GG, Nagra HD, Aqua Formula, and SGM server.

bonzo75 said:

Which model is the hybrid?

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morricab said:

What about the hybrid Aqua instead of the all SS Formula? It has the same discrete R2R dac.

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Mike Lavigne said:

I'm exhausted.

Ed Hsu from SGM arrived last Wednesday and I've been going full bore since then; 4 hours Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, then 7 hours Saturday night (and 15 local audio club members until 11pm), then Sunday for 8 hours. and I worked Wednesday thru Saturday. I'm still running on fumes. it was a great time but I'm too old to push this hard.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday night (and Friday morning) with the $30k Nagra HD dac in my room along with the SGM server. this Nagra HD has the added power supply, plus the added transformers on the analog outputs (when using XLR outputs). the Nagra has a 128dsd dac which up samples all PCM to 128dsd.

the way Ed from SGM had it configured was to have the HQ Player inside the SGM up-sample all PCM to 128dsd and all dsd to 128dsd. we played things mostly this way, but at the end we also played things with the SGM outputting bit-perfect data and allowing the Nagra to do it's own upsampling of PCM and not have the HQ Player do it.

the SGM with HQ Player was quite a bit better than the Nagra on it's own, really not close at all. it was still nice sounding but lost much of it's refinement and nuance.

as far as my impressions; I preferred the Nagra HD with SGM to the GG with the SGM. the Nagra was more liquid, refined and weighty, and had more apparent detail to my ears. the GG still did great with vocals and horns and pianos, but had slightly less relative detail and did not separate instruments as well. the GG might have been slightly more open on top. the GG can sound a slight bit rough in direct comparison with the Nagra HD. (this is with the KR242 output tubes, I'm going to try the Elrogs again soon to see how this might change this part). the DHT tubes of the GG have their attributes and their limitations. on some systems maybe they might be preferred. but not in mine. the Nagra HD seemed a net gain over my GG in my system.

I preferred redbook on the Nagra HD with SGM to the GG when using the PCM RTR dac. both are good, but the Nagra HD got closer to the overall musicality of my vinyl. of course; the Nagra HD dac with the power supply is twice the cost of the GG, so that must be considered. at some point if the Nagra HD gets dsd512 then that might push the Nagra HD even higher.

on Friday morning I again listened for about 90 minutes. then went to work and was thinking about what I had heard. it occurred to me that what the Nagra was doing was placing a beautiful, lovely 'glaze' of liquidity over everything. which in some systems is exactly what is needed. but in my system it is revealed as an artifact.

which then leads to Friday night.....when the $14k Aqua Formula dac showed up. I preferred the Formula with the SGM to either the Nagra HD or the GG; and honestly in my particular system it's not close. the Formula simply sounds more like my vinyl; specifically, like my Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement cartridge. it is also reasonably priced around 13.5k euros. it's a solid state PCM only ladder dac; very, very open, natural and detailed. did I say it does space? it has the most decay of any digital product I have heard. possibly not quite as weighty as the Nagra HD. Ed had the SGM set up to upsample all dsd to dxd, 384/32. and even though it was not native, I preferred the dsd on the Aqua Formula to the other 2 dacs, on my particular system.

over the weekend the Aqua Formula opened up more; and it has great tone and is very micro dynamic. it plays more to the strengths of my system. whereas the Nagra and GG both get exposed as somewhat colored in my system when directly compared to the Formula.

for this comparison all the dacs were sitting on my Acoustic Dreams rack, sitting on Wave Kinetics A10 U8 footers. finally on Sunday afternoon Ed and I moved things around to place both the SGM and the Formula on my Adona rack. the Formula was placed on top of a Symposium Svelt Shelf, which sat on my dart preamp, which sat on my Herzan active isolation platform. I was not prepared for the degree of additional information that we heard when listening to the Aqua Formula getting the advantage of the Herzan. now it was even closer to the vinyl.

I think anyone considering the $14k Aqua Formula should instead look at it as the $24k Aqua Formula/Herzan TS-150.

then last night I connected grounds from the Tripoint Troy Signature to the SGM and Formula. now I hear more body and weight and naturalness. the Formula has been more natural each day I've listened to it. now it's been on since Friday night.

ultimately you should choose a dac that plays to your system and tastes. I could live with any of these fantastic dacs, but the Formula fits best.

and the SGM with HQ Player is a game-changer to my ears. each of the dacs was optimized with the SGM; and the support and degree of customization is remarkable.

so how good is the Formula?

I cannot exactly say how the Aqua Formula compares to the $56k Trinity dac I had; too many changes in my system to be definitive. my guess is that they would be similar.......might the Trinity be a little better? maybe. I know I prefer the Aqua Formula-SGM combo to my recollection of the Trinity dac--CAPSv4......for whatever that is worth.

$90k MSB Select II????

good question.

the new $74k CH Precision 3 box Mono dac????

don't know.

my guess is that the combination of the Aqua Formula and the SGM server is right up there with anything. and add the Herzan active isolation and you are living large.....assuming you have a system which likes the 'all the truth' approach.

I tried to listen to the Nagra and Aqua Formula on my CAPSv4 server to see what the SGM delta would be for those 2 dacs. Ed and my son Steve tried for 90 minutes on Sunday to load the drivers, but the Audiophile Optimizer on the CAPSv4 made it impossible to do it. it would have required a re-format and re-load and I did not need to know that anyway, some others had asked me about it. I did my best.

all three of these dacs are wonderful; I could live happily with all of them and could see each of them being ideal for particular systems.

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morricab said:

I am a big fan of ladder DACs, always have been, and for me the BB PCM63PK and the UltraAnalog D20400 were the pinnacle of these designs...better than the PCM1704 despite having 4 less bits. I am not sure that these discrete designs coming out today are really better than if the whole thing is miniaturized like it was in the 90s.

You should give the Aries Cerat Kassandra II a try if you have looking for a killer DAC. It is using an extreme version of the MMB (multi-multi bit) concept from Accuphase and has like 16 AD1865N chips per channel with an amazing analog output stage.

What about the hybrid Aqua instead of the all SS Formula? It has the same discrete R2R dac.

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Mike Lavigne said:

(...) i meant it when i said all these wonderful dacs will sound great in the right system.

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bonzo75 said:

I am interested in the Aqua, and also in knowing the SGM delta, given not everyone has the budget for SGM - discussing with Audiophile Bill, who had the SGM for a while, the delta on Lampi was much lower than that on T+A.

Also, the Nagra HD dac here at Audio Lounge in London, next to the SME 30/12 with a 5k Clearaudio Titanium through a 1800 Nagra BPS phono stage, compares poorly to the GG via SPDIF, using the Nagra CD transport (I did not do a USB compare, far less an SGM compare). It was on all parameters and not just a tube/SS preference.

The rest of the system is a Burm 909 + YG Hailey, you can use the Siltech or the Nagra Jazz pre, I used the Siltech for this compare though I compared the two preamps previously on Analog.

People in/visiting London can do the shootout easily, my Lampi is available if anyone wants to borrow, it is a 10 quid Uber ride to the place with the Lampi. Easy to set up.

ps: I liked the Nagra pre, and the 1800 BPS phono - the Nagra classic had a clean tone but did not seem to have the oomph, midbass, or dynamics to drive the YG and to create a stage.

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cyclopse said:

I question if the BPS could have been a weak link in the vinyl configuration? I found it a bit noisy and soft around the edges due to the battery power source.

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EuroDriver said:

What we seem to be discovering is that precision and component value accuracy really matters.

A few observations

- You take a few components to build a fully balanced input stage on a good quality PCB. You use use 5 pct tolerance parts, 1 pct tolerance parts, and then 0.1 pct tolerance parts, the sound gets better and better as you use higher precision parts

- It is legendary how the DAC chips used in each Trinity DAC have been harvested and selected from many hundreds (?)

- 16 DAC chips per channel per channel sounds way way better than one DAC chip per channel. Hmm there is a lot of averaging going on here to improve precision.

What does this suggest ? Component value precision matters !
(...)

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microstrip said:

A few remarks on your observations.

I would not say that the precision (specific value of the component) is what matters most, but most of the time the different technology used in the more precise component makes the difference. Many components such as resistors or capacitors are only 1% precise, but sometimes within a series fabrication they are precise to better than .1% and this does not make them better sounding per se. In my SoundLab speakers cheap good quality power wire resistors sounded better than the "creme de la creme" high power precision thick film ones.

Many great designers use low precision parts known for their better sounding quality, such as carbon resistors or capacitors using low precision dielectrics.

The 1704 DACs must be harvested and selected because they are not intrinsically high precision and in a DAC using the Trinity method of generating the wave this would distort enormously the signal. We can find many higher precision DACs, but they are not adequate to this job in the Trinity.

Averaging is just a good example we have alternatives to high precision.

Just wanted to make clear that although sometimes precision of parts is needed and welcome, it is not the unique way to get excellent sound or can be taken as an indicator of high sound quality.

BTW, before I see some eyebrows rising, we are using precision and accuracy indifferently - in science and technology matters they are two very different thinks.

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Mike Lavigne said:

happy to take you up on that offer if you would like to ship one to me up here in the Seattle area. you would be welcome to come along, of course. I hear great things about it.

not sure which model of Kassandra you are talking about......and I can't say I'm in the market for a high dollar dac even if I love it.....but I might be.

I want to go into this type of thing with full disclosure.

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Mike Lavigne said:

my ears and mind are open to being dazzled by the Kassandra when it works out on your end. I hope it happens.

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