DCS Vivaldi

[Roysen]

Congrats...have been told great things about ch precision.
Aren't the guys from Orpheus the founders of CH precision? I believe I read this.

Hi Lloyd,

It's the other way around. The founders of CH Precision also founded Orpheus Labs, but naturally are no longer part of Orpheus Labs.

 

[LL21]

I have now heard this. My history with dcs I think mirrors their stereotype of their evolution. I came super close to buying the old Elgar plus...tried 3x but could never get myself to do it. I knew in the right system, it could be quite special. And I wanted a DAC...when people thought DACs were old school. But it just never quite sang to me. Along came Zanden and that was me done to this day. I nearly traded in my 5 yr old Zanden for Scarlatti 3 yrs ago...suddenly realized how far resolution has come in digital...I was sure now the Zanden was well surpassed in this one regard. But again, DCS did not have the fluidity of pace I enjoy with my Zanden. I passed.

I heard the Scarlatti in a system designed with extreme care...halcyonics among other things...and with that care, I knew you could get there with Scarlatti but you gotta work at it. Ok...quite a good experience.

Now, with Vivaldi...that is no longer required. Put it on the shelf, push play...and my gut tells me many of us will feel surrounded by extraordinary resolution and I mean extraordinary...but those who value purity of tonality, beauty of string resonance, female jazz vocals will enjoy new found wonder at pure mids with no noise floor. Detailed decay that allows one to savor those mids even more until the note trail off.

The stahl-tek gave me serious pause for nearly one year and I did not do it...I don't think I would have regretted it...but I did not feel driven to do it. If Vivaldi were not multiples more than even the mighty Zanden, I could see myself doing a shootout and walking away with Vivaldi and nt looking back. I could still say I would miss something very very subtle that creates music in the Zanden that I did not hear with Vivaldi...but I get so much more detail and interesting musical mess to hear, it is a wonder in its own right that changes the way I listen to music which I knowi could equally enjoy.

I have long communicated with Zanden that their voicing is my favorite by far...but the resolution has been passed by Scarlatti and now Vivaldi. And the Vivaldi voicing is quite close. Still have no thoughts of Vivaldi...the Zanden for me is that good...particularly with all the isolation, nos tubes and PC upgrades I've done to the Zanden which has drastically improved bass and solidity and detail. But Vivaldi is a Great Leap Forward for dcs that I now find competes with the organic beauty many of us listen for in systems.

 

[edorr]

I have now heard this. My history with dcs I think mirrors their stereotype of their evolution. I came super close to buying the old Elgar plus...tried 3x but could never get myself to do it. I knew in the right system, it could be quite special. And I wanted a DAC...when people thought DACs were old school. But it just never quite sang to me. Along came Zanden and that was me done to this day. I nearly traded in my 5 yr old Zanden for Scarlatti 3 yrs ago...suddenly realized how far resolution has come in digital...I was sure now the Zanden was well surpassed in this one regard. But again, DCS did not have the fluidity of pace I enjoy with my Zanden. I passed.

I heard the Scarlatti in a system designed with extreme care...halcyonics among other things...and with that care, I knew you could get there with Scarlatti but you gotta work at it. Ok...quite a good experience.

Now, with Vivaldi...that is no longer required. Put it on the shelf, push play...and my gut tells me many of us will feel surrounded by extraordinary resolution and I mean extraordinary...but those who value purity of tonality, beauty of string resonance, female jazz vocals will enjoy new found wonder at pure mids with no noise floor. Detailed decay that allows one to savor those mids even more until the note trail off.

The stahl-tek gave me serious pause for nearly one year and I did not do it...I don't think I would have regretted it...but I did not feel driven to do it. If Vivaldi were not multiples more than even the mighty Zanden, I could see myself doing a shootout and walking away with Vivaldi and nt looking back. I could still say I would miss something very very subtle that creates music in the Zanden that I did not hear with Vivaldi...but I get so much more detail and interesting musical mess to hear, it is a wonder in its own right that changes the way I listen to music which I knowi could equally enjoy.

I have long communicated with Zanden that their voicing is my favorite by far...but the resolution has been passed by Scarlatti and now Vivaldi. And the Vivaldi voicing is quite close. Still have no thoughts of Vivaldi...the Zanden for me is that good...particularly with all the isolation, nos tubes and PC upgrades I've done to the Zanden which has drastically improved bass and solidity and detail. But Vivaldi is a Great Leap Forward for dcs that I now find competes with the organic beauty many of us listen for in systems.

Did you ever get around to listening to the MSB DAC IV?

 

[Hyperion]

That's very interesting and insightful Lloyd. I wonder how much you loose if going for the Vivaldi DAC only (which might actually be within reach for more than the lucky 1%).

I haven't read all 23 pages of this thread, but I wonder if anyone has any experience with the Esoteric D-02 DAC in relation to the top dogs mentioned here? I believe Esoteric as well as dCS has moved towards a more natural/organic/fluid or if you like "musical" presentation in recent models along the lines of MSB, Jeff Rowland Aeris, Aesthetix Romulus/Pandora - and perhaps also the Zanden (which I have no experience with unfortenately).

Sorry if I'm oversimplifying things here, but I'm interested in the overall "sonic movements" and tendencies among manufacturers at the moment.

 

[LL21]

That's very interesting and insightful Lloyd. I wonder how much you loose if going for the Vivaldi DAC only (which might actually be within reach for more than the lucky 1%).

I haven't read all 23 pages of this thread, but I wonder if anyone has any experience with the Esoteric D-02 DAC in relation to the top dogs mentioned here? I believe Esoteric as well as dCS has moved towards a more natural/organic/fluid or if you like "musical" presentation in recent models along the lines of MSB, Jeff Rowland Aeris, Aesthetix Romulus/Pandora - and perhaps also the Zanden (which I have no experience with unfortenately).

Sorry if I'm oversimplifying things here, but I'm interested in the overall "sonic movements" and tendencies among manufacturers at the moment.

Hey Hyperion...nice to see you. I still prefer my Zanden with its transport...and the few people who have heard dcs transport or metronome agree. That said, buying only DAC and going with lesser transport still works well...I did it for 5 yrs with my Zanden. Martin Colloms reviewed the audio note 5th element and CDT6. And felt using naim unities rave instead of dedicated transport lost maybe 10% in performance. Not bad for saving nearly half the cost of a full audio note digital setup.

On digital trends, my personal observation is the 2 goals remain similar to amps and the tube v SS race. Detail and organic. Digital has approached from both sides. The nirvana is both. I think the evolution is that emm, dcs and wadia's in the last 10 yrs have gone from detail and maybe a bit cooler to incorporating that organic, pure beauty bit.

On warmer sometimes fuzzier digital, they have really come along way in delivering detail without stridency.

I think the greater leap forward has been the extreme resolution...and that's where I have been waiting to see when someone can deliver it...and not give up warmth. I think Vivaldi gets there. And one of the few and first to do it at this extreme a detailed level. Really nice stuff.

 

[microstrip]

That's very interesting and insightful Lloyd. I wonder how much you loose if going for the Vivaldi DAC only (which might actually be within reach for more than the lucky 1%).

I am also particularly interested in the question you raise, as I was also considering a Vivaldi DAC + clock. However a dealer (who surely had great interest in selling it to me, and I usually trust) told me that for 16/41 (redbook digital) the CD transport was a must and much better than a PC or music server. I was very disappointed with this opinion, as the transport is very expensive.

 

[Hyperion]

...CD transport was a must and much better than a PC or music server. I was very disappointed with this opinion, as the transport is very expensive.

I find that very, very hard to believe...

 

[edorr]

I find that very, very hard to believe...

Even in the unlikely case this were true, I would happily sacrifice 10% performance for the convenience of controlling my entire library from an iPad.

 

[Hyperion]

Even in the unlikely case this were true, I would happily sacrifice 10% performance for the convenience of controlling my entire library from an iPad.

+1. Even if a sacrifice of 10% were true today, I'd rather put the money elsewhere until the current state of the arts in music servers has developed further.

 

[edorr]

+1. Even if a sacrifice of 10% were true today, I'd rather put the money elsewhere until the current state of the arts in music servers has developed further.

I do most of my listening in a half meditative state after midnight. Having to get up and change tracks / discs takes a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of the experience. Besides, server placed playback has completely changed the way I consume some genres of music. Say I am in the mood for some Kate Bush listening. I drill down into a screen that shows five Kat Bush albums, and I put together a playlist of tracks I'm in the mood to listen to on the fly. If while listening to "this woman's world" I am reminded of the beautiful version by Maxwell on the MTV unplugged album, I navigate to it on the iPad and add it to the playlist in 15 seconds (this was of course a real life example from my Wednesday listening session).

 

[LL21]

I am also particularly interested in the question you raise, as I was also considering a Vivaldi DAC + clock. However a dealer (who surely had great interest in selling it to me, and I usually trust) told me that for 16/41 (redbook digital) the CD transport was a must and much better than a PC or music server. I was very disappointed with this opinion, as the transport is very expensive.

I spoke with Goodwins about their custom server...they used to do a lot, but with all the very hi quality options...not so much anymore though they still do them...and we're just about to deliver one this month. They said to watch out for the new aurender. In general it seemed Goodwins liked transports quite a bit at the sota level...particularly when designed to go with a specific DAC...but I still come back to the idea that you're losing half the cost and only 10% of the overall performance. That said, I admit it took me 5 yrs of hanging on for a sota server and in the end finally broke down and got the matching Zanden transport second hand and am so happy I did. The magic at this level is so often in that last 10%.

 

[Roysen]

Hi Lloyd,

Interesting views on he Vivaldi. Was your impression of the dCS Vivaldi based on the same listening session as you heard the Rockport Altairs? I am just curious as the articulation and tonal purity you describe is also something I heard when I listened to the Altiar but with a full Soulution electronics set up. Do you think this character could be something coming from the speaker and not the Vivaldi? To me the dCS components have always had a very neutral, resolved and characterless sound. It has been possibly to make it more sound with more tonal beauty matched in the right system but it took some work whereas for example the Wadia components to me have more tonal beauty and articulate soul.

 

[LL21]

Hi Lloyd,

Interesting views on he Vivaldi. Was your impression of the dCS Vivaldi based on the same listening session as you heard the Rockport Altairs? I am just curious as the articulation and tonal purity you describe is also something I heard when I listened to the Altiar but with a full Soulution electronics set up. Do you think this character could be something coming from the speaker and not the Vivaldi? To me the dCS components have always had a very neutral, resolved and characterless sound. It has been possibly to make it more sound with more tonal beauty matched in the right system but it took some work whereas for example the Wadia components to me have more tonal beauty and articulate soul.

Hi Roysen,

In truth, you could well be right...the reason my instinct tells me the Vivaldi alone may be a greater leap forward in organic quality is based on an interesting experience with Scarlatti. I had always felt the Scarlatti resolution was something special but could never get myself to trade in my Zanden for it due to the missing organic quality and flow I enjoy with Zanden.

I then heard a super well treated Scarlatti where the owner felt that halcyonics made a huge difference and improvement...to such a degree I did not feel the lack of organic quality anymore. Plus, hisnflooring for equipment is separate from the flooring that holds the speakers. Ad he also fine tunes a customized power conditioner...literally tweaking the actual volts the unit gets. Now, full disclosure, that owner uses kondo's finest and large Genesis speakers which, as you say, makes a big difference. However, my understanding from the owner was that it was the treatment applied to the dcs Scarlatti itself which really made the difference. And I trust him on this.

Coming back to Vivaldi...it was on an hrs rack...but otherwise it was playing as is...and I heard magic that day on Clapton. That is exceedingly rare for me to hear it at the level I heard. The AE Tidal system in hong kong had stunning resolution, space...greater than Altair system for sure...4 tower speakers vs 2 Altairs should have greater scale. But not the sweet magic I heard when Clapton hits a guitar note and that deep sonorous note rings and decays in the room. AE was stunning just not my favorite.

I definitely feel system design is critical to get magic,,,but I no longer got the sense you need major major attention to nano- detail to get Vivaldi to work the way my friend needs to do it to get Scarlatti to sing. In fact, when i walked out one of the key realizations was that this was one of the first times, I felt Altairs, Comstellation and Vivaldi could be components that are excellent in and of themselves...and that they did not require quite as much focus on system design because they would each sound excellent dropped into most systems...perhaps not magical...but still excellent. There are a lot of products from 5-10 years ago which today remain amazing...but get the combination wrong, and you really have a problem. Too dark. Slow. Bright. Hard.

To ameliorate brightness for example, if you bought SF you were probably a good way towards alleviating problems...but maybe you gave up some neutrality if you were not careful. Here, my gut tells me you could use each and any of these 3 in a random system of quality components and get darn good sound, without feeling like any technical sacrifices were made...and that includes the Vivaldi.

 

[LL21]

Hi Lloyd,

Interesting views on he Vivaldi. Was your impression of the dCS Vivaldi based on the same listening session as you heard the Rockport Altairs? I am just curious as the articulation and tonal purity you describe is also something I heard when I listened to the Altiar but with a full Soulution electronics set up. Do you think this character could be something coming from the speaker and not the Vivaldi? To me the dCS components have always had a very neutral, resolved and characterless sound. It has been possibly to make it more sound with more tonal beauty matched in the right system but it took some work whereas for example the Wadia components to me have more tonal beauty and articulate soul.

Hi Roysen, again starting to wake up a bit with some coffee...so coming back to you with a little more color. I see where you are coming from with Wadia...though I've only heard the s7 in a shoot out with Esoteric X-01SE, not against Scarlatti. I agree that it takes work with Scarlatti as you have seen from my prior post. As for whether the tonal beauty is more Altair driven than Vivaldi driven? I would guess this much....I am confident somehow that it will be easier to get tonal beauty out of the Vivaldi than Scarlatti, and I also believe that given my experiences in a few systems with Constellation it is not the Constellation which is great equipment but not 'compensating here' since I do not get the sense that it does this to 'stiffer, harder' components. I don't think its the MIT cables purely based on their reputation since I've not really heard them enough.

While Rockports are truly beautiful from reputation and my own experience back with the Merak Sheritan IIs, again, I dont think that "even" the Altair would have made music with the Scarlatti if someone had just plunked the Scarlatti down on the floor without tweaking, isolation, power, etc... I think it might have ameliorated a bit perhaps around the edges, but the challenge with the Scarlatti for me was one of a kind of 'typewriter' effect where the flow seems unnatural...that does not strike me as something a speaker overcomes...unlike hardness, brightness, etc. Whereas what I heard with Vivaldi was flow. The Scarlatti depth of tone was good but sonorous and beautiful...could the Altair have helped here? Again, somehow its natural character might have helped...but it cannot replace extra tonal depth if the source is not delivering it properly. And I felt somehow the Vivaldi was presenting exceptionally well...all purely instinctive since I could not empirically pull the system apart and introduce multiple other components to truly test my hypothesis. Just my two cents. Hope it helps.

Put another way, I know myself and my ears well...I know when I am prepared to gamble and buy blind and when I am not. I would buy the Altairs 'blind' without any audition in my system...I probably would do it with Arrakis even if I had NEVER heard Arrakis...i'd be that brave (easy to say, maybe not so easy to do it if pressed! ). Would I buy Vivaldi blind? Only the Stahl-Tek ever tempted me to buy after one audition in another system...and I never did it. I never even accepted the offer to take Scarlatti home when it was 2nd hand and available for trade-in at an 'attractive' price. I would be 50-50 on Vivaldi...I bet if I did it, i dont regret it...and i might even be deliriously happy. I might find out 'oops' I lost some tonal warmth or something, but I am 100% confident I would gain back FAR MORE in natural detail which makes listening to music a whole new experience of rediscovery of my music collection...thus, I would get over the potential loss of tonal warmth or whatever'...or just tweak a cable or two or something and get it right back. It was that good.

 

[microstrip]

Another naive question about the Vivaldi stack - is there any sonic advantage in owning the upsampler unit if you want to listen to a DSD file from a PC server using USB?

 

[microstrip]

Although I could not get any answer to the previous post I will risk another tricky one:

What is , in your opinion, the best sounding software to transcode PCM 16/44.1 in DSD 5.6? Do we get better sounding results using software to do this operation, and recording the output of a SOTA PCM DAC with a SOTA DSD encoder?

 

[asiufy]

microstrip,

Don't have a Vivaldi, but, from what I've seen, it's more useful as a streamer/DLNA/UPNP unit. With the upsampler, you skip the USB and use the network to stream music.

Now, whether that solution works/sounds better than going USB to the DAC, it's what I'm curious too, specially with the MSB and MSB Universal Media Transport Plus, which also acts as the DLNA unit.



alexandre

 

[microstrip]

TAS 2013 Overall product of the year - DCS Vivaldi

Although the fortunate audiophiles who own the DCS Vivaldi do not need confirmation, they did an excellent choice: the Vivaldi won the TAS 2013 Overall product of the year.
Congratulations DCS!

 

[Barry2013]

Well done microstrip I was wondering when somebody would point that out.
HiFi+ recently carried a two part review by Chris Thomas who I trust. Started with DAC and Transport in first review and in second added Clock and Upsampler, Full of praise for both. Concluded that the four boxes provided a real and significant improvement if you could afford it but was very happy with the two box set up

 

[Orb]

Heh just found the Paul Miller Hifi News review online
Enjoy reading, interesting comments about the Upsampler on page 2 under title DAC AND UPSAMPLER.
http://www.moremusic.nl/reviews/dcs/HFN_dCS_Vivaldi_set.pdf

Cheers
Orb