Listening Session - Dacs/CDPs

[howlindawg]

I still struggle to get my head around how anyone would sell a DAC where default setup on power up would be so bad that a few changes would improve it to the degree we are looking for but maybe that was the way things were in the early days of DAC development.

The Elgar DAC will function just fine plug and play like all the other DACs tested.
The digital source could have been connected directly to it if desired.

However if you route the digital signal through the Purcell you have to configure the Elgar to expect the output format of the Purcell. As tested previously, the Elgar was only receiving one of two interpolated digital signals which will sound like a 1970s mono wireless. :)

[Adrian]

O.K. ........ Round 2 it is then



So what is in the ring this time.... DCS vrs Lampi vrs Meithner vrs Hugo vrs Arcam CD player........ am I right?

[DaveF]

So what is in the ring this time.... DCS vrs Lampi vrs Meithner vrs Hugo vrs Arcam CD player........ am I right?

No Hugo this time.

[Sligolad]

However if you route the digital signal through the Purcell you have to configure the Elgar to expect the output format of the Purcell. As tested previously, the Elgar was only receiving one of two interpolated digital signals which will sound like a 1970s mono wireless. :)

Ahhh now there is an explanation that makes sense, thanks Martin.
All i heard was we had set it up incorrectly with no indication of where we went wrong.
Still sounds like a strange default when the Purcell has 2 cables out to 2 inputs on the Elgar but i expect Dave will now hear a totally different beast altogether.

I had expected great things from the Elgar & Purcell on the day and was greatly disappointed, a fluke of circumstance prevented me from handing over my money for a DCS Debussy a couple of years back, it was the dealers loss for his incompetance on the day!!

I think we can now expect a much better result and possibly a good deal on the cards at the end of the day :-))

[Diapason]

Hang on a second, is Pearse replacing his Meitner?

[Sligolad]

Not exactly replacing it yet Simon as there is a firmware update overdue that is supposed to lift the Meitner to new heights so lets see what that does.

I ordered the Lampi Big7 as I got a good one off deal at less than the cost of the Meitner so I pushed the button 3 weeks ago.
I blame Tony as he won me over with the Level 4.5 he recently acquired and I always had a soft spot for the Lampizator Philosophy.

If it is a significant improvement over the Meitner then I may let it go but no decisions yet.
It will be another month before I get it in my system for a listen so will report back once I get it running.
Cheers,
Pearse.

[Diapason]

Most intriguing. My CD ripping is slowly continuing, but soon I'll be taking my first tentative steps on the CA route...

[DaveF]

Big thanks to Simon who dropped around this afternoon with the Wadia tank just moments after the dCS arrived. Plenty of toys on show and it took a while to sort cabling out before we eventually sat down to listen to the dCS. Hopes were high for it as we had the proper setup instructions this time around. However, we immediately had a problem where the dCS Upsampler would not lock onto either the Meridian or Arcam transports via an RCA connection. Not a great start and very frustrating indeed. Cue several minutes of pressing every damn button in sight trying to sort it out. Power cycles, cable changes, the lot was tried but no luck.
I managed to dig up an old battered optical connector and tried it. Bingo, the dCS locked on instantly but to our dismay there was a terrible background noise during playback. It sounded like a digital breakup or loss of sync somewhere in the system. Switched back to RCA and strangely this time it locked instantly but the background noise was still there although much lower than the optical connection.

So we reluctantly left it aside and hooked up the Wadia. As expected the Wadia sounded fine. Perhaps a little restrained in the beginning but in terms of character it sounded very similar to the Meitner to my ears. The Lampi was tried and as I had expected it had that slight less control in the bass and perhaps not as much detail in places depending on the recording.

All along I was disappointed with the dCS problem but then had the idea of bypassing the dCS Purcell Upsampler unit and going straight to the dCS Elgar DAC instead. So back to the dCS we went. No problems here and I think that from the go it was obvious that the dCS did have that extra detail from the classical piece we tried. The stereo imaging problem of two weeks ago was gone (although the Upsampler was out of the loop).

After Simon left, I was determined to get to the bottom of the Upsampler's problems. A few texts to Martin and a read of the troubleshooting section of the Purcell manual resulted in a factory reset and turning off a word clock setting. This has appeared to fix the problem and I've had both units playing away for the last 2 hours and it sounds mighty fine indeed.

Early impressions are that the dCS is shining with classical music and more or less identical to other DACs with non-classical music. The differences are still small mind and difficult to really quantify. But I'm going to have a good listen to the dCS over the next few days to really see how I feel about it. Fingers crossed that the problems of earlier where just a settings issue, there are tonnes of options in the manuals for both of the players.

Conclusion
Although I still have the dCS to evaluate, my thoughts on DACs are that that they are much closer in sound than I originally expected. This could be well down to my system not being resolving enough, I'm not really sure. I more than happy with it but I still havent optimised speaker positioning and this is something I plan to address in the coming days/weeks. So after that optimisation maybe bigger differences will be heard. My view on hifi is that speakers are the dominant influence on sound with the amp coming close behind. Sources, although important, are much closer together. I've seen nothing in the past few weeks to change my mind on this.

Expectation bias is something I fell victim to at one stage. I sat down to listen to one of my reference discs through the dCS and I thought it sounded glorious as I kind of expected it to. I went then to turn down the volume via the dCS but there was no change. I then realised that I was listening to the Arcam DAC and not the dCS. lol Major Duh! moment.
So there you go, I was easily fooled when I had no idea that the dCS wasnt actually playing. :-)

[Ivor]

Great read as always Dave, I hope you reach a conclusion soon.... although the journey seems very enjoyable too!

[DaveF]

The summary so far would be that all of the DACs/CDP's I've listened to this past few weeks all sound very fine but not all that different from one another. Perhaps the Lampi and dCS stand out in their own way from the pack.

Best bang for the buck would be to stick with the Arcam and waste my money on a flashy TT and new cart. But in a way I do like the toys and a nice rack of equipment really floats my boat so I'm likely to buy one of the above for that reason. No shame. :-)