Yesterday I was with Peter A. at Goodwin's High End in Waltham, MA, to compare two DACs, the Berkeley Reference DAC and the dCS Rossini DAC, with Paul as great host. The source in the set-up was either of the two DACs fed by the Simaudio CD transport (the same as I have). Amplification was Spectral DMC-30 SV pre-amp and Spectral DMA-300 RS amp, and speakers were Magico Q1 monitors. All source material was just plain Redbook 16/44.1 CD, and what we heard made for a remarkable experience.
We started with the dCS Rossini DAC and an early Beethoven string quartet, op. 18/3 (first Emerson Quartet /DGG, then Tokyo Quartet/Harmonia Mundi). Immediately obvious was the different tone from what I was used to on my system, with a Berkeley Alpha DAC 2 as a source. The string instruments sounded more wooden, and there was more resolution. It just was a more natural sound from the start. Then I wanted to try a recording that I thought was more problematic, Bartok's violin sonatas with Gidon Kremer/Iuri Smirnow on Hungaroton. The violin tone on this ADD recording put on CD in 1986 (!) had never sounded quite right on my system. Yet also here we were surprised by the wooden tone of the violin and the convincing sound of the piano, and the resolution of string tone seemed extraordinary. So much micro-vibration from the bow gliding over the strings, and a rosiny tone as well. It was reminiscent of a very good violin recording on vinyl. Peter and I agreed on the good sound, and I could not believe that it came from this early CD on a label that is not particularly known for sound quality. We then played a few tracks from a Chesky CD that Peter brought, and they sounded all very good. I will let Peter comment on that in more detail.
We then switched to the Berkeley Reference DAC. It also sounded remarkably good, and there was a wooden character to the string tone as well. Yet while the resolution of this DAC also was high, it seemed just a bit less compared to the Rossini DAC. Also, unlike with the Rossini DAC, there still seemed to be a slight digital edge to transients, even though really minor compared to more common digital playback. In absolute terms it was still outstanding, but there just was not quite the remarkable freedom from digital artifacts that we experienced with the dCS Rossini. Peter commented that listening to the Rossini simply did not induce any fatigue, like good vinyl playback and unlike most digital playback as he experienced it. We also found that the sound had more body with the Rossini DAC, e.g., on the piano in the Bartok violin sonatas. The comparison of the Chesky tracks on both DACs also went slightly in favor of the Rossini, including the more 'fleshy' sound of the finger snapping on the Kenny Rankin song. Dynamics of both DACs were outstanding.
Back to the Rossini, I tried a few tracks from John Coltrane's 'Trane's Blues'', and while the age of the recordings on the album showed, the saxophone sounded better than I had heard before, yet still not quite right. To me, the tone of saxophone had always been the most problematic aspect of sound on digital compared to analog, where on a good vinyl recording/pressing, played back on a great analog set-up, it just sounds so much more convincing and natural. Yet then came the killer: we listened to a modern avantgarde jazz recording (Positive Catastrophe/Dibrujo, Dibrujo, Dibrujo...) which had the best sax sound on CD that I knew but which still had not sounded quite right thus far, on my system. Now both Peter and I found it very convincing -- it was like a revelation of what digital really could do. Finally there was the full-bodied tone from tenor and baritone sax, and a great reproduction of the raspy and breathy sax timbre. Now I felt for the first time that digital had closed in on vinyl in this respect; in fact, my jaw dropped when I heard that sax sound. I had been afraid that there might be something wrong with digital, even though I was convinced that digital theory, with the original information kept intact through the sampling process, in principle was correct. Yet now finally I heard the proof. Digital had come home and showed that it was missing nothing compared to great analog: the body, density and integrity of tone was all there, and the timbral resolution was as well. Peter who listens only to analog at home seemed to agree with me. And keep in mind, there was no hi-res involved, all these goodies came from plain 16/44.1 Redbook CD! Yes, perhaps in a few details great analog may still be superior to digital in direct comparison, but there just was not this chasm anymore between great analog and most of the digital that we had experienced. It was at least very close between great vinyl and digital over the dCS Rossini, so close that it just did not seem to matter anymore in a significant way. Good news for me, since I have only digital at home, and a lot of the music I listen to is only available on digital and more specifically, on Redbook CD.
What we heard was a confirmation of what we first experienced with the quality of digital playback on the dCS Vivaldi (also just 44.1 kHz digital, over Redbook CD or HDCD) at the demo of the Magico S7 speakers at Goodwin's in December, but now with musical material that simply left no doubt anymore.
The naturalness of sound through the dCS Rossini was really stunning. Importantly, it was not achieved through any smoothing of sound. While the tone of string quartets, due to the lack of artifacts, sounded much more 'well-behaved', in a good way, than I had ever heard before from digital, there was also a lot more of rough 'shredding' of sound through the cornet (a sister of the trumpet) than I had heard before on that great jazz recording. All the natural timbre of instruments simply came through to a much greater extent, and reminded me much more of live music.
Peter and I then also listened to some orchestral music, Beethoven's Eroica symphony with Herbert Blomstedt/Staatskapelle Dresden on the budget label Brilliant Classics (!). Fifteen years ago I had bought the 5-CD set of all nine symphonies for $ 21.95 (that was way before CD-box sets tended to be cheap), and while I had always loved the interpretations, at first the sound had been rather bad on my system. After each upgrade the sound remarkably improved until currently it is really good on my system. Yet not as good as we heard over the dCS Rossini/Spectral/Magico Q1 system at Goodwin's. The resolution and naturalness of string tone, especially the violin and cello sections, was quite spectacular, and I could not believe the resolution of the brass either. And all that from basically a cheap run-of-the-mill CD.
The one thing that Peter was missing, and he was right on that, was convincing presence of sound. Yet in my room that is much larger and has better acoustics I can achieve very good presence and palpability from digital, and personally I am not concerned that this could not be achieved with the dCS Rossini as well. Soundstage depth was also lacking, but also this is probably more a function of the room than of anything else.
After some time Peter had to leave, and I listened to some more music, including more orchestral material. Where previously sometimes the sound of the violin section had been too thin, over the dCS Rossini it was just right. I also listened to some triangle sounds. Peter had pointed out at the session in December, where we had heard the dCS Vivaldi, how convincing triangles sounded, much better than he and I had heard so far from digital, and I had been afraid that this, among other aspects of sound, might have been partially due to the fact that these were on HDCD rather than on Redbook CD. Yet now my worries subsided: triangles, including their fragile decay, also sounded very convincing on plain Redbook CD over the dCS Rossini.
I also played around a bit more with comparisons between the Berkeley Reference and the dCS Rossini DAC. The saxophone sound on the recording that had sounded so good on the Rossini was also very good on the Berkeley, but just did not quite have the body and utter naturalness of tone. I would say that the Berkeley Reference DAC is outstanding in its own right, with a really impressive performance for the price -- and certainly on a much higher level of naturalness of tone and resolution than I had heard from usual digital, including mine, thus far. Yet as good as the Berkeley was, the dCS Rossini was just that decisive bit better. It had even more resolution and body, and the naturalness and density of tone seemed to be as good as that of great analog. Yes, the extra step in quality comes at a price ($ 24K vs. $ 16K), but after hearing the dCS Rossini performance, that upgrade is the only one that I can envision for my digital. It might be that my system does not allow for all the extra resolution to shine through in full, but just the convincing tone of the dCS Rossini, in combination with certainly more resolution through my system than what I now have, seems worth the price. I'll have to save up for the purchase. I want to have the Rossini Player with its internal CD transport; as fantastic as the sound was from my Simaudio transport through the Rossini DAC, the integrated player should raise the performance even more.
Of course the dCS Rossini (DAC or Player) also does all other digital formats, files, high-res PCM, and DSD, as well as live streaming. It also has a pre-amp function which we did not use, however, since Spectral amps are meant to be driven by their own pre-amp.
***
As for the Spectral gear and the Magico Q1 speakers, I was impressed with the purity and remarkable naturalness of tone, the body of sound, and the enormous resolution, without all of which of course the great quality of the two DACs would have been less apparent. I would have to see how resolving my system is with the dCS Rossini as source, but if it is lacking, the only upgrade path that I would want to entertain at this point is with Spectral and Magico. Spectral amps first convinced me when I had the DMC-15SS pre/DMA-260 amp combo in my system, and other experiences including this one have convinced me even more of naturalness of tone, resolution and dynamics of these amps (and relative to their stellar performance, the price of Spectral amps is rather on the modest side). I have had great experiences so far with four Magico speakers, the Mini II in Peter A.'s system, the M Project in Madfloyd's system (both of these experiences have been extensive, and the M Project is the best speaker that I have heard so far), the S7 at the Goodwin's demo, and now the Q1. Since I am a monitor guy, the Q1 would be the way to go for me. Great that Goodwin's has chosen Spectral and Magico as a major focus in their product line.
Many thanks to Goodwin's High End for the opportunity. I had hoped that the dCS Rossini would go in the right direction, but what we heard through that system went beyond my wildest dreams.
We started with the dCS Rossini DAC and an early Beethoven string quartet, op. 18/3 (first Emerson Quartet /DGG, then Tokyo Quartet/Harmonia Mundi). Immediately obvious was the different tone from what I was used to on my system, with a Berkeley Alpha DAC 2 as a source. The string instruments sounded more wooden, and there was more resolution. It just was a more natural sound from the start. Then I wanted to try a recording that I thought was more problematic, Bartok's violin sonatas with Gidon Kremer/Iuri Smirnow on Hungaroton. The violin tone on this ADD recording put on CD in 1986 (!) had never sounded quite right on my system. Yet also here we were surprised by the wooden tone of the violin and the convincing sound of the piano, and the resolution of string tone seemed extraordinary. So much micro-vibration from the bow gliding over the strings, and a rosiny tone as well. It was reminiscent of a very good violin recording on vinyl. Peter and I agreed on the good sound, and I could not believe that it came from this early CD on a label that is not particularly known for sound quality. We then played a few tracks from a Chesky CD that Peter brought, and they sounded all very good. I will let Peter comment on that in more detail.
We then switched to the Berkeley Reference DAC. It also sounded remarkably good, and there was a wooden character to the string tone as well. Yet while the resolution of this DAC also was high, it seemed just a bit less compared to the Rossini DAC. Also, unlike with the Rossini DAC, there still seemed to be a slight digital edge to transients, even though really minor compared to more common digital playback. In absolute terms it was still outstanding, but there just was not quite the remarkable freedom from digital artifacts that we experienced with the dCS Rossini. Peter commented that listening to the Rossini simply did not induce any fatigue, like good vinyl playback and unlike most digital playback as he experienced it. We also found that the sound had more body with the Rossini DAC, e.g., on the piano in the Bartok violin sonatas. The comparison of the Chesky tracks on both DACs also went slightly in favor of the Rossini, including the more 'fleshy' sound of the finger snapping on the Kenny Rankin song. Dynamics of both DACs were outstanding.
Back to the Rossini, I tried a few tracks from John Coltrane's 'Trane's Blues'', and while the age of the recordings on the album showed, the saxophone sounded better than I had heard before, yet still not quite right. To me, the tone of saxophone had always been the most problematic aspect of sound on digital compared to analog, where on a good vinyl recording/pressing, played back on a great analog set-up, it just sounds so much more convincing and natural. Yet then came the killer: we listened to a modern avantgarde jazz recording (Positive Catastrophe/Dibrujo, Dibrujo, Dibrujo...) which had the best sax sound on CD that I knew but which still had not sounded quite right thus far, on my system. Now both Peter and I found it very convincing -- it was like a revelation of what digital really could do. Finally there was the full-bodied tone from tenor and baritone sax, and a great reproduction of the raspy and breathy sax timbre. Now I felt for the first time that digital had closed in on vinyl in this respect; in fact, my jaw dropped when I heard that sax sound. I had been afraid that there might be something wrong with digital, even though I was convinced that digital theory, with the original information kept intact through the sampling process, in principle was correct. Yet now finally I heard the proof. Digital had come home and showed that it was missing nothing compared to great analog: the body, density and integrity of tone was all there, and the timbral resolution was as well. Peter who listens only to analog at home seemed to agree with me. And keep in mind, there was no hi-res involved, all these goodies came from plain 16/44.1 Redbook CD! Yes, perhaps in a few details great analog may still be superior to digital in direct comparison, but there just was not this chasm anymore between great analog and most of the digital that we had experienced. It was at least very close between great vinyl and digital over the dCS Rossini, so close that it just did not seem to matter anymore in a significant way. Good news for me, since I have only digital at home, and a lot of the music I listen to is only available on digital and more specifically, on Redbook CD.
What we heard was a confirmation of what we first experienced with the quality of digital playback on the dCS Vivaldi (also just 44.1 kHz digital, over Redbook CD or HDCD) at the demo of the Magico S7 speakers at Goodwin's in December, but now with musical material that simply left no doubt anymore.
The naturalness of sound through the dCS Rossini was really stunning. Importantly, it was not achieved through any smoothing of sound. While the tone of string quartets, due to the lack of artifacts, sounded much more 'well-behaved', in a good way, than I had ever heard before from digital, there was also a lot more of rough 'shredding' of sound through the cornet (a sister of the trumpet) than I had heard before on that great jazz recording. All the natural timbre of instruments simply came through to a much greater extent, and reminded me much more of live music.
Peter and I then also listened to some orchestral music, Beethoven's Eroica symphony with Herbert Blomstedt/Staatskapelle Dresden on the budget label Brilliant Classics (!). Fifteen years ago I had bought the 5-CD set of all nine symphonies for $ 21.95 (that was way before CD-box sets tended to be cheap), and while I had always loved the interpretations, at first the sound had been rather bad on my system. After each upgrade the sound remarkably improved until currently it is really good on my system. Yet not as good as we heard over the dCS Rossini/Spectral/Magico Q1 system at Goodwin's. The resolution and naturalness of string tone, especially the violin and cello sections, was quite spectacular, and I could not believe the resolution of the brass either. And all that from basically a cheap run-of-the-mill CD.
The one thing that Peter was missing, and he was right on that, was convincing presence of sound. Yet in my room that is much larger and has better acoustics I can achieve very good presence and palpability from digital, and personally I am not concerned that this could not be achieved with the dCS Rossini as well. Soundstage depth was also lacking, but also this is probably more a function of the room than of anything else.
After some time Peter had to leave, and I listened to some more music, including more orchestral material. Where previously sometimes the sound of the violin section had been too thin, over the dCS Rossini it was just right. I also listened to some triangle sounds. Peter had pointed out at the session in December, where we had heard the dCS Vivaldi, how convincing triangles sounded, much better than he and I had heard so far from digital, and I had been afraid that this, among other aspects of sound, might have been partially due to the fact that these were on HDCD rather than on Redbook CD. Yet now my worries subsided: triangles, including their fragile decay, also sounded very convincing on plain Redbook CD over the dCS Rossini.
I also played around a bit more with comparisons between the Berkeley Reference and the dCS Rossini DAC. The saxophone sound on the recording that had sounded so good on the Rossini was also very good on the Berkeley, but just did not quite have the body and utter naturalness of tone. I would say that the Berkeley Reference DAC is outstanding in its own right, with a really impressive performance for the price -- and certainly on a much higher level of naturalness of tone and resolution than I had heard from usual digital, including mine, thus far. Yet as good as the Berkeley was, the dCS Rossini was just that decisive bit better. It had even more resolution and body, and the naturalness and density of tone seemed to be as good as that of great analog. Yes, the extra step in quality comes at a price ($ 24K vs. $ 16K), but after hearing the dCS Rossini performance, that upgrade is the only one that I can envision for my digital. It might be that my system does not allow for all the extra resolution to shine through in full, but just the convincing tone of the dCS Rossini, in combination with certainly more resolution through my system than what I now have, seems worth the price. I'll have to save up for the purchase. I want to have the Rossini Player with its internal CD transport; as fantastic as the sound was from my Simaudio transport through the Rossini DAC, the integrated player should raise the performance even more.
Of course the dCS Rossini (DAC or Player) also does all other digital formats, files, high-res PCM, and DSD, as well as live streaming. It also has a pre-amp function which we did not use, however, since Spectral amps are meant to be driven by their own pre-amp.
***
As for the Spectral gear and the Magico Q1 speakers, I was impressed with the purity and remarkable naturalness of tone, the body of sound, and the enormous resolution, without all of which of course the great quality of the two DACs would have been less apparent. I would have to see how resolving my system is with the dCS Rossini as source, but if it is lacking, the only upgrade path that I would want to entertain at this point is with Spectral and Magico. Spectral amps first convinced me when I had the DMC-15SS pre/DMA-260 amp combo in my system, and other experiences including this one have convinced me even more of naturalness of tone, resolution and dynamics of these amps (and relative to their stellar performance, the price of Spectral amps is rather on the modest side). I have had great experiences so far with four Magico speakers, the Mini II in Peter A.'s system, the M Project in Madfloyd's system (both of these experiences have been extensive, and the M Project is the best speaker that I have heard so far), the S7 at the Goodwin's demo, and now the Q1. Since I am a monitor guy, the Q1 would be the way to go for me. Great that Goodwin's has chosen Spectral and Magico as a major focus in their product line.
Many thanks to Goodwin's High End for the opportunity. I had hoped that the dCS Rossini would go in the right direction, but what we heard through that system went beyond my wildest dreams.
