and software to enable the dac to have this rate of througput, other dacs will internally upsample to DSD 1024, Meitner, PS Audio, IFI but none of these dacs nor does EMM, DCS, or Esoteric have the speed to input a native DSD 1024 data rate. Proprietary DSD engine using filters and technlogy developed entirely in house. 2: Feature set: The SDV 3100 can be purchased as either a conventional dac or as a preamplifier dac, the preamp stage is the same stage as the companies reference preamplifier which itself sells for $18k the preamp has both an RCA and XLR input. This means that you are effectively getting a world class preamplifier for basically for free. Built in streamer Every kind of digital input: XLR, RCA, Toslink, HDMI, Two analog inputs for the preamp version Built in FM radio Built in Blue Tooth. Fantastic T+A Control App 3: Superb construction quality, all aluminum chassis, separately shielded design separating dac boards, and analog stages from the power supplies, which are also separated into analog and digital supplies which are also in separately shielded enclosures. 4: OTA software upgrades 5: Superb Headphone amplifier stage We have sold DCS and compared some of DCS last generation products to what we have so we are familiar with them. Sure DCS has upsampling in a separate device, as well as a clock, we feel that the T+A SD dac can compete with the best in the world from DCS and MSB yet do so for 1/2 to 1/3 of what those companies charge for a comparably specified product. The T+A sounds absolutely amazing at DSD 512 we have run that test vs a few other servers, as the Innous doesnt’ run that fast. When you add up the sound quality, feature set, and price, the T+A is one of the best overall front ends you can purchase today. If you consider that the SDV version comes with a built in reference preamplifier and all you need is an amplifier you have a truly magnificent system with two to three boxes. A great review from Stero Magazine from Gemany explains what happens when you use an ultra high speed computer to run HQ player and upconvert a file to DSD 1024 from PCM: https://stereo-magazine.com/review/t-a-pdt-3100-hv-t-a-sdv-3100-hv-review We used the diverse and complex software for Windows, Linux or MacOS, which insiders consider the most competent and most convincing algorithms in the field, on a high-performance PC with six cores plus a powerful CUDA graphics card in a closed network with gigahertz router, as it requires extreme computing power. The SDV3100HV‘s „Network Audio“ function is designed for such applications. But can it really be used to such an extent as the manufacturer promises? And is that even sensible? As a test file we used the song „IGY“ from Donald Fagen‘s top album „The Nightfly“ in PCM format with 24 Bit/48 Kilohertz. The track already sounded clean, detailed and balanced as usual. Now we increased the sampling rates in PCM format up to a dizzying 768 kHz, 16 times the original frequency. And in fact, with every step the resolution increased, less digital artifacts seemed to be in play, which was connected with the kind of algorithms used for upsampling, as well as with the digital filtering. The real surprise happened, however, when we had the HQPlayer convert the PCM title into DSD1024 with 49.15 megahertz bandwidth. Suddenly „IGY“ showed a floating lightness and unadulterated naturalness, which was clearly above the best PCM results and almost took our breath away. We made further checks, for example with the 24 bit/192 kHz PCM file of the beguiling choir piece „Var nära mig“. Again, the maximum DSD resolution, at which the bitstream is extremely close to an analog waveform, was always advantageous because it was more musical and more authentic. The performance of the DSD512 already lost some of its value. The SDV3100HV had thus passed one of its most important tests and proved its future viability and outstanding sound quality – for everything that is and will be. The take away is that all of this technology ensures that the end user can continue to explore the world of high resolution digital in any format and from any source that they wish. The funding for some of these advancements was actually paid for by the Germany gov't to enable T+A to pour considerable resources into the design and execuation pushing forward digital technlogy. Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ T+A dealers |
What?! Are you talking about T+A SDV 3100 HV? It has Ethernet input. It's called "streaming DAC" --- it's right there in the name of the product |
Just to have some other options, you could try the Bacch SP and see if you like it. It actually changes the sound to get a better stereo image. I attended a demo and it is a bit like magic. The Bacch SP ADIO has a dac and you can of course turn off the stereo effect. https://www.theoretica.us/bacch-sp.html There have been very few mentions of TotalDac here but they have some great dacs and usually gets very good reviews. I have only heard them at audio shows but they sounded great there. |
