Good dac to reproduce soprano vocals?

Female vocals on particular are masked by high jitter levels. I recently developed a version of my products with S/PDIF output jitter in the 10psec range. Compared to the 50psec that I had been achieving this extremely low jitter delivers much better intelligibility, particularly of background singers. It develops a much more 3-D picture of the vocalist as well.

So, what does this mean for the DAC?

If you use the USB input driven from a computer, the master clock is in the interface, sothe jitter of this is critical. These USB interfaces are all at different performance and jitter levels. If you drive the DAC with a transport, the jitter of this transport is critical. If you drive it with AppleTV or Sonos et , then the jitter of these is critical. These are notriously bad BTW, but they can be improved with a good reclocker.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I was going to reply with something along the lines of Steve.

But once jitter is taken care of the character of the DAC also comes into it. The DAC I have heard recently that makes vocals sound really good is the new Chord QuteHD. Another DAC with a really beautiful liquid and fluid midrange that really works well with vocals is the Tranquility SE DAC - but its USB only.

With the Tranquility you wont need to worry about it but as Steve said with any other DAC make sure its fed with a low jitter source.

Thanks
Bill

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. To be more specific about my request, I am currently using a "pretty good" dac (the Calyx 24/192) which does a beautiful job with female vocals in general. Karrin Allyson's jazz album "Round Midnight" (a 48k/24bit download) sounds fabulous. What I'm referring to is the soprano vocalist who can produce an immediate crescendo of immense power and beauty. I have only heard this done with any grace by the Berkeley Audio Alpha, and it was lacking the warmth of the real thing. In my system, those powerful crescendos on a redbook cd are typically hard and glassy.

In most cases, I'm thinking that 44.1k/16 bit recordings just aren't capable of capturing this accurately without some "reinterpretation or interpolation" by a dac. If you want to know what I'm talking about take a listen to Kiri Te Kanawa's cds from the 80s and 90s. And the latest from Susan Graham (a mezzo) isn't a whole lot better. Are these performances just going to be lost in the wake of the turn to digital recording?

I'm not sure CD format is a barrier to good female vocals.

I can vouch that mhdt Constantine or Paradisea tube dac possibly with a minor tube upgrade like NOS TUng Sol can do them well if teh system overall is up to the task.

Try a well built DAC based on the venerable TDA1541 chip, peferably Double Crown. The ones I've heard preserves the timbre of female vocals like no other modern DACs, closest to a vinyl rig. The modern DACs may be better at soundstaging and imaging and frequency extension, but no modern DAC I've heard can beat a NOS ladder DAC when it comes to vocals and acoustic instruments sounding like the real thing.