153 – Highend Cable

In a much smaller room upstairs this year – and all the better for it in my view re soundquality – as I entered the room and sat down the music playing in this room, on this system sounded lovely.

The system was: Bel Canto CD2, DAC3.5, UB.2, Ref 500m mono amplifiers, Olive 4HD music server, Audience AU24E and Nordost cabling and Raidho C1.1 speakers with Raidho S2.0 speakers also being used.

Music was focussed, detailed, with great clarity and dynamics but was also both neutral and clean without losing any musicality – a nice achievement.

Highend Cable http://www.highendcable.co.uk

154 – G Point Audio

Having spent an entire day helping Greg and the boys set up his room it was nice to be able to visit after everything had settled down and just listen to some music that sounded very good.

The main system (there were two in the room) comprised the following components: Lampizator transport £1900, Lampizator DAC -pre-amplifier £4600, My Sound Qubes mono amplifiers £4000, Ancient Audio Lector transport (modified version by Franc Audio isolation inspired by G Point Audio) £5000 and the very impressive looking and sounding Horns PL Universum speakers. All cabling was by Albedo, with mains products from Ansae.

The second system comprised of: Toshiba Lampizator modified Toshiba 9500 DVD/HDCD player, Linear Audio Research IA Model 30mk2 EL34 valve integrated amplifier and Horns Pl FP 10 speakers. Also used with the main system and the smaller system was the weird looking speakers called Mummies from Horns PL.

As I reported quite heavily in my Exhibitors Prologue feature on this particular room I won’t say a lot more about it except that once everything had settled down and warmed up both systems sounded very good with the main system being particularly impressive.

G Point Audio http://gpoint-audio.com/

155 – Palmer Audio

The sound in this room was sublime, delicate, enchanting and moving. I sat for quite awhile listening to the album being played and enjoyed it greatly.

The system comprised of the following items:Palmer Audio2.5 turntable £4500 for the version that takes a 12 inch arm and £4000 for the 9 inch version, Sugden Masterclass integrated amplifier, Sugden phonostage and Harlbeth 7 speakers.

The sound was beautiful, sublime, beguiling, effortless and magical, in fact this simple system produced one of the finest sounds of the entire show. The music being played was by Jon Hopkins and King Creosote and was called Diamond Mine well worth checking out.

Palmer Audio http://www.palmeraudio.co.uk/

157 – Audio Note

What can one say except once again Audio Note had a good sound in their room and a very well attended room it was too. I didn’t get to listen for long, but what I heard was very good indeed and well up to Audio Note’s usual room sound standard.

The system comprised of the following components: CDT One/11 CD transport £2554, DAC2.1 x111 £2550, Meishu 9 watt class a integrated amplifier £4500, TT2 (from) £1289, arm £654 and on static display an Empress mono amplifier. The speakers were ANEs £5482.

Audionote http://www.audionote.co.uk/

Conclusions and thoughts

This years National Audio Show was quite a bit smaller than last years, with a number of regular exhibitors missing (Audio Freaks for example) and I can’t help wondering what the 2013 show will look like especially with HiFi News revealing they are relaunching their own HiFi Show again (though sadly for a visitor like myself, in the middle of nowhere) in the Beaumont Estate Berkshire October 25th to 26th.

However September 2013 can at the moment take care of itself – speculation being pretty much a waste of time – as this report is about the 2012 show and overall I enjoyed it and the sound of the rooms was much better than last years show with only one really bad room.

So in no particular order the best sound goes to quite a few people this year: Palmer Audio, both Music First rooms, Prometheus Audio, The Right Note, Studio AV/Kog, Audio Acoustics, Angel Sound Audio, iFi Audio, Marantz/Jordan Acoustics, Brodmann Acoustics, High End Cables and LW Audio.

If asked to pick the most outstanding room then I would say it was Palmer Audio – even writing this months after the event the thought of the music playing in that room sends goose bumps up and down my skin.

Notable mentions re interesting rooms would go to Ming Da and G Point Audio and interesting/ground breaking new products go to the iFi Audio range and the Light Harmonics Da Vinci DAC.

I very much enjoyed 2012′s show and I look forward to the next one – see you all there – God willing.

These show reports are dedicated to the memory of My Dad – thank you for giving me the music.

Neil 

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio, except where noted and Copyright belongs with those named parties.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without prior written permission. Failure to comply, may result in legal action.

101 – Thomas Audio Support Systems

New to me Thomas Audio offer a fairly unique solution to isolating your equipment from air borne and structural vibration embodied in the Magic Rack

‘Based in Dorking, Surrey, Thomas Audio Support Systems (TASS) set about designing and manufacturing the perfect HiFi rack. To get the best from even a modestly priced set up the most important issue is to isolate the system. With perfect isolation, a budget system can sound great, a top end system can sound, well…. WOW! Placing your system on a standard rack, or on the book shelves will just kill the potential sound.

The Magic Rack is unique, there’s no other HiFi rack out there using the same materials or design principles. We’ve tried many of the standard HiFi racks out there – they just don’t work well enough.

This all started because we love our music… love it with a passion.’

I certainly haven’t seen anything quite like the Magic Rack MR1 equipment table before. TASS describe it thus….

‘The Magic Rack is a modular design. This allows you to have as many shelves as you’d like, you can always add another shelf in the future.

Each rack is hand made locally to us near Dorking by a furniture craftsman. They’re not mass produced and we inspect and test every rack before we send them out to the customer.

The Magic Rack is currently available either in a wood finish or gloss black, just select the finish you require.

WHAT IT DOES AND HOW IT WORKS

The Magic Rack supports and isolates each HiFi component that is placed on it. The Magic Rack isolates each component from any outside vibrations coming from, for example the speakers. The speakers are moving a lot of air around the room in the form of sound waves, put your hand in front of your speakers when playing music and you can feel this. When the sound waves hit the component, your amp for example, the component gets vibrated, which in turn reduces the performance/sound quality.

If you’re running let’s say 3 components, for example a power amp, a pre-amp and a CD player, then that’s 3 components that are being vibrated. The Magic Rack stops this happening.

The Magic Rack stops this in 2 ways…

The main body of the Magic Rack is made from M.D.F. which being granular in construction is a poor medium for energy (vibrations) to travel through. The granular construction acts as an energy ‘sink’. The energy (vibrations) get blocked and they can’t travel through and hit the HiFi components. If the rack was made of steel or glass for example, the energy (vibrations) would hit the rack and travel along it straight to the components.’

‘A second energy ‘sink’ is incorporated into the rack by placing the separate components straight onto the Magic Rack’s rubber straps. The rubber straps have also have a damping effect in the same way as the M.D.F. main body. Energy (vibrations) cannot travel along the rubber straps and are immediately blocked. The net result is that the components can now get on with the job they were designed to do making a huge difference to the performance.

DIMENSIONS: 789mm wide x 457mm deep x 589mm high.

Based on a 3 shelf rack

Magic Rack MR1 3 tier £600

Each additional tier £200

Custom wood finishes price on application’

The room was very busy when I visited so I didn’t have much of a chance to hear a demonstration of the equipment tables but I was intrigued by them, though if I am honest, visually I am not sure about the straps. So I guess at this stage all I can say is that they look like an interesting alternative to more conventional equipment tables and are certainly worth looking into.

Thomas Audio Support Systems http://www.magic-racks.co.uk/index.html

102 – Prometheus Audio

It was a real pleasure meeting the extremely passionate and knowledgeable George Thomsen who devoted a good 30 minutes + to telling me all about his turntable.

The Prometheus Audio Reference turntable motor unit used at NAS 2012 was £40,000 (cost of the example on show as George offers customisation of the material used, and this can push the cost of the turntable upwards and downwards. In fact prices range between 12k to over 40k) and the arm on it was a Talea by Joel Durrand £8000. The cartridge was a Koetsu K Signature £4000. The amplification was via a Wavac PRT 1 pre-amplifier and LRX phonostage Fed  into a pair of Focal JMlabs active speakers. The stand is designed particularly for the turntable (though other equipment can be used with it) the stand in use at the show would retail for £25000.

Fit and finish of the turntable and stand was stunning and there is no doubt that only the very finest craftsmanship, materials, fit and finish (to tolerances of less than 2/10ths of a human hair) goes into both items – frankly to my eyes they both looked incredible.

During talking to George it became clear that he is a driven man re perfection of design and quality engineering but also very knowledgeable about music.

Much of what George told me I think he would be keen for me not to repeat, but the turntable uses a self lubricating bearing material and a special mix of oil that George formulated after many hours of trial and error (yes different types of oil affect the sound) until he was happy he had found the best type for his design. The platter weighs 20KG and is weighted in the outer rim not under the platter and is balanced during production not afterwards. The turntable also uses 6 isolators and the only point of contact is the belt.

The equipment platform is also amazingly well made and thought out design and features, air pockets within each leg and 48 isolators with 12 pistons, and at no time do they ever bottom out.

The Talea tonearm is also a thing of great beauty and magical engineering.

Joel Durand a professional musician has this to say about the Talea tonearm (taken from his website), the result of his own personal quest to design the best tonearm and in a similar way as to how one would a musical instrument…..

‘As a professional musician, my reference in audio reproduction has always been the live music event. I’d rather go to a good concert than sit at home in front of a blank wall–even if the wall is decorated with the pretty lights of expensive audio equipment. I have been to hundreds of concerts, in many of the best (and the worst…) halls of Europe and the US; unfortunately there are just as many concerts I have not attended, or will never attend.

Having moved away from some of the greatest cultural centers in Europe and the US, I started to miss the opportunity to hear live the world-class ensembles one can only find in those places on a regular basis. So the only way to recover some of that magic was to bring them home, in the best possible conditions. As I progressed in putting together my audio system, I soon felt the need to direct the creative energies I had devoted for so many years to musical composition into this new area, in a way that would combine my early training in sciences with what I had learned about music in the last three decades. This is why the Talea™ was born. In order to realize this project, I spent countless hours reading about tonearm design, machining prototypes and trying to fully understand the manufacturing process; and I listened to a lot of music–the best part of it all!

In the process of developing the Talea™, whenever there was a choice to make in the design or selection of materials, I followed the path that brought me closer to the real sound, that delivered the level of realism I knew so well from the concert hall, and was aiming for when I started the project. I am confident that the Talea™ is one of the very finest instruments on the market. I trust that you will agree, once you have had the chance to hear and play it.’

‘A mixture of wood and metals

Far from simply being an inert vehicle enabling the transmission of the electrical signal coming from the cartridge, the tonearm is probably the closest component to a musical instrument in the audio reproduction chain: like a violin bow, one of its primary roles–-in conjunction with the cartridge–is to communicate the mechanical vibrations from the musical source without damaging them. Each of the tonearm’s constituents carries a crucial responsibility in the transmission of these vibrations, so every element, down to the smallest screw plays an essential role in the resulting sound.

This is why I spent considerable amounts of time selecting the variety of materials that make up the Talea™: it is in the combination of carefully selected exotic hard wood and the different metals used in the assembly that lies one of the secrets of the Talea’s remarkably transparent and dynamic sound. Achieving this delicate balance is a very difficult process, one that involves paying the closest attention to the location and properties of every element of the assembly, and finally putting together each unit by hand and tuning it individually.

The result is a tonearm that delivers exceptional dynamic range and tonal realism throughout its bandwidth.

A unique device for azimuth setting

Just like a musical instrument that needs to be perfectly in tune before it is played, a tonearm should have a number of adjustments readily available to maximize its tuning. Beside the finely graduated adjustment capabilities for the Vertical Tracking Angle/Stylus Rake Angle and Vertical Tracking Force, the Talea™ offers a unique mechanism for azimuth setting. Thanks to new, patent-pending technology, the Talea™ is the first tonearm to offer the ability to adjust the azimuth on the fly. Never before has it been possible to fine-adjust this essential parameter while listening to music. Anyone who has spent time getting the most out of a high-end tonearm knows how critical it is to find the proper setting for the azimuth… and also knows how painstakingly complicated it is with most modern tonearms. With the Talea™, all you need to do is turn a small knob on the side of the azimuth tower; and it can be done while playing a record.’

‘Specifications:

Effective length: 263 mm (10.35”)

Pivot-spindle distance: 247.37 mm (Loefgren A geometry). Because the pivot is offset from the VTA tower, the Talea™ can be mounted in about the position of a 9” tonearm

Overhang: 15.66 mm. Effective length fine adjustment is realized with a cartridge plate on which the cartridge is mounted (Please see our page on cartridge alignment here)

Offset angle: 20.81 degrees.

Cartridge mount: 1/2”

Mounting distance (from spindle): 207.8-220.2 mm (8.3-8.7”). If you want to make sure that the Talea™ will fit on your turntable, you can download a mounting template here (click on tab “Talea™ Mounting Templates”).

Mounting hole dimensions: 10-24 (metal screws) or #8 (wood screws). Mounting on the plinth/armboard is done with 2 bolts (for metal armboards) or 4 screws (for wood armboards). No large central hole needs to be bored

Weight of the whole assembly: ca. 2.3 lbs (1.04 kg)

Bearing: Unipivot, Swiss-made non-corrosive, non-magnetic stainless steel pivot in a sapphire jewel. The center of mass of the tonearm is in the same plane as the bearing, thus ensuring an ideal dynamic balance, without the need for the outrigger weights commonly found on other unipivot systems

VTA: on the fly fine adjustment, with knob; each turn of the knob corresponds to 0.5 mm change in height, thanks to an extremely precise 50 TPI thread (finer than micrometer thread). Maximum range: 23 mm. The VTA tower is fastened to the inner column with a clamp mechanism, ensuring maximum mating and rigidity between the parts

Azimuth: adjustable on the fly (patent-pending technology). We discuss the question of azimuth setting here

Progressive anti-skating mechanism; can be disabled if desired

Counterweights: 130 g, 95 g, 60 g; with additional fine adjust weight to allow adjustment of VTF in small increments (typically +/- 0.1 g). The Talea™ is a medium mass tonearm, and the combination of counterweights provided with it allows use of most cartridges currently available. The Talea™ has been successfully tested with cartridges from 5 to 15 grams, with compliance from 8 to 20 µm/Mn

Phono cable uninterrupted from cartridge clips to termination connectors, except at the junction internal wires-interconnect cable

(available in unbalanced and balanced configuration); see below

Jig to set the pivot-to-spindle distance provided; no need for a ruler, the jig places the tonearm exactly in the right position

Arc protractor included

Like the Telos™, the Talea™ is a medium-mass tonearm that can be used with most modern cartridges on the market.’

‘To ensure excellent protection and durability, the main metal parts are black nickel plated.

The Talea™ is supplied with the high quality Discovery Plus 4 phono cable (four conductors, twin shields and locking phono plugs); length: four feet. All Discovery cables utilize a patented reverse lay stranding technique; this proprietary method of stranding eliminates EMI within each conductor. The cable is made up of high purity oxygen-free copper and PFA Teflon (the highest grade on the market) dielectric. Available in unbalanced or balanced configuration.

More details and reviews on the Discovery phono cable at: Discovery Cable™

The cable is burnt-in prior to shipping with the AudioKharma Cable Cooker 3.0.’

I enjoyed listening to music on this system, which sounded amazingly solid, natural, stable, open, airy and detailed, with massive weight and scale. The music just existed within the room within its own acoustic, which overrode the space of the hotel room transporting the listener to the recordings own world.

George was sharing the room with Mike Valentine (on the left in the picture below) record producer and music engineer, the force behind the Chasing the Dragon recording, which he was demonstrating from the master tapes in George’s room.

I was very impressed with the Prometheus Audio Reference turntable, the Talea tonearm and George himself.

Prometheus Audio http://prometheusaudio.co.uk/index.html

Durand Tonearms http://www.durand-tonearms.com/

104 – Sound Fowndations

Keith Green was up to his usual standard of presenting Isotek products and the differences they make to the sound of a system. Keith’s demonstrations are well worth watching as great examples of how to do such a thing, they are informative, entertaining and interesting to watch.

Around the room on static display were items from Furutech, Canor and Clearlight Audio.

The sound of the system was very good as usual but sadly as Keith was in full demo mode and I was unable to return to the room, I can’t give much more detail on the system.

SoundFowdations http://www.soundfowndations.co.uk/

Isotek http://www.isoteksystems.com/

Furutech http://www.furutech.com/

Canor Audio http://www.canor-audio.com/

ClearLight Audio http://www.clearlight-audio.de/

106 – Audio Pro

Another new name to me Audio Pro had a range of their speakers on display but as I was pushed for time – literally about to leave the show – I did little more than enter the room and take photos -however the designs do look interesting as many are wireless designs and Audio Pro state that their designs solve many of the sound quality issues that have blighted many wireless designs in the past – removing cables from the equation is an intriguing idea.

This Swedish company has this to say about itself….

‘Since 1978, we have built loudspeakers with one ambition: to give you the best sound at the best price. We want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy good sound quality at home.

Our job is to make speakers that sound good, as well as scoring high in audio tests. You may think this sounds silly, but what’s really silly is that many speaker makers construct their speakers to deliver the ideal frequency curves when tested in echo-free (anechoic) testing chambers. Who lives in an echo-free testing chamber? No one we know.

Why this standard, you might ask. Many years ago, some sound engineers decided to apply what was, to say the least, a peculiar standard: namely, if a speaker had a straight frequency response in an echo-free (anechoic) test chamber, then the speaker’s frequency curve would also be straight in a room at home. However, it’s not that simple – the acoustics in a padded test chamber and those in your living room have nothing in common. If you’ve never been in an anechoic chamber, then you should know that the acoustics there resemble those of a small closet filled with winter overcoats.

In an ordinary room at home, on the other hand, all sorts of sounds are reflected as they bounce off walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, etc. If you put a conventional speaker in a room at home and measure the frequency response, it will be anything but straight.

Today, you will find Audio Pro in over thirty countries on four continents. If you ask the owner of an Audio Pro system what sets us apart from other speaker manufacturers, you will probably get a range of answers. Many speak of the magically pure bass, or what good sound quality they got for their investment, or in more ephemeral terms: “it just sounds so good… you can feel it!” It’s hard to describe a listening experience in words. There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, but each of the marvellously complex mechanisms that are your ears contain 20,000-30,000 sensors that transmit the nuances of the sound image to your brain. Use them to judge for yourself. Listen…’

I will let you browse Audio Pro’s website to explore their large range of speakers in detail, but prices range from as little as £350 for the Living LV1 to £1300 for the floorstanding Living LV3′s which can be used as a stereo, mono speaker and is an omnidirectional design.

Audio Pro http://www.audiopro.com/

Audio Pro Direct UK site http://audioprodirect.co.uk/

Neil 

The final part of NAS 2012 will follow very shortly, with more coverage of the upstairs rooms.

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio, except where noted and Copyright belongs with those named parties.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without prior written permission. Failure to comply, may result in legal action.

S17 – Epicurean Audio

I enjoyed my time – albeit short – in this room and it was nice to get an opportunity to hear amplification from Edge again. This American brand – based in Chicago, though it was once based in Florida - has been seen in various rooms in UK shows over the time I have been covering UK audio shows for AIHFA and I have yet to hear a bad sound from any room these amplifiers have been used in.

Epicurean had put a system together including: Sorten Acoustic Panels, an Edge G3 integrated amplifier £6800, Avalon Idea speakers Conrad Johnson HD3 DAC and Theus HD.

The G3 integrated amplifier is a 115 watt amplifier, which incorporates trickle down technology from the high-end NL series products.These products and the G3 have a somewhat Art Deco look about them and the purposeful look is matched by an equally purposeful sound that lacks no finesse or delicacy.

Edge Electronics http://www.edgeamps.com/

Epicurean Audio http://www.epicureanaudio.com/

S18 – Kudos Audio/Cymbiosis

There was a time – when I was a bit more closed minded – when I would not have crossed the road to hear a Naim/Linn system and truth be told I just didn’t get or understand the classic Linn/Naim approach to reproducing music and if I had held to those dislikes I would have missed out on the lovely sound this room was making.

They were using Kudos Audio Cardea Super 20 speakers and Naim electronics to great affect as the system was beautifully open and detailed in its sound.

Also on display in the room were examples of the wonderful craftsmanship of Chris Haraban of Woodsong Audio who make Reference and Artist plinths for the Linn LP12 turntable. The wood used is beautifully finished and magical to touch – like liquid silk. Woodsong Audio also undertake one off Private work, so if there is a wood they don’t use in their plinths why not contact them and see if they can turn your idea into a reality.

Kudos Audio http://www.kudosaudio.com/en/

Cymbiosis http://www.cymbiosis.com/

Woodsong Audio http://www.woodsongaudio.com/

S19 – Peachtree Audio

Peachtree Audio this year had their own room dedicated exclusively to their products and nicely presented it was too. Both times I visited customers were being sold too and music was not being played so sadly I can’t comment on sound in the room.

The system being used was a Nova pre-amplifier £2500, Peachtree 220 power-amplifier £1200, Deco 65 integrated amplifier £750, Nova 125 integrated amplifier £1350, Oppo BD93 and speakers by Paradigm.

Peachtree Audio http://www.peachtreeaudio.com/dac-it-digital-to-analog-converter.html

S20 – Quadral

I can’t really comment on the sound in this room as both times I visited it no music was playing and due to time constraints I was unable to return.

The system being used was made up of electronics from Quadral’s Aurum marque and their speakers.

Quadral/Aurum http://www.quadral.com/

S21 – Kudos Audio/Cymbiosis

The system in this room was to a much bigger scale than in the other Kudos Audio room and perhaps it was too big for the room as sadly this particular Naim/Linn/ Kudos speakers setup – while playing Fleetwood Mac The chain – while nice was also a bit bright and edgy, and the bass was at times edging into boom.

No doubt in a different room things would have been better. Rooms in hotels can be very hit or miss and a room can make or break a set up and this room was certainly having a say on how things sounded – overall the sound in this room was still better than how some others were sounding.

Kudos Audio http://www.kudosaudio.com/en/

Cymbiosis http://www.cymbiosis.com/

S22 – Music First

It is always lovely to see Harry O’Sulliavan and Stephen Billington of Music First both of whom are passionate gentlemen; passionate about music and the products that are hand assembled by Music First.

The system on demonstration in this first MF room was made up from a Baby Reference pre-amplifier, Bel Canto S300 power-amplifier, Chord DAC 64, Sony Vario laptop and Howes speakers.

Also on static display at the back of the room was Music First Classic Vs pre-amplifier £2645 and a very nice Revox A77 reel to reel tape deck that they had used for denos in the past. Rodrigo Vs Gabriela track Stairway to Heaven was playing – off the laptop – and while this has become one of those somewhat obvious audio show demo tracks it still sounded lovely.

Music First http://www.mfaudio.co.uk/

S23 – Music First

In this room the system consisted of a Baby Reference pre-amplifier, Quad 405.2 power-amplifier. Rodgers LS 3.5A speakers, Revox B77 reel to reel recorder and all equipment was housed on HiFi Rack stands – a simple but very effective system that Harry O’Sullivan was justly proud of.

The music played while I was present – Black Box Recorder – was stunning sounding, with a lovely sound stage, great detail, clarity and musicality – I could have spent hours in this room but time was pressing so onwards I had to go.

I have yet to hear a bad sound in any Music First room. so well done guys for keeping the standard up – no mean feat.

Music First http://www.mfaudio.co.uk/

Neil 

The next part of NAS 2012 will follow very shortly, with more coverage of the upstairs rooms.

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio, except where noted and Copyright belongs with those named parties.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without prior written permission. Failure to comply, may result in legal action.

So sit back and let me transport you back to last years, late summer NAS show at Whittelbuy Hall.

Neil

Becketts – The Right Note

As per usual – I have yet to be disappointed with a Right Note room – Jeremy Baldwin was in his element chatting with those in the room as he demonstrated the products and the quality of music reproduction was very high as per usual – I have yet to hear a bad sound in a Right Note room at any show I have attended in the past and this show was no exception.

The system Jeremy was demonstrating consisted of the following products: VTL S200 power-amplifier £9800, Spiral Groove SG2 turntable with Centroid tonearm £5000 and there was also a Spiral Groove SG 1.1 turntable on show £2150, VTL7.5 pre-amplifier £19500, VTL 6.5 phonostage £8350 and the speakers were Kawero Vivace £22360. All the equipment was hooked up by Vertex cabling and housed on Leading Edge equipment tables £1015.

The spiral groove turntables are something I have wanted to see and hear for years after reading about the brand in the pages of Stereophile and The Absolute Sound and the sound was lovely and just as good as I had read described.

Various bits of VTL and other interesting kit dotted the back of the room on static display.

One interesting new comer but not in use – while I was in the room – was the new Kaiser Acoustics Kawero Chiaro £13, 295 to £15, 115 (depending on finish)monitor speaker with integral speaker stand to which the speaker cables are connected – its a shame they were not being demoed but I suspect they may have been to small to drive this very large room well, but yet again maybe they might.

‘The Chiara high performance stereo loudspeaker features sophisticated engineering, state-of-the-art materials and high tech manufacturing processes to minimize structural vibration, offering uncolored tonal coherence and a robust sound previously unattainable in a compact loudspeaker of this size.

It is the smallest loudspeaker in the Kaiser Kawero speaker range, all manufactured from Panzerholz, a high tech natural wood-based laminate engineered in Germany. Panzerholz is incredibly dense: it sinks in water, offers the rigidity of steel, and also boasts some of the best vibration damping characteristics in the world. In fact, as a side-effect of this performance, it turns out that this loudspeaker is bulletproof.

Hardships in working this extremely hard material are overcome by careful tooling and handling techniques.

Tankwood / rubber / glass fibre high pressure sandwich cabinet without parallel surfaces

• Bass and midrange 4th order alignment design through rear-firing passive radiator (custom made

Scan Speak Illuminator unit) Custom paper and carbon sandwich cone driver

from Scan-Speak Denmark • Extremely fast custom made Mundorf AMT tweeter • Duelund CAST Cu capacitor and inductor • Crossover components individually pressure-mated to Panzerholz

• Point-to-point wiring; no Printed Circuit Boards throughout • Advanced microvibration control throughout State-of-the-art Computerized Numerical Control machining and assembly to the tightest tolerances achievable today

Bandwidth 40Hz – 30kHz ±3dB, Sensitivity 87dB@2.83V, Impedance 4 Ohm, Crossover Point 3100Hz, Recommended Power 150 Watts, Connections Single-wired, Height 1160mm, Width 295mm, Depth 470mm, Weight 34kg ea.

As usual I enjoyed my time in the Right Note room and once again this room is a model lesson on how to achieve a high level of sound quality within a challenging hotel room – well done The Right Note.

Right Note http://www.rightnote.co.uk/

Chapel – Russ Andrews

Unlike previous years Russ had an interesting set up in his room and a brave premise to try and prove – that high end cables can improve the sound of a budget set up. Sadly as these were timed demos I was unable to attend them but I would very much have liked to have. Why not? you may ask. Well being frank there are only so many hours in the day and to cover the shows the way I do – unlike many websites and printed magazines –  which is to visit every room rather than only cover a few I just don’t have time to attend timed demos/lectures and being honest I find doing what I try to do a real stretch and even sometimes I feel I don’t entirely succeed – rapidly running out of time on the last day.

Anyway I was able to get a good look round this very busy room and I hope those who could attend the lecture/demo found it very interesting.

Russ Andrews http://www.russandrews.com/

Stowe – Light Harmonics

New to the UK and fairly new as a company was Light Harmonics’s with their digital to analogue converter The Da Vinci which is a 384K USB DAC retailing at £20000

The system on demo in  this room in my view didn’t really work that well – room issues I feel – so it was hard to get a really good idea of what the Light Harmonic DAC was doing but it was a very interesting design both visually and technically with great potential re its specifications. Overall sound in the room was good but being honest something was letting things down as I had expected better and I left the room disappointed and feeling rather cheated, as I would really have liked to hear this DAC in better conditions.

The system comprised of the aforementioned DAC, Anthem Statement M1 amplifiers, Plinius pre-amplifier. MAC Book Pro running bit perfect from Itunes, and the speakers were Martin Logan Summit’s

Light Harmonic have this to say about themselves…..

‘Light Harmonic was founded in Sacramento, California, in 2010, after Larry Ho’s audiophile friends first auditioned his new creation and were tremendously impressed. Larry had thrown everything into it, everything he knew, holding nothing in reserve. He had spent all his time and energy on the project, and enlisted engineers in the U.S. and Europe to assist.

In a kind of inventor’s intervention, friends of Larry convinced him he should share his new DAC with the world. In their minds, it was too good not to. In short order, he launched Light Harmonic. Its mission: to make the world’s best digital audio products, starting with Da Vinci DAC as its initial offering. Since 2010, the company has built a manufacturing facility just outside Sacramento, California.’

Light Harmonic say this about the Da Vinci DAC…..

‘The Da Vinci is the world’s first true bit-perfect 384K asynchronous DAC using USB 2.0 technology. Its rich with patent-pending technologies, Da Vinci boasts 40 ultra-low-noise power regulators, dedicated digital power, a three-layer buffer, triple clocking, and a proprietary audio processing unit. Additional characteristics include a lifelike soundstage, musical coherence, transparency, and a best-in-class noise floor.’

Rather unusually this company based their development reference on analogue not digital …..

‘To test our progress, Light Harmonic engineers assembled a stellar analog (not digital) audio reference system to serve as a good representation of true high-end sound. The system included a Clearaudio turntable, an SME tonearm, a Koetsu Rosewood cartridge, and an Aesthetix tube phono amplifier. We compared Da Vinci’s performance to this set-up throughout our research and development process.’

The Da Vinci combines the following concepts and specs…..

‘Light Harmonic designed Da Vinci from the ground up, incorporating the latest thinking, developing new technologies, and addressing a multitude of issues, including the following:

Automatic LSB Correction

As research advanced, we confronted the Least Significant Bit (LSB) extension error, a problem that plagues every currently available DAC. LSB is a mathematical error affecting 16- and 24-bit digital files that causes a mismatch of up to three percent in every note. Da Vinci solves this with new and proprietary technology that automatically corrects each music sample.

Precision Timing

In digital signal conversion, timing is everything! To ensure computer speed fluctuations would not influence Da Vinci, and that it would run at a constant speed, Light Harmonic developed a proprietary (and patent-pending) Three-Layer Buffer similar to the buffering technology many of today’s high-speed computers employ. This is the first time such a design has been applied to audio.

At the same time, our Triple (3X) Clock architecture divides the tasks usually handled by one clock among three clocks — one for 44.1K audio, a second for 48K audio, and a third for USB signal transmission. Da Vinci also uses the best non-phase-locked loop (PLL) clocks, which are set very near the analog conversion module. Advanced computer simulations and PCB modeling ensures that the transmission length of each digital audio signal is identical, with a maximum possible error of one one-thousandth of an inch.

No Up or Over-sampling

Light Harmonic’s analysis suggests that 99 percent of audio DAC manufacturers upsample and over-sample. This makes measured numbers appear impressive, but the DACs doing this never sound quite right to our ears. We even tried, during Da Vinci’s gestation, to make the industry’s best upsampler using top-level delta sigma conversion technology and a finely tuned digital filter. But the results couldn’t compete with our analog reference system, and we scrapped them. In the end, we stuck to our guns: bit-perfection all the way!’

‘Technical Specifications: Type Digital-to-Analog Converter, Finish Options Standard: Black

Upgrade: Silver, Dimensions 18.5″ (L) x 18.5″(W) X 7.87″ (H), Weight 61 lbs/28.0 kg

Converter Type Bit-perfect R2R architecture with patent pending 3-layer buffer. Analog Outputs Output Levels: 2.05V rms unbalanced / 4.1V rms balanced. Balanced Outputs – 1 stereo pair on 3-pin male XLR connector (pin 2 hot). Unbalanced Outputs – 1 stereo pair on RCA Phono connector.

Digital Inputs 1x Asynchronous USB 2.0 interface on standard USB-B connectors. Will accept up to 32 bit PCM at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192, 352.8, 384K S/s, 1x Asynchronous AES/EBU on 3-pin female XLR connectors. Will accept up to 24 bit PCM at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192K S/s. 1x Asynchronous SPDIF on one RCA Phono connectors. Will accept up to 24 bit PCM at 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192K S/s, Clock Frequencies 3X Clock architecture without PLL. TCXO with -166 dBc/Hz @ 10MHz. 45.1584M Hz for 44.1, 88.2, 176.4, 352.8K Mode. 49.152M Hz for 48, 96,192,384K Mode. 13M Hz for USB interface. THD+N (unweighted) Better than 0.0018%, Frequency range: 20Hz – 20kHz, LSB Auto-Correction Always enabled

Residual Noise, (unweighted) Better than –115dB @ 20Hz – 20kHz Residual Noise (A-weighted) Better than –125dB @ 20Hz – 20kHz, Channel Separation (Crosstalk) -142dBFS @ 10kHz, Filters Digital Filters: None. User selectable Analog Filter: -3dB @ 100K Hz. Power Supply Factory set for 115~120 , 220~230 V AC, 49 – 62Hz. Power Consumption 2 Watts in Standby mode/ 58 Watts operational maximum’

Core Conversion

Da Vinci refrains from using common delta-sigma integrated circuits (ICs) for the digital-to-analog conversion modules at its core. Instead, we use precision resistor-ladder architecture with low noise, a complex programmable logic device, parallel mechanisms for core conversion, and eight of the finest shunt local regulators we could build. The result: precise signal conversion.

Proprietary Duet Engine

Our patent-pending Duet Engine effectively doubles low sampling rates without digitally up- or over-sampling signals or using digital filters. Instead, sophisticated aligned analog interpolation does the trick. The result: Duet Engine technology delivers smoother highs and eliminates any need for a so-called brick-wall filter to cut off audio signals above or below a selected frequency. The improvement is especially apparent when listening to CDs.

Pristine Analog Output

Instead of opting for negative feedback, off-the-shelf integrated circuits or operational amplifiers, we created a unique, proprietary analog stage to achieve the output needed to meet Da Vinci’s demanding goals.

The stage consists of a dual mono, discrete, balanced, single-ended Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) with an output buffer and non-negative feedback. It uses no operational amplifiers, and the buffer has far fewer high-order harmonic distortions than other designs. We’ve found this offers a more natural sound, especially in the high frequency range, even if at the expense of what we consider to be synthetically impressive measurements.

Six-Piece Aluminum Chassis

Solid as a brick, Da Vinci possesses the best-designed chassis in the industry. It is constructed of CNC-milled aerospace-grade, 6061-T6 aluminum blocks, which provide exceptional thermal stability, resonance control, and shielding from radio and electromagnetic signal interference. Special damping materials between the chassis’s several layers minimize internal vibrations, and Da Vinci’s 61-lb. weight and unique shape effectively eliminate vibrations from outside sources.

Multistage Isolated Power

Da Vinci’s unique design enhances its appearance while also isolating the power supplies and preventing overheating. Set in the lower half of the two-piece chassis, the power supplies handle all AC to DC conversions, the display and controls, and the clocks. The lower half also houses a uniquely shaped heat sink that ensures Da Vinci runs within specific temperature tolerances.

To minimize AC and inter-modulation noises, Da Vinci employs more than 40 high-quality regulators, including 8 discrete shunt regulators in the primary digital conversion module, 3 nano-volt noise regulators in the clock power circuit, 5 high-precision regulators in the USB module, and 8 high-current discrete shunt regulators for each channel of the analog output and buffer. An R-Core transformer ruthlessly minimizes electro-magnetic signal interference.’

All exciting stuff, but as I said above I was very disappointed not to be able to hear this DAC in a more synergistic system (my opinion) and room (I am pretty sure the room was affecting things too) – such is audio show life – maybe next time.

Light Harmonic http://www.lightharmonic.com/

AnthemAv http://www.anthemavs.co.uk/

Vale – Studio Av

There was quite an aura of having achieved something special amongst the exhibitors in this room and as I walked round the room I twigged what it was no Focal speakers (being honest I am not a big fan of their sound) being demoed instead the speakers were the Avalon Compas £35.000 and in my opinion what a change this made to the way music was being made with equipment that in the past has always been on the end of JM Lab/Focal speakers.

The system comprised a DCS Scarlatti front end transport, DAC, Master Clock, Upsampler about £47000 worth in total, VTL TL 7.5 pre-amplifier £19500, MB450 mono block power amplifiers £17500 with various cables.

The sound of music in this room was open, detailed, effortless and organic and hearing the Avalon’s in this setting was very educational as it helped point to the past success of Audio Freaks in their demos at shows that the Avalon speakers were on the face of it a huge part of the sound in their rooms.

I spoke to a Kog Audio distribution staff member who told me that Kog had taken over distribution of Avalon. I must confess to being shocked by this news as I can’t imagine Audio Freaks without Avalon, indeed an image of a legless man entered my mind as losing such a foundational brand must have left Audio Freaks feeling like they had lost a couple of limbs.

Around the room various other items were on show from the likes of Vitus Audio, Focal, Avalon, Densen and VTL.

Studio Av http://www.studioav.co.uk/

Kog Audio http://www.kogaudio.com/

Priory – DCS, VTL, Vivid

Within this room there were more goodies from Kog Audio on show and the new DCS Vivaldi set up.

DCS equipment has always impressed me with its looks, build quality and obvious technical prowess but for whatever reason, and I suspect in part system choices, I have never really warmed to the sound that DCS digital front ends have made in the past, however this show was a real turning point in that I really enjoyed the way music was being made in this room.

The Vivaldi set up comprises the following items:

The Vivaldi Transport £24500

‘Vivaldi Transport is designed to extract revelatory levels of detail from both CD and SACD and is the ultimate machine for silver disc replay. All signal processing in Vivaldi Transport is controlled by electronics designed by dCS. It uses the TEAC Esoteric VRDS Neo™ mechanism which provides a brushless motor with heavy flywheel for stable disc rotation and super rigid construction.

The powerful digital processing platform of Vivaldi Transport is based around Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips and a microcontroller system. All of these use code developed and maintained in-house by dCS.

Vivaldi Transport represents true state-of-the-art in digital audio by offering twice the logic capacity of previous generations, delivering unmatched sonic and measured performance.

In order to enhance the cleanness of the power supply and isolate the mechanism from the electronics Vivaldi Transport features a completely new chassis design that has separate power circuits for the digital processing and CD/SACD mechanism sections. This has resulted in near silent operation.

Vivaldi Transport features a Dual AES output that supports dCS-encrypted DSD (1 bit data at 2.822MS/s) to a dCS DAC from SACD. Vivaldi Transport also offers the option of upsampling CD data to DXD (24 bit data at 352.8kS/s) and transmitting this data over the same Dual AES interface.

SACDs are played in their native DSD format, again using the Dual AES interface. Native CD data is available from 4 PCM outputs (1x AES/EBU and 2x SPDIF, 1x SDIF-2), as is down-sampled SACD data.

Vivaldi Transport is intended to be used with the matching Vivaldi DAC or with any suitable industry standard DAC. The unit may be run either in Master mode or with the DAC as the system clock. Performance will be enhanced further by adding Vivaldi Clock to the system.

The Vivaldi Upsampler £12500

‘Vivaldi Upsampler is designed to act as the hub of a digital audio system and will transform your listening experience, taking your music collection to levels you have not heard before.’

‘Operating as a digital-to-digital converter Vivaldi Upsampler accesses music from any digital source and converts the audio from its native sample rate to either high resolution DXD (24 bit data at 352.8 or 384 kS/s), DSD (1 bit data at 2.822 or 3.07MS/s) or standard high resolution PCM (24 bit data up to 192kS/s). The results gained from Vivaldi Upsampler are extraordinary – a more vibrant, 3-dimensional, transparent and effortless performance.

Vivaldi Upsampler features a wired network connection and can stream high resolution audio files stored on a computer or on network storage via UPnP™. The additional asynchronous USB input on Vivaldi Upsampler also allows direct connection of a PC and supports high resolution audio up to and including 192kS/s or DSD over PCM (DOP). The USB interfaces runs in Asynchronous USB mode, which makes Vivaldi Upsampler immune to jitter from the typical computer’s noisy clock. Vivaldi Upsampler is Apple Authenticated and supports playback of iPod/iPhone-stored digital media, bypassing the iPod/iPhone internal DAC to ensure optimal performance. USB memory hardware is also supported.’

‘An array of independently selectable digital inputs (RJ45, USB, AES, SPDIF, SDIF-2, Toslink) completes the versatility of this powerful machine and elevates the performance of Red Book CD from CD Players or high resolution audio from digital streamers to a previously unsurpassed level.

Vivaldi Master Clock £9700

DCS were pioneers in the use of external clocks in digital audio systems and the redesigned multi-stage Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) system used in Vivaldi Upsampler sets world-beating standards for accuracy and control of troublesome jitter from the incoming audio stream.

Control of such a versatile product is extremely simple with the user having the choice of using the full colour front panel menu, Vivaldi Controller App or the premium dCS remote control. The Vivaldi Controller App also allows users to change DAC inputs and volume, simplifying the control experience further.

‘Vivaldi Master Clock is a powerful yet simple to use Grade 1 master clock based on our pioneering developments in studio and home audio. Featuring two banks of clock outputs capable of outputting different frequencies, Vivaldi Master Clock uses the latest groundbreaking technology from dCS.

In a digital audio system samples must be accurate in level and time. Jitter, which exists in all digital systems, can result in timing errors in these samples causing the analogue signal to be reconstructed inaccurately. In a dCS system our DACs can act as the system master clock, but listening tests have shown that there is no substitute for a high-quality, dedicated master clock.

DCS were pioneers in the use of external clocks in digital audio systems and our clocking technology has been continually refined so that our latest multi-stage Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) system sets world-beating standards for accuracy and control of troublesome jitter from the incoming audio stream.

All dCS Master Clocks are subjected to rigorous in-house testing. The crystal oscillators are pre-aged, selected for long term stability and then individually calibrated over a wide temperature range to ensure consistent optimal performance. Vivaldi Master Clock uses a sophisticated microcontroller system to ensure smooth correction as the temperature changes and this approach gives a more stable result than either oven controlled crystal oscillators or even atomic clocks and dCS master clocks are designed to generate industry standard Word Clock on 75 ohm co-axial cable. Other manufacturers’ equipment that has been designed to accept standard Word Clock can be used with our clocks.

Vivaldi Master Clock may be slaved to an external reference (such as an atomic clock or GPS reference) if increased accuracy is desired. Our sophisticated multi-mode Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) significantly reduces jitter from the reference source.’

Vivaldi DAC £20000

‘Vivaldi DAC uses the latest groundbreaking technology from dCS including ‘next generation versions of the dCS Ring DACTM, Digital Processing Platform and Clocking System so that, as the hub of a digital audio system, an array of features guarantee amazing performance from any digital source.

The unique design of the legendary dCS Ring DACTM combines exceptional linearity with very high speed operation enabling it to deliver true 24 bit performance even at low signal levels. The latest generation of our Ring DACTM incorporates a number of important technical advances that have resulted in enhanced dynamic range, reduced jitter, improved channel separation and greatly improved musical realism.

The powerful digital processing platform of Vivaldi DAC is based around Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips and microcontroller system. All of these use code developed and maintained in the UK by dCS.

Vivaldi DAC represents true state-of-the-art in digital audio by offering twice the logic capacity of previous generations, emphasised by its unmatched sonic and measured performance.

DCS were pioneers in the use of external clocks in digital audio systems and the redesigned multi-stage Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) system used in Vivaldi DAC sets worldbeating standards for accuracy and control of troublesome jitter from the incoming audio stream.

Vivaldi DAC features standard AES3, Dual AES, SDIF-2 and SPDIF inputs in addition to an asynchronous USB 2.0 interface. The enhanced digital volume control allows direct connection to a power amplifier so that in the majority of systems there is no need for a separate preamplifier. Maximum output can be set at either two or six volts to suit different amplifier and speaker combinations.

Featuring a completely new interface designed to handle all high resolution musical formats up to DXD (24 bit data at 352.8 and 384kS/s) plus DSD, the optimised DSP filters available to Vivaldi DAC owners will ensure you can extract every last nuance of musical detail and emotion by tuning the system to suit your personal preference.’

Build quality was stunning and these components make a hell of a visual statement being the top of DCS’s range of digital disc spinners, DACs, Master Clocks and Upsamplers.’

The sound of the system was open, detailed, spacious and airy with great detail and despite my preferring the Avalon speakers next door which gave the sound a little more musicality – in my opinion this system worked very well and filled the room with lovely music.

DCS http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/

Vivid Audio http://www.vividaudio.co.uk/

Vacuum Tube Logic http://www.vtl.com/

Woodcote – T+A Audio

T+A had a lovely system assembled and playing comprising of a P10 pre-amplifier £7990, M10 mono block amplifiers £10490 each, CD10 SACD player £7990, G10 truntable £6790, DAC8 £1890 and Citerion TCD 210 speakers at £5980. Cabling was the excellent Atlas Mavros.

Visually striking and sonically delicious this set up was a feast for the eyes and ears and looked every bit as good as it sounded.

Set up was well executed and while there were a few room related issues overall  soundquality was very good. A few other bits of T + A was on static display around the room.

T+A http://www.taelektroakustik.de/?L=1

Avoke http://www.avoke.co.uk/

Corpse – Classic Albums Sundays

I like the idea behind this endeavour, but truthfully now its becoming a franchise and thus appears to be an expanding business, I am a bit less supportive simply because one can’t in my view licence and sell the concept of music enthusiasts sitting down and listening to albums on good systems as I and many others the world over have been doing this for many many years albeit maybe not in public venues like pubs etc, but Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy has, and I guess fair dos to her for coming up with a new way of making money from listening to music in this way. Am I being unfair? maybe but its how I feel about the way CAS has been developing of late.

Don’t get me wrong venues cost and the involvement of audio companies may also involve expenses and covering costs by ticketed admission is fair enough but the word franchise now associated with CAS suggests licences and there is usually a cost attached to that and it is that which to an extent bothers me. Certainly if CAS want to clarify the situation I am happy to publish it.

I managed to sneak in for a look round between albums and the system supplied by Loud and Clear was very impressive: VP! Classic 3 £6000, VPI Motor Drive £12000, Lyra Altas cartridge £7500, Moon 810 LP £8450, Moon 850 pre-amplifier £18900, Moon 880m power-amplifier £29000 and Pro Ac Carbon Pro8 speakers £25,550. Cabling was by Abbey Studio Cables and plenty of Black Ravioli isolation cushions were in evidence.

There was music playing while I was in the room, but not the album to be listened to, and the sound was very nice, though playing far too low for me to say much about it other than tonally it sounded spot on.

Classic Album Sundays http://classicalbumsundays.com/

Loud and Clear http://www.loud-clear.co.uk/

Neil

The next part of NAS 2012 will follow very soon, with more coverage of the upstairs rooms.

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio, except where noted and Copyright belongs with those named parties.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without prior written permission. Failure to comply, may result in legal action.

Regards Neil

Late last March 2012 I received out of the blue a lovely email from Jonas Harrow, marketing manager of High Fidelity Cables – a company I had not heard of before – asking if I might like to review the CT1 RCA to RCA Interconnect and after a number of email exchanges I agreed to doing a review of said interconnect, but it wasn’t until August that two 1 m pairs of CT1s arrived, just a day before I was due to go away on holiday – good timing.

Being honest I get lots of emails about products for review, some of which I politely turn down because the logistics are too large to overcome in getting them to my listening room, or I instinctively know the products unsuitability to my system or room and I don’t want to waste a distributor or manufacturers time and money with a less than good chance of me being able to do justice to the product (1). However there have from time to time been offers of products that just don’t materialise and there having been a large gap between Jonas first emails, my exchanging details with him to the cables actually arriving that I had almost forgotten about them, as like Jonas email the cables arrived by courier out of the blue literally a day before I went away on an annual holiday.

The delay was down to a few changes being made to the connectors – not sound quality related as Jonas made clear to me – and High Fidelity Cables waiting for those so they could start producing the final version of the CT1 and send me my actual production review samples.

Intrigued

There were a number of factors that intrigued me enough about the CT1s to want to do the review and the involvement of Rick Schultz formerly of Virtual Dynamics was one of those as was the technical aspects of the cables that at least on the virtual paper of the email I read seemed to be offering something unique and different to other cables on the market and lets be honest there are lots of cables on the market each one shouting loudly about what they do that is so different to the rest.

This was Jonas pitch to me:

‘It features a new patent pending technology called Magnetic Conduction. It uses controlled magnetic fields as the pathway for the signal. Third Party testing at the University of Toronto has shown dramatically reduced distortion and increased signal to noise ratio compared to conventional cables.

We know that a new cable company appears every week and the general
reaction is ‘not another one.

Consider the following points of interest

- Magnetic Conduction gives measurable reductions in THD and IHD, with
improved signal-to-noise ratio - 5 patents pending – RCA connector designed from the ground up, with over 40 parts – A new theory and execution in cable design that is totally original’

After reading the above he had me but I didn’t realise it would be very many months before the cables would arrive but as they say ‘all good things come to those that wait’ even if they have forgotten about them.

Product Description and In-depth Technical Details.

What I received sitting in very long clear plastic bags – not how they are supplied these days – were two 1 m silvery white, fairly thin, fairly flexible interconnects with a separate left and right channel cable. Each was terminated with very long beautifully made connectors, these being custom designed and made exclusively by High Fidelity Cables – more on the Pinlock connectors in a moment or two.

The cables are coaxial and directional with small arrows to indicate the direction and require a few hundred hours of run in before reaching their final stable sound – though they sound great from new but do improve over time.

One of my big fears before getting these cables and there were no photos at the time of Jonas contacting me re these cables was that they would be like Virtual Dynamics products and very hard to use. I recall trying a set of VD mains cables once and it was a case of dressing the system around the cable i.e they were very stiff, hard to bend and could lift small buildings with their springiness not so the HFC cables which are fairly easy to work with bar two things.

I will get the only negatives out of the way right from the off, the unique technology these cables use requires a much longer than normal connector and as such you need to allow lots of room behind your equipment at least 6 inches (15 cms) I feel to allow for the connector and a gentle curve in the cable. This is due to the Pinlock connectors being 3 inches (8 cms) long – possibly the longest RCA connectors in audio.

The second issue won’t be an issue for you if you have well made and well secured RCA furniture on your equipment, as the Pinlock RCAs on the HFC CT1 cables have possibly the strongest grip I have ever come across in that they are hard to get on and off. The grip is like the Vulcan death grip and I can imagine these killing many rubbish quality RCA sockets – so you have been warned. I must say getting these on and off during the review was a challenge especially as at times I was doing comparisons with other cables and trying them on various bits of kit, thankfully all my equipment is well made so no RCA sockets were harmed or killed during the making of this review though all were gripped very, very tightly. a grip that never changed during the course of the review.

And Now for the Technology bit…..

In Jonas initial email he listed the following aspects of the CT1s unique design and I will quote from High Fidelity Cables website to outline these in detail as they not only deserve but require:

‘Magnetic Conduction is a patented method of signal transfer for electrical energy. It uses a controlled magnetic field as the pathway for the signal. Testing at the University of Toronto show dramatically reduced distortion and increased signal to noise ratio compared to typical cables. The conductor is a unique and proprietary alloy specifically designed to work with this technology.

Pinlock Plugs

Traditional RCA connectors cause the signal to micro arc across the resistive pathway of the connection. Our patent pending PinLoK RCA connector has an oversized pin that will compress to enter a normal RCA socket. Spring tension then continues to push and expand the inserted pin for maximum contact pressure. This increase in surface contact lowers the amount of micro arcing and reduces distortion.

Magnetic Wave Guide

Skin effect in a cable is created by opposing magnetic forces which cause the signal to push to the extreme outer edges of the conductor. Our magnetic wave guide technology creates a tunnelling effect focusing the magnetic force into the middle of the conductor. This eliminates the cause of skin effect and preserves the time and phase aspect of the original signal.

Mechanical vibration decoupling

Micro vibrations are introduced into an audio system by a multitude of sources and will follow the signal path looking to dissipate to a larger mass or point of stress. Each of our cables feature extensive mechanical vibration decoupling. Multiple conductive plates made with a specialized powdered material are used to dampen the vibration transfer within the connector itself.

Inteli Shield

High Fidelity Cables uses a dual shielded coaxial design that has extremely high rejection capability. This coaxial design is combined with Magnetic Conduction’s patented ability to control unwanted electro magnetic interference. This particular geometry gives all our cables a class leading ability to filter out unwanted radio waves (RFI) and stray magnetic fields (EMI).

Micro Signal Transfer

Quiet passages of music and subtle audio details are represented by lower power electrical signals. In conventional cables these micro signals are easily prone to loss and distortion because they lack enough current to move through the conductor. Lab testing has shown Magnetic Conduction technology to preserve and keep these micro signals intact, resulting in large performance gains for audio system reproduction.’

‘What is Magnetic Conduction?

Magnetic Conduction is a patented method for signal transfer. The technology was developed by Magnetic Innovations LLC. As implemented by High Fidelity Cables it uniquely offers a magnetic as well as electrically conductive pathway for signal transfer. This technology operates in several ways:

Creating Magnetic Force in the Conductor

To appreciate the impact of Magnetic Conduction technology, it is important to understand that an electrical signal is always accompanied by a magnetic field. It is the use of the magnetic element of signal transfer that makes the CT-1 fundamentally different as a conductor technology. Magnetic Conduction maximizes the magnetic as well as the electrical force.

An electrical signal is strongly motivated to follow a magnetic field, as demonstrated by experiments in which electricity/plasma is attracted or repelled by magnetic fields. Our “Magnetic Mapping” process is used to “align” magnetic poles at each end of the cable in a proprietary and directed way so as to “draw” the electrical signal through the conductor. In effect, we use magnetism to keep the electrical signal flow aligned and to minimize the random pathways for electrons within and along the conductor. In the CT-1, the entire cable is directionally magnetized to promote signal transfer where resistance to the signal is highest and where the greatest losses can take place.

Pre-Applying Magnetic Force to the Input Connector

In the Magnetic Conduction process, we minimize signal distortion, particularly in lower level signals that may otherwise be distorted as a result of resistance in the transfer. By ‘pre-applying’ a magnetic field to the signal cable, Magnetic Conduction preserves the energy that an electrical signal otherwise loses when electrons jump from one ionic core to another, i.e., from a component’s output connector to an interconnects male input connector. This results in more faithful transmission of low-level signal elements.

Enhancing Signal Flow

The PinLok CT-1 connector uses magnetic force to focus the signal into the center of the connector and transfer that signal into the CT-1 conductor. The CT-1 conductor is made from highly permeable alloy that, once attached to the connectors, becomes fully magnetized. The signal then follows this magnetically and electrically conductive pathway. This pathway is magnetically active, as the PinLok RCA at the exit end of the conductor is magnetically “pulling” the signal through the conductor. The magnetic field applied at the input and output connectors controls eddy currents, forcing electrical signals to ‘flow’ in only one direction — along the magnetic field through the conductor from source to termination. This allows us to use an entirely metallic connector that minimizes eddy currents, improving signal flow.

Employing a Unique Conductor

The conductor of the CT-1 is composed of a proprietary alloy. The unique conductor itself becomes part of the patent-pending process because it is attached to the magnetized PinLok connectors. The CT-1 conductor is wrapped in Teflon, well known for its excellent dielectric character. The conductor is made in a coaxial configuration. The inner core of the CT-1 is encased in a braided sleeve that serves as the ground connection. This allows the enveloping ground element to mitigate the potential for noise reaching the center conductor. With this design, cables can be routed without concern for crossing power cables or picking up random noise. The coaxial design also helps to focus magnetic energies back into the cable core. This supports both the magnetic and the electrical transfer functions.

The advantage is a light, flexible, low noise, low loss and highly functioning technology for transferring an audio signal. The effects are cumulative with the addition of each Magnetic Conduction device. The technology works for both AC and DC and for power and signal transmission.’

Benefits of the PinLok Connector

Our mechanical design of the connector improves signal flow for reasons other than the applied magnetic fields. PinLok is designed to improve signal transfer and help overcome the weakest link in the audio system — the mechanical connection where the signal must migrate from the female sleeve to the male pin of the RCA. In order for a traditional male pin to fit inside the female sleeve, the pin must be smaller in diameter than the sleeve. This creates a gap that the signal will have to cross over, and this gap creates the opportunity for signal loss and distortion. The amount of surface contact of the signal carrying elements in traditional RCA connectors is minimal; and the less contact, the greater the resistance. For this reason, the CT-1 PinLok connector applies a unique split pin-ball style male termination. The uncompressed ball at the end of the CT-1 connector is designed to be larger in diameter than the female sleeve. Insertion pressure collapses the split ball, while spring pressure expands the ball and creates maximum contact area, which lowers electrical resistance.

Beyond this, the CT-1 connector is coated on the ball with a unique conductive polymer called Stabilant 22. This polymer becomes conductive in the presence of signal transfer and helps to reduce resistance even further. The connector also includes mechanical damping to lower distortions caused by the transfer of mechanical noise. Each CT-1 PinLok connector is made up of 55 individual custom made parts.

The Results

Once a CT-1 interconnect has been placed into a system, an organized magnetic field resides along the cable to help guide the signal. Once the signal leaves the CT-1, it maintains a magnetic property for a significant distance before randomization occurs as electrons rebound in and around ionic cores of the electrical pathway. Installing a second or third CT-1 in the signal path further enhances the magnetic attraction and helps to pull the signal through the audio system, as each CT-1 will magnetically map a signal path and maintain non-random signal transmission through the system. This mapping effect can be applied in interconnects, speaker cables, and power cables. It can also be applied internally inside loudspeakers, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, power conditioners, and such. Applying more of this technology is desirable, as each cable or component incorporating it will aid in greater efficiency of transferring signals and result in a more resolute audio system.

Lab Testing

A testing facility in Canada contracted by Magnetic Innovations LLC tried testing very low level signals, as low as -59 dB from a full signal strength of 2 volts. They discovered that long after conventional audio cables significantly obscured test signals, High Fidelity Cables were still at work clearly transferring this low level information. In controlled tests, a system wide reduction of 14% THD and 14% IMD was measured. Signal to noise ratio improved by 1.5 dB which is significant. This test was conducted by a third party in a controlled environment, using an RCA cable with Magnetic Conduction technology (these results will vary with different systems).

Patent Approval

Magnetic Innovations LLC has now been granted U.S. Pat. No. 8,272,876.’

All of the above reads brilliantly but what about the reality of the claims…..

Reference System

The review system was as follows: Balanced Audio Technology VK300se integrated amplifier, Anthony Gallo Reference SA amplifier, Anthony Gallo Reference 3.1 speakers, Moon Andromeda CD player, Marantz SA7, Acer 1810TZ notebook, Freecom 2TB hard drive, HP 22 inch screen, Freecom 2TB hard drive, Ifi Audio iUSB Power USB power filter. Digital cabling: Wireworld Ultraviolet, Starlight Red, XLO. Analogue cabling: Atlas Mavros RCA to RCA, XLR to XLR, Atlas Mavros speaker cable, QED Genesis speaker cable. Mains: the computer aspect of the system was isolated via a Mark Grant 8 way distribution, EC Audio Pandora’s box hooked to the Acer. Main cables were Audience Au24, Analysis Plus Power Oval silver and Mark Grant 2.5. Equipment tables were Clearlight Audio Aspekt racks, SSC isolation platforms, Bright Star Audio Isonodes and Sound Mechanics M8 cones. I also used Telos caps to cover unused sockets both in and out.

Music Used

The Dali Demo CD

Thomas Dolby – Aliens Ate My Buick

Dead Can Dance – Into the Labyrinth

A Concern…..

One thing that did concern me before taking on the review is that for the most part my reference system is balanced in its functionality comprising of truly differential balanced designs (2) and as such using the RCA outputs and inputs over the balanced XLR ones automatically puts a bit of a downer on overall sound quality so naturally I was concerned that music played via the RCA outs on the Moon Andromeda CD player into my Balanced Audio Technology VK300 se integrated amplifier’s RCA inputs would mean I was perhaps not hearing the HFC CT1 interconnects to their fullest, the balanced design of the equipment putting the single ended nature of the cables at a disadvantage in comparison with my Atlas Mavros XLR cables in any comparison I might do with them – something which is natural enough to do during any review as one listens in isolation then compares to known references (3) However as things turned out I need not have worried about this.

Let the Listening Begin

After returning from holiday in September 2012 I began during the running in process to listen but only at a fairly low volume level and only in a casual way to this cable and to be honest as I had a number of ongoing, upcoming reviews I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what I was hearing except that it was quite good even though I had the volume turned down way low.

I had fully intended in doing the review sometime after the AMR DP777 (originally scheduled to be completed and published in November 2012) but as things turned out all my reviews bar one were shelved after my Dad died suddenly in November 2012 so it was not until more recently that I have begun listening again to the HFC CT1 and what a revelation that has been – frankly I feel that I have been missing out on one of the best parties of all time by not using the CT1 in all that time – doh!!!

Whether connected to my Marantz SA7 or the Moon Andromeda the High Fidelity Cables CT1s have been incredible in that they have allowed much more of the music to come through than any other cables I own or have tried before in this system and by quite a marked margin and as this equipment is all balanced in design I wonder how much more there is to be had when the CT1 XLR cables are available – some time in the future.

I know its an oft used and possibly abused thing in reviewing to describe a product as revelatory (and some will call you out if you say this too often) but these interconnects are exactly that, in that I have been hearing things in well known, well trod music for the first time and please trust me on this I know these tracks inside out or I thought I did. The degree of clarity these cables brought to my system was incredible but what was also amazing is that this was achieved without spotlighting, hyper detailing or drawing attention to any part of the frequency band over the other. Music played through my system with these cables in place was presented with an effortless, organically natural musicality that I have rarely heard before – not only was the sonic advantage that balanced connection normally imparted levelled but it was in many areas surpassed and not subtly – however my gut feeling is that even with all that a set of balanced CT1s would raise the game even further as my system components are balanced by design and thus perform to their best used that way.

Getting down to the nitty gritty of comparisons to my reference cables wasn’t too hard as the CT1s don’t really hide their lights under a bushel.

Listening to Thomas Dolby’s wonderful album Aliens Ate My Buick – an album I have been listening to both for pleasure and as an assessment tool since the late 80s was quite a revelation as I kept hearing things I had not heard before.

The Keys to her Ferrari had more acoustic air, depth, dimensionality to the soundstage and more body to the instruments and vocals than with my reference Atlas Mavros cables. The music ebbed and flowed with dynamics from macro to micro happening effortlessly and no obvious drag, shifts in pace and volume reproduced as if this was a live recording rather than a studio construct. In fact switching back and forth between the Atlas Mavros XLRs and the High Fidelity Audio CT1s left me feeling that music via the CT1s just had a more organic and less rushed feel. This is where I will struggle a bit to exactly describe what I was hearing but via the balanced connection music sounded rushed, almost frenetic, whereas via the CT1s music sounded more natural and relaxed.

In typing that I know I am not really getting it right, as to the reader they will perceive that I am saying the CT1s sounded laid back, relaxed and dead in comparison and that is not the case at all: as music sounded right via the CT1s with all the pace, drive and dynamics one expects from the instruments and music listened to but via the Mavros/balanced connection it sounded more like a race to get to the finish.

At 3 mins into the track I was left with my mouth hanging open as the degree of depth, clarity and separation of the instruments within the acoustic was breathtaking. I was hearing things in away I had just not heard them before and hearing round them in away I had not before. I am well aware I have wrote about instruments and vocalists having more body and dimension before and indeed each listening experience in the past has rendered more reality to the music being listened to but the CT1s took that further than before and truly were a revelation as not only was there a front, bottom, top, and sides to the musical performances I listened to but there was also now a back, as these cables allowed me to hear subtle acoustic clues and reflections of sound that gave reality to the rear of instruments and vocalists.

Micro details, once buried in the recordings, there but less clear, now stood clear exposed by the CT1s clarity. This was not as I have said earlier done with any added emphasis, or exaggeration, everything was in its correct place just obvious now where once upon a time these subtle musical details where obscured. In away using the CT1s was like moving from listening to MP3s to full bandwidth vinyl, CD or SACD. Where once subtle musical clues, masked by other louder more obvious ones where obscured, hidden they now took their place as part of the overall performance – no longer hidden – truly the window cleaner was in but with new cleaning solutions and equipment.

The opening of the track Pulp with its beautifully played bass lines was breathtaking as once again the CT1s let me hear more of the music. Moving onto the albums epic track Budapest by Blimp left me once again shocked by how much newly heard detail was in this recording.

The haunting sensuality for the ears that this piece of music is and always has been, beautiful in its simple beginnings but growing as new layers of musical information build to create an epic experience. Via the CT1s the track was laid bare in all its gentle complexity, every layer audible, in its own space and three dimensional reality.

One test as to how good the resolving power of a system or component is, is how it reproduces the massed choir of voices in the almost foot ball stadium melae towards the end of the track and via the CT1 cable I heard more of the individual voices in this section of the track than before but it was the single voice coming in at 4 mins and 37 seconds that truly blew me away, as for the first time it stood completely clear in its own acoustic space and was very solid and distinct. Also during this track many layers of Thomas Dolby’s own voice being used in a backing capacity were much more obvious than before and on a few occasions the degree of depth and acoustic around these was quite amazing.

Switching to Stimela by Hugh Masekeala another track I know intimately well was also breathtakingly good in all the areas already mentioned in regards to the Thomas Dolby album and once again switching to the Atlas Mavros reduced the degree of clarity and depth of image layering that the CT1 cables had revealed.

As I had been listening to Into the Labyrinth by Dead Can Dance a lot recently I had a good listen to this album with the CT1s and once again I heard a lot of things I had not heard or noticed before.

During the Carnival is Over, Brendan Perry’s voice had greater emotional content than I had noticed before and I put that down to the greater clarity of the CT1 over the Mavros as I felt there were better insights given by the CT1 in regards to phrasing and intonation of Brendan’s vocals thus bringing more emotion to the simple vocal style used by him on this track.

As on other albums I listened to during reviewing the High Fidelity Audio cables this Dead Can Dance album was also exhibiting more depth of image, instrument separation, focus and clarity with the Moon Andromeda hooked up by them, rather than via the what should on paper be – and in my past experience – the superior balanced inputs, connected via Atlas Mavros (4) XLR cables, and on this occasion, with this particular RCA cable wasn’t.

Towards the end of the review period I hooked the AMR DP777 DAC up via these cables and was pleasantly surprised – though I guess I should not have been – to find that doing so narrowed the gap between the AMR DP777 computer set up and the Moon Andromeda CD player – which was still better (5) but not by as great a margin as it had been before hooking the CT1s up to the DP777.

Conclusions

To say I was quite shocked by how well and big a difference these single ended cables brought to my balanced system is putting it mildly. Normally everything is connected up – that can be – by XLR cables and sounds better that way and by a usually large percentage but on this occasion that was not the case as I have already said so frankly this has really put the cat among the pigeons re my normal expectation as to how balanced outperforms single ended.

High Fidelity Cables make claims re how their cable technology does the following things: ‘This coaxial design is combined with Magnetic Conduction’s patented ability to control unwanted electro magnetic interference. This particular geometry gives all our cables a class leading ability to filter out unwanted radio waves (RFI) and stray magnetic fields (EMI)’ and ‘that long after conventional audio cables significantly obscured test signals, High Fidelity Cables were still at work clearly transferring this low level information. In controlled tests, a system wide reduction of 14% THD and 14% IMD was measured. Signal to noise ratio improved by 1.5 dB which is significant. This test was conducted by a third party in a controlled environment, using an RCA cable with Magnetic Conduction technology’

These are the areas that balanced technology is usually superior to single ended audio designs, thus giving superior reduction of noise floor, distortions and interference which allows more of the music to be heard but in the case of these cables they have levelled the playing field and better it in a balanced audio system. As I said earlier in this review, I wonder how much better the level of performance in my system would be by being able to hook it up fully via balanced CT1 cables, the very though makes me grin broadly as my feeling is that this would be spectacular.

I have listened to lots of cables over the years and usually the differences and improvements they bring over others are quite subtle and writing about them in the context of a review can sometimes make those differences and improvements sound more than they are in reality, but in the case of the High Fidelity Cables CT1 interconnects, and the superior sound quality they brought to my system, these improvements were very marked indeed and I hope I have done full justice in my prose to that reality.

As with all reviews I do and recommendations the usual caveats apply re not buying before you try in your own system – as your mileage may vary – but I will thoroughly recommend the High Fidelity Cables CT1 cables even to the point of suggesting you might also like to try them in a balanced set up, but with the strong suggestion you wait till the XLR versions are available. For those with single ended systems it really in my view is a no brainer to put these cables at the top of your to listen to list.

The High Fidelity Cables CT1 interconnects are a stunning revelation, are revolutionary and a major achievement – in my view – in interconnect designs. I for one can’t wait to see what Rick Schultz and High Fidelity Cables come up with next – well done!

Neil

Product – High Fidelity Cables CT1

Retail Price (USA) $1600 per 1m stereo pair

Source of Loan – Manufacturer

High Fidelity Cables
3941 Legacy Drive
Suite 204, B-230
Plano, Texas 75023
USA
Website: www.highfidelitycables.com
Email: info@highfidelitycables.com
Telephone: +1-972-312-1902

(1) Over the time period AIHFA has been in existence I have turned down quite a few review opportunities but if I have any doubt re a products suitability to my set up, room or even my own likes and dislikes which I try to factor out but can’t always so any major aversions such as my disliking the sound of horn drivers does factor into what reviews I do or don’t do. Anyway in the round I always feel it better to explain the issues, give the pluses and minuses, say no or see if the company in question wants to take a risk re sending me an item or not.

(2) For those interested in the technical aspects of Balanced, dual mono, differential designs you can read the following article by Bill Whitlock of Jensen Transformers http://sound.westhost.com/articles/balanced-interfaces.pdf and this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_audio

(3) As yet Nigh Fidelity Cables don’t offer a balanced XLR version of the CT1 as they are still developing an XLR connector, which like their Pinlock RCA plug will be a totally new, from the ground up design incorporating their unique magnetic conduction technology.

(4) Part of doing any review is comparing items to your existing references in this the Atlas Mavros cables that I have been using and enjoying for quite a number of years so I hope my finding the CT1 interconnects better is not seen as me rubbishing these fine cables but as they are twice the price this should also be seen as no disgrace.

(5) See the Adventures in High Fidelity Audio AMR DP777 review http://www.adventuresinhifiaudio.com/10/04/2013/the-abbingdon-music-research-dp777-dac-crossing-the-rubicon-or-how-i-learnt-to-love-computer-audio/

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio…..except for High Fidelity Cables product photos and recording artists album cover. Copyright in those cases belongs with their original publishers.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without written permission or legal action may result.

I am well aware this review is quite late – it should have been completed and published Dec 2012 and is also now out of sequence so to speak with the Wireworld USB cable reviews and the iFi Audio iDAC and iUSB Power reviews which should have followed it but I hope I am forgiven as a personal loss meant I shelved most of the reviewing I was doing around November last year and as such the AMR DP777 review was shelved – though I was about half way through doing it – until recently when I finished it off.

I will warn you before hand that this is probably the longest review I have written but the subject required it and so it is what it is part product review, part getting to grips with technology and part personal travelogue as attitudes changed and a mind opened. One thing this review has taught/reminded me, is it is wise to never say never as these can be famous last words.

I hope you enjoy it.

Neil

Those who know me well, know of my fondness for AMR both as a company and their products – I own a CD77 – and I have also known and respected Vincent Luke of AMR for quite a few years since I met him during one of the Heathrow Park Inn shows when Real HiFi were the UK distributors of AMR, so any opportunity to hear and review a new – well relatively new – product fills me with great excitement and in this case a little trepidation. How so you might ask?

Well because this particular review will by necessity take me somewhere I have no real desire to go either personally or professionally and that is into the world of computer audio. The cold hard facts are I am an analogue kind of guy in my thinking and in my day to day life, I have not embraced the virtual digital world to any great extent – in fact one could say I hold it at arms length much as one might hold a snake and I don’t really intend to do digital virtual re reading or listening to music until I have no choice. The world of downloaded books and music to me at least smacks of the Emperors new clothes in that you part with cold hard cash – in this day and age of austerity and increasing unemployment that cash is increasingly hard to come by – and many use it to buy nothing tangible, nothing physical, which to my mind is crazy.

In the good old analogue days one bought a paper book or music stored on a physical format and one had a real world relationship with it. You could hold it, feel it, smell it and one had to actively physically use it- oh yes and you actually owned it. One read one book at a time and one listened to an album – remember vinyl – the whole way through, not as a series of sound bites. To my way of thinking doing anything else leads to a shallower relationship with books and music, one in which the quality and art is lost to a base line commodity but there is sadly in fact no actual commodity as one – or so it has been revealed recently – only rent the books or music you download. These items you buy don’t belong to you, you can’t pass them on, lend them, and at any time – of their choosing – the company who supplied them might revoke your licence to read or listen. Truly to me we are seeing the greatest marketing con of the century getting people to pay for nothing.

However regardless of my thoughts and incredulity on this matter – I can stand like King Canute waving my arms all I like but the digital download waves will keep on coming – as many music consumers and enthusiasts are now downloading music onto their computers – MAC or PC – and are listening to music that way, feeding it via a USB cable into a DAC and then into their HiFi amplifier and this is where the AMR DP 777 digital to analogue converter comes in.

The AMR DP777

The DP 777 is very much a tale of two cities, on the one hand we have the old world charm of red book CD digital and in the other we have the bright brash and less substantial world of computer audio and its brightest star for quality HD audio. This DAC is in reality two in one with neither section being a compromise on the other.

The other trump card up its sleeve is that the DP777 is also an analogue and digital pre-amplifier with two RCA inputs to route analogue signals out to a power-amplifier. For my system and its level of complexity I would need more analogue inputs and at least one fixed level analogue output to feed my tape decks but for the modern audio enthusiast who does not use something as quaint and antiquated – their possible thoughts not mine – the DP777 will be more than all they will need with two BNC/XLR digital inputs, two RCA and fibre optic ones. The only obvious omission is a digital output to facilitate digital recording to a CDR or similar machine – also now viewed by many as quaint legacy technology.

The AMR DP777 DAC is broadly similar in look to all of AMR’s other products in the 777 range and build quality is to a very high standard with all parts fitting together well and all inputs and outputs solid and well mounted. The fascia is brushed aluminium with the AMR logo recessed on the left upper side and the model details on the lower left side.

The middle of the DAC’s fascia is taken up with a large display screen taking up about a 3rd of it and its easy to read from quite a distance away. Below the screen are 5 touch buttons controlling power on off (stand bye), next two input selection back and forward, and the last two volume up and down if you are using the DP777 as a pre-amplifier.

The DP777 comes with a beautifully made all metal remote that gives the user access to altering the display brightness through four steps to off (I thought the DP777 sounded slightly better with the display switched off), and the following functions:.kHz/SAMPLING: to cycle through the different output frequencies. ZERO JITTER: for the highest sound quality. When engaged, a small “J” will be displayed. When the GMT Clock System dynamically tracks a change in the clock frequency, the “J” will flash. INPUT selection: to select the previous/next input.MUTE: to mute the output. AMR: auto-selection of the optimal settings for the best sound quality. Signal Polarity: hold down the AMR button for 2-3 seconds to change the signal polarity. HD Dual DAC selection: to select: HD DAC (best with 24/88.2kHz-192kHz recordings) or Classic DAC (best with 16/44.1-48kHz recordings). FILTER: to select: HD DAC: Organic / MP Listen / Apodising 808 / Traditional. Classic DAC: Bit-Perfect I or Bit-Perfect II. VOLUME Up/Down: controls the analogue volume control. Auto-bypass at full volume (0dB).

All in all the DP777 is a very well equipped DAC with plenty of features to try. I found myself after a bit of playing around that for listening I preferred the Organic setting both with the HD DAC and Bit Perfect 2 with the Classic DAC which is a broadly similar setting to Studio Master 2 on the AMR CD77.

There is a lot of technology packed under the hood and we will look at that next.

Technology

I will let AMR speak for themselves re describing the DP777 DAC I quote from their website:

‘High-Definition (HD) digital audio is redefining the quality of recorded audio for the 21st Century. Having created some of the most natural and captivating music sources on the CD standard, AMR has turned its attention to High-Definition audio and in its own imitable way, taken the road less travelled.

Our first objective was to deliver the maximum quality of music from the existent libraries of CD standard audio (be it on silver disks or as ripped lossless files) equally balanced with the requirement to also deliver the maximum music quality from the new HD audio formats. We meticulously auditioned the full array of HD DAC chipsets and whittled the field down to one of the latest and most outstanding.

Again, the standard textbook implementation was shunned as we applied the same assiduous design and execution of the multi-award winning CD-77 to unleash the full, latent potential of the HD format. Each stage of the signal path is a technical magnum opus focused upon one objective: the most enchanting and pulsating performance. The result is the DP-777 Digital Processor.’

‘The DP-777 has the same, unparalleled DNA as every other AMR component; with extraordinary digital advancements never seen before in any converter:

Gemini Digital Engine (GDE)* Unlike any other converter, at the core of the Gemini Digital Engine, there is not one, but 2 distinct chipsets that define their generation; one latest generation High-Definition 32-Bit DAC to produce the best sound from HD recordings and one Classic Multibit 16-Bit DAC to produce the best sound from CD. These two “non-identical twins” deliver the best of both worlds in a way that is simply unmatched. Further, the Gemini Digital Engine pushes these chipsets beyond what is thought possible. Using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to handle the core digital duties, including the memory buffer and the signal processing, the outcome are two specially-commissioned DAC chipsets that perform well beyond the textbook.

Zero Jitter Mode* The Zero Jitter Mode utilises AMR’s ingenious Global Master Timing (GMT)* and Intelligent Memory System (IMS) to totally eliminate jitter coming from the source. The Global Master Timing clock system intelligently actualises over 28 million different real-time clock frequencies to exactly match the dynamic input clock down to 0.001Hz (i.e. ~0.04ppm accuracy) of the source. With this new and completely jitterless clock coupled to the Intelligent Memory System (IMS), the GMT/IMS system lock out source jitter once and for all.

24/192kHz Asynchronous USB Input The DP-777′s 24/192kHz Asynchronous USB Audio Class 2.0 Input is a true asynchronous decoupling of the DAC system clock from the computer that is also fully future-proofed.’

‘HD Valve Digital input (HD-VDi)* This is AMR’s atypical brainchild of using a New Old Stock (NOS) 6N11 high-speed valve designed to operate into several 100Mhz to amplify and purify the high-definition SPDIF signal with zero feedback. Clearly visible on an oscilloscope, with HD-VDi, the signal changes from a blurred to clean and sharp SPDIF signal. Any deficiency in the incoming SPDIF is completely removed.

OptiValve Output Stage Two NOS valves perform the left and right channel analogue amplification and output buffering duties using the same demanding approach as the CD-77/CD-777; where one half amplifies and the other half buffers without any negative feedback loop. No solid-state devices are present in the signal path.

High-End Pre-Amplifier The DP-777′s direct-coupled/buffered analogue pre-amplifier stage is capable of accepting two analogue sources in addition to the signal internal to the DP-777. The exceptionally precise 71-step resistor matrix-based Analogue Volume Control system delivers unmatched transparency. To attain the highest sound quality, no digital volume control is anywhere to be found.’

*: World’s first, AMR exclusive.

DP777 Features

Once again I will let AMR tell you about this off their website.

‘Gemini Digital Engine(GDE)®

Sonically speaking, the textbook implementation of HD DACs leaves a lot to be desired. This justified the decision to continue with the same innovative and comprehensive digital approach as the CD-777 and the CD-77 before that.

AMR’s HD Gemini Digital Engine is an ingenious implementation of two separate DACs; a HD 32-Bit DAC and a Classic 16-Bit DAC with Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to handle all core digital duties, including the memory buffer and managing the signal processing. AMR has in reality, created custom-built DAC chipsets to its exacting specifications which is akin to programming many discrete logic IC’s worth of circuit boards onto one chip. This approach is technically arduous and time-consuming, but is soon justified upon listening to just the first few notes of music from the DP-777.

Organic Digital Algorithm incorporating SMART®

At the top of AMR’s unique Digital Filter Algorithms is the “Organic Algorithm” which incorporates SMART®: (S)oft roll-off, (M)inimum-phase, (A)podising, (R)ingless, (T)echnology. This is AMR’s technical expertise at its very best where it has developed an original and comprehensive digital algorithm to address the sources of “digital ringing”; pre-ringing & post-ring in the recordings and in the playback of the DAC. Being the only manufacturer in the world with the “Organic” filter, in conjunction with the rest of the far-reaching digital and analogue implementation, the DP-777 is the first High-Definition DAC in the world that truly makes music to stir the soul.

OptiSampleHD®

AMR appreciates that “no one sound fits all” and that the highest quality of music reproduction is to ensure the original signal bit/sample rate is maintained all the way through. Hence, AMR developed the DP-777 with OptiSample® via both its High Definition and Classic Multibit DACs to ensure the original recording is preserved end-to-end.

The DP-777’s High Definition DAC offers: Organic, MP Listen, Apodising 808, and Traditional digital algorithm modes.

Under the DP-777’s Classic Digital DAC, the DP-777 offers: Bit-Perfect I and Bit-Perfect II filter modes.

All are all user-selectable, via the remote control and offer different perspectives on the sound but most important of all, reproduce the original recording to the highest degree.

Global Master Timing®/Intelligent Memory System®

Before the arrival of the DP-777, the issue of solving jitter introduced via SPDIF using a Phase Locked Loop (PLL) Clock recovery was seen as sufficient. However, this analogue “solution” to a digital problem is woefully inadequate yet is not even commonplace.

AMR’s Global Master Timing (GMT)/Intelligent Memory System (IMS) represent a total “out of the box” systematic digital solution that solves the digital SPDIF jitter issue once and for all. The Intelligent Memory System holds a large number of complete audio samples, so it may completely absorb a large amount of variation (jitter and drift) in the incoming signal, while still sending out data at a fixed and precise clock rate, regardless of variations in the incoming clock.

Central to the GMT clock system is an ultra-low jitter, quartz-driven clock system capable of producing over 28 million different frequencies. When engaged, the GMT system intelligently and dynamically controls the clock that drives the DAC chips and takes the data out of the memory buffer. The GMT Clock is set to precisely match the principal frequency of the incoming clock with a precision of better than 0.001Hz. Hence, if the frequency shifts from 192,000.002Hz to 192,000.003Hz over a period of minutes (drift) which is the minimum to be meaningful, the GMT clock will intelligently and precisely track the change.

Once the GMT clock has correctly calculated the incoming clock, the rate of updating the DAC’s clock with the minimal 0.001Hz step (~0.004ppm accuracy) step is at most, once every few minutes or less. As a result, the DAC clock is completely decoupled from the source and completely stable.

With the GMT clock that drives the DAC Chips and to clock the data out of the memory buffer at the same exact frequency as the incoming clock, there is nil jitter in the source clock, as there is no physical PLL link between the source clock and the clock driving the DAC Chips.

The GMT System is not a secondary PLL as used in some cases and some DACs since the late 1990′s, but an entirely new concept. Instead, GMT is a system that will completely block jitter and only react to compensate any slow drift in the clock source or to adapt to a change in sample rate.

The GMT Zero Jitter mode is available for all digital inputs including the USB input and is the new clock standard reference for the digital audio world.

Asynchronous 24/192 USB Input

The DP-777’s Asynchronous USB 24/192 means native and future-proofed playback on OSX and Windows.

Asynchronous USB 24/192 uses USB Audio Class 2.0 in Asynchronous Mode and is fully compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. It should be keenly stressed that USB Audio Class 2.0 should not be confused with USB 2.0. USB Audio Class 2.0 is required to support sample rates above 96kHz (that is, high-definition music). AMR is one of a handful of companies to have brought such a standard to market following the industry definition of the USB Audio standard.

Most USB DACs do not follow the global USB Audio standard and hence will require drivers for all PCs (including Macs, Linux) which may be unavailable and must be supplied by the manufacturer into perpetuity, for each new operating system.

By comparison, USB Audio Class 2.0 is built into Mac OSX and many versions of Linux and supported by Microsoft on Windows and is set to be recognised as an industry-wide standard to achieve native “plug & play” support in all future operating systems.

Asynchronous mode means the clocks are on the DAC side and the PC is synchronised to that stable clock. Compare this to the common way of USB audio workings where the DAC attempts to synchronise to the PC using a jitter inducing PLL to follow all the PC’s clock changes, be they caused by software directly modulating the clock or indirect clock modulation due to the varying processor loads (this is called software-induced jitter).’

‘By combining our Asynchronous USB Audio Class 2.0 connection with the Global Master Timing/Intelligent Memory System we are not only delivering future-proof, cutting-edge computer connectivity with virtually nil jitter, but we also completely remove the jitter of the clocks.

Crucially, the USB signal is completely decoupled (i.e. isolated) from the DP-777. So any power supply noise, RFI and ground noise from the PC is not able to enter and contaminate neither the DP-777 nor its signal.

Bit Perfection®

Presently, virtually all CD players and DACs are NOT “Bit-Perfect”. Such machines are only “Bit-Perfect” at the input interface section. None are truly “Bit-Perfect” end-to-end because the use of traditional digital filters will artificially manipulate the signal and the sonically damaging artefacts that result is readily detected by the human hear. Any DAC using oversampling (to any frequency) or asynchronous upsampling is NOT Bit-Perfect.

The DP-777 is one of a select few able to deliver a true, “Bit-Perfect” signal all the way through to the output as it preserves the signal integrity from the input (SPDIF/USB) right through to the pure valve analogue output stage.

HD SPDIF Inputs with Valve Digital input technology

The Compact Disk standard was never conceived with the notion of distinctly separate transport and DAC sections but once this became so, SPDIF was adopted as the method to link the two together. However, SPDIF is an analogue transmission system that uses what was originally a video signal format to transmit a digital system. Clearly, this is not an elegant solution as the SPDIF clock and signal are transmitted together as if the red, blue and green signals for a television were cobbled into a single run.

At AMR, to overcome this set of essentially analogue problems we devised a completely analogue solution. AMR’s proprietary Valve Digital input technology (VDi) is a world’s first: it is the use of the NOS 6N11 (high-speed valve operating into the 100MHz region) in a zero feedback circuit derived from military radar technology to re-establish the clean waveform of the original incoming signal from the two HD SPDIF Inputs.

Firstly, this ensures that even if the input SPDIF signal has an incorrect output level or poor waveform, the SPDIF input receiver will have a clean and perfect SPDIF signal to lock onto.

Secondly, as all SPDIF receivers use Schmitt Trigger input circuitry, the receiver will create a glitch noise at the trigger point, this noise travels back into the SPDIF cable, returning to the source component. It is this errant noise that is at least in part responsible for the major differences between SPDIF cables and sources in the input system of common DACs. As the HD-VDi isolates the SPDIF receiver from the outside world, HD-VDi eliminates the detrimental effect caused by this noise once and for all.

The DP-777’s HD SPDIF inputs employ a NOS valve input circuit for everything all the way up to the 24/192 high-definition standard. The result is clearly visible on an oscilloscope as the SPDIF signal is restored back to its perfect wave form. This input ensures the “right note at the right time” to give the music the “life” that is missing from all other DACs.

OptiValve®

AMR believes that having the ultimate in digital execution would count for little if the analogue section was not just as committed. Hence, the analogue section of the DP-777 utilises AMR’s OptiValve® analogue stage with zero negative feedback and NOS 6H1n-EV valves. The “EV” designation represents the premium version of this valve. Being a double triode per channel design; in the DP-777, one half amplifies and the other buffers. Rectification and filtering in the DP-777 uses zero-noise Schottky diodes with additional noise filtering, an electronic inductor and a virtual battery design. The analogue stage of the DP-777 is identical in concept and function to that of the CD-77. With no operational amplifiers or solid-state devices, this is a major factor behind the DP-777’s organic and “vinyl-like” sonic performance that will embarrass many a high-end DAC.

Direct-Coupled/Buffered Analogue Volume Control®

The DP-777’s Direct-Coupled, Buffered Analogue Volume Control (AVC) system is AMR’s ground up analogue volume control system that is both transparent yet dynamic across the whole 71-step range. The AVC gives a completely noiseless change of volume and virtually nil distortion but with more steps and finer resolution that betters even the best stepped attenuators. The AVC functions as a series of near perfect switches, with no ageing, no degradation and no wear. It is finely adjustable in 1dB steps but the beauty is the extreme transparency that is second only to the famous transformer volume control (TVC) approach first developed by Western Electric at the turn of the century. Partnered with a fitting power amplifier such as the AM-77 or AM-777 (in Power Amplifier mode), the signal path does not get any shorter, rendering the music virtually palpable.

OptiTrans®

AMR’s expertise in specialised transformer design for audio use has led to the development of transformers with individual windings that offer the sonic benefit of individual transformers without the space demands. Again, AMR has shunned the mainstream (and more cost-effective) approach to the use “off the shelf” transformers, preferring to have its own dedicated transformers, with multiple layers of shielding built-in, hand-wound and hand-made. Power supply is an integral part of circuit design and AMR’s steadfast approach has ensured the highest possible quality of music performance.

The Finest, Cherry-Picked Components

‘Underpinning the design of each and every AMR component is the use of premium components which were selected after careful evaluation and exhaustive listening. These include AMR silver leaf capacitors, Sanyo Oscon capacitors, precision wire wound resistors, 70um gold plated military-grade printed circuit boards, AMR’s own German-made premium film and foil capacitors, power supply polypropylene film Music Capacitors and zero-noise Schottky rectifiers. We positively encourage a closer inspection of the DP-777’s internal components.’

All fabulous looking and on paper sounding stuff but how does the DP777 DAC sound in reality? Let us see….

Review System and set up – a Journey of Discovery

For this review while my system didn’t change much I had to change my attitude about computer audio and thus throw away a lot of prejudice. Right from the off I decided to take the tiger by the tail and go for broke and thus review the DP777 both with a red book CD transport and a computer – in principal an easier thing to decide to do than it was in reality.

I am not the sharpest tool in the box re computing, I know enough html and the functionality of this site to run it with minimal help from my wonderful service provider but when it came to setting up a computer to act as a source for the DP777 that was a very different matter. I am however blessed with a very technical friend – thank you Lisa – and I am also very grateful for Vincent Luke of AMR and Simon Bennett of Absolute Analogue for their aid in preparing the computing infrastructure for this article.

However a number of issues confronted me right from the off and they were as follows: Which computer to use and would lower or higher specification make a difference re performance, environmental noise, USB cable lengths and quality? Which Media engine to use? To deal with the first issue I found rapidly that computer spec does indeed make a difference re the smooth running of the Media Engine used.

The two main ones that AMR recommend for use with the DP777 are J River 17 (now in 18 version for Windows8) and Winamp – they do also suggest I Tunes as well – and one Media Engine requires much more computing power to run smoothly over the other, or so it seemed.

J River is a wonderfully slick, very adjustable program that I found to be a joy to use once I had figured out it would only run smoothly on my fairly new Sony laptop (learning is a wonderful thing all will be revealed later on) as using J River with an older Acer notebook would after about an hours use result in drop-outs, some stuttering and eventually silence. When that occurred I had to go back into the control panel of the laptop and re set the AMR driver – ASIO based – to start the music again.

Using Winamp a much less complex Media Engine caused the Acer no issues but sadly Winamp for this application was less easily optimised in particular re ASIO set up – and yes I tried the Makio WASAPI ASIO plugin but alas it was infected with a virus so I was unable to try Winamp in full octane mode so to speak as the ASIO plugin they have available directly through them offers no adjustment at all – via my set up anyway – and would not play properly with 192 music.

Having spoken with Simon Bennett of Absoloute Analogue he explained to me that some laptop/desktop USB set ups can cause issues especially when using USB in from an external HD and USB out to the asynchronous USB input of the DAC. The issues he explained occurred as a result of the paralleling of the outputs and it would be better to break this chain by using say a Firewire output on the computer to the DAC (if equipped with such) or use a Firewire equipped HD drive and hook it to the Firewire input on an computer. Not being able to do this I decided to break the chain and try the SPDIF output on the Acer – not a coax but optical output – and after purchasing a suitable adaptor I gave this ago, and while the fibre optic method of data transfer won’t support 24/192 it did 24/96 quite happily.

I tried this configuration with Winamp first and there were no issues with sound break up, stuttering or silences and all in all this form of hook up sounded very good though not as good as J River had – when working – so I tried J River next.

Firstly I had to switch from the ASIO setting on Winamp – as this produced no sound – but switching to direct did. In direct comparison to Winamp J River was a bit louder but after compensating for that I felt that J River was the slightly more transparent, open, detailed and dimensional of the two media players, plus it played all the file types I had to hand whereas Winamp was unable to play some.

I still felt that the Acer laptop was perhaps still not quite up to spec enough to act as the middleman in this application, as a few stutters still occurred over several hours playback. As a left field thought I pressed into service an older Windows 7 Fujitsu laptop which shock horror played every type of file perfectly. I literally scratched my head and rubbed my beard in perplexity and wondered was something else screwing up the Acer’s play back ability.

However once a few issues where sorted out (see 1) I was able to use the Acer again with confidence, as no further issues for the whole review period arose – and it acted as middle man flawlessly – and I am still using it. I did briefly go back to using my Sony laptop but despite a slight improvement in sound quality obtained by linking the Freecom Hard Drive via an esata connection (I feel and others like the aforementioned Simon Bennett of Absolute Analogue feel that breaking the USB chain is a good thing if one can and the esata connection did that) with a Belkin lead I opted to stick with the Acer as the Sony is my day to day computer – I am writing this review on it – and I wanted to keep it free from being a music source.

Once stable playback was achieved consistently I could begin the review properly and that was the plan until a major life changing event occurred out of the blue.

A Pause

Just as I was beginning the more focussed listening sessions I feel ill with a very bad Flu that kicked the crap out of me and my Dad died suddenly from a massive heart attack – while he and I were talking on the phone and he was asking how I was – during my illness so the review and my life was paused for awhile and only resumed more recently. In the mean time I did do some more casual listening but it was half hearted and my review hat was well and truly locked away. The change in this came when a previously agreed review with a deadline (The Wireworld USB cables) really needed done (promised schedule) and so I began listening to the AMR DP777 more seriously again as part of that review and then the iFi Audio USB Power review which followed that one.

In reality the pause was a useful thing re the review as I learn’t more about optimising the Acer and the computer audio set up in general and thus a few additions and tweaks were made in the new year.

Further Optimisation

One of the main ways in getting the computer in my case the little Acer race tuned was to remove all surpfluous programs and as mentioned earlier removing a conflicting program and at Vincent of AMRs suggestion I downloaded Fidilizer (2) which can be used to suppress Windows functionality which is not focussed on music reproduction. I used this excellent freeware in audiophile mode as using it in its extreme form which shuts down some extra Windows functionality in the laptop that I found useful to have. Was there a difference in sound using extreme? Yes but only a slight one. I also found putting Bright Star Audio Isonodes isolation pucks under the laptop and the hard drive was also beneficial. The one big tweak I tried successfully was trying to improve the performance of the laptops PSU.

Now I am well aware that the quality of any PSU can have a big impact on overall performance in dedicated audio components but I was sceptical re laptop PSUs but I replace the mains cable to the Acer with a Mark Grant 2.5 into a clover leaf IEC adaptor which improved things but pressing an old EC Audio Pandora’s box mains filter into use brought about quite a marked improvement in sound quality. I plugged the cloverleaf adaptor directly into the Pandora’s box and the Acer’s PSU into it – with support below the PSU as other wise it would have been floating in mid air and possibly straining the cloverleaf adaptor by its weight. Replacing the stock PSU with a specialist custom linear one might have raised the bar more but not having one to hand I was still very happy with what the Pandora’s box brought to the party.

The next biggest improvement despite the DP777 not requiring any power for the USB digital input was adding the iFi Audio iUSB Power the full details of which you can read in the dedicated review of those items.

Doing all of this plus running the same USB cables from hard drive to laptop, then into the DAC directly or into the iFi Audio iUSB Power brought about further improvements.

The extra hours casual use on the DP777 was also valuable, as AMR and others feel this product like other AMR 777 series – like the 77 series also – need about 500 hours run in/use to reach their final stable sound.

Listening System Additions – further Evolution of a computer audio system

Normally the reviews I write take place over a three month period or less and the system equipment ancillaries are fairly fixed and stable coming from my own collection of equipment and accessories, I will however tweak add things to get the best out of the item in for review – though I do try to keep to the reference system when possible so as not to add too many variables to the review. However circumstances re this review were very different from normal so I hope dear reader you will forgive the somewhat evolutionary nature of this review. During this review I was very much doing on the job learning about computer audio as I went along and during the pause – mentioned above – a few extra items came along and as such – being beneficial to the review – were added to the review process and system.

Initially the ancillaries were a little more basic re digital cabling as I was using the supplied USB cable and then some Belkin Gold USB cables and despite the AMR DP777 still being new it was pretty obvious that the better over basic cables made a difference to the sound (3) After making the Wireworld Starlight cables my references I also reviewed the iFi Audio iUSB Power which also made a difference to the overall performance of the AMR DP777 so these items were made part of the review system.

Also added was a Mark Grant 8 way isolation mains distribution block which kept the computer items separate from the main system (4) which was also a worthwhile addition to the review system.

One other change of note was moving from a 2TB Iomega hard drive which was very noisy in use to a much quieter Freecom 2TB hard drive which had an esata output.

So during the main bulk of the review the system was as follows: Balanced Audio Technology VK300se integrated amplifier, Anthony Gallo Reference SA amplifier, Anthony Gallo Reference 3.1 speakers, Moon Andromeda CD player, Marantz SA7, Acer 1810TZ notebook, Freecom 2TB hard drive, HP 22 inch screen, Freecom 2TB hard drive, Ifi Audio iUSB Power USB power filter. Digital cabling: Wireworld Ultraviolet, Starlight Red, XLO. Analogue cabling: Atlas Mavros RCA to RCA, XLR to XLR, Atlas Mavros speaker cable, QED Genesis speaker cable. Mains: the computer aspect of the system was isolated via a Mark Grant 8 way distribution, EC Audio Pandora’s box hooked to the Acer. Main cables where Audience Au24, Analysis Plus Power Oval silver and Mark Grant 2.5. Equipment tables were Clearlight Audio Aspekt racks, SSC isolation platforms (I felt the DP777 sounded best on one of these in my system), Bright Star Audio Isonodes and Sound Mechanics M8 cones. I also used Telos caps to cover unused RCA and XLR inputs and outputs with some small improvement in sound but not as marked a one as was the case with the CD777.

Music

Dead Can Dance – Into The Labyrinth

I used a fair bit of music during the course of the review but I used this album a lot both as a 24 bit 88.2 FLAC HD file and both the CD and SACD layers of the Mobile Fidelity album the file was derived from.

The Review Proper – at last!

There is a wonderful musical rightness to listening to music via the DP777. Tonally it sits to the slightly warmer side of neutral, but its not despite using valves overly warm, sweet or rich in a sickly way. Bass is tight and detailed and the mid and treble are open and detailed with just the right amount of detail and openness. The soundstage is wide and deep when its part of the recording but not much forward of the front plane of the speakers and rather than having an overly analytical presentation one could say the DP777 is very musical, rather than etched or harsh. As I grow older I much prefer the more musical approach than being riveted to my listening seat by a machine gun presentation or a mailed fist in a thread bare velvet glove. Etched, spotlit detail is not how I hear music, even live and therefore I just don’t understand how some prefer this type of sound – as its just that sound and not music.

Using the DP777 as a conventional Red Book DAC with the Moon Andromeda, Marantz SA7, Micromega Dialogue and briefly an AMR CD777 as transports was interesting as once again the various qualities of the transports and digital outputs revealed themselves with varying degrees of soundquality. None sounded bad but the Moon Andromeda and the AMR CD777 sounded best with the DP777 so despite the AMR DP777 digital input implementation the quality of transport used had a direct effect on the sound still.

I enjoyed the CD777, DP777 combination and I did wonder for a moment or two if AMR might bring out a transport only, but in this day and age of dwindling interest in the silver discs I guess not but it was fun to day dream about such a pairing.

Trying the USB input on the CD777 which I didn’t do when I had that player in for review – I had no facility at that stage to do so – was interesting and a very fine sound was to be had but the DP777 was vastly better with a wider, deeper soundstage, better instrument separation, greater weight and scale and a richer palette of tonality. However in saying that the CD777 used as a USB DAC was certainly very good it was just that the standalone DAC was better as it should be and was.

I spent a lot more time exploring High Definition 24 bit 88, 96 and 192 music than listening to red book CDs via the DAC and over the period of time I was formally reviewing the DAC I was as I have mentioned earlier also on a steep learning curve and I found a number of things that improved playback, so optimising your computer or MAC front end is vital to getting the best from any computer audio DAC and certainly the quality of music via the DP777 was much better at the end of the review than the beginning and this was not down to run in as removing or deactivating the things I had put in place reduced the listening experience.

No doubt a seasoned computer audiophile would have had all these things in place right from the get go but I didn’t and I found the process very interesting and rewarding re getting to where I am at now.

The Elephant in the room.

Many computer audio enthusiasts claim that CD is dead and that most computer audio set ups are better than most CD players. I left to last comparing the same track by Dead Can Dance on my Moon Andromeda, Marantz SA 7 against the fully optimised Acer, DP777 combination.

Using Dead Can Dance’s song The Carnival is Over both as an HD 24bit/88.2 track, SACD and CD – same source Mobile Fidelity (WPCB – 10076/SAD 2711) SACD of Into the Labyrinth – I listened to the DP777 DAC first and thoroughly enjoyed the track – one of my favourite pieces of Dead Can Dance music.

The DP777 reproduced the beautifully sensual ebb and flow of the track, with multi layered instruments occupying their own acoustic space with Brendan Perry’s voice front and centre possessing great strength, emotion and also well defined within its own acoustic as a three dimensional fully formed entity.

Behind and surrounding Brendan all the instruments were easy to hear and follow either as a whole or individually. Certainly as I had improved the cabling and rest of the computer set up this track had always demonstrated these improvements as layer upon layer of obscuring grudge was removed. I know the cleaned window is oft used as an analogy to describe these sorts of improvements but each stage of learning and tweaking brought about an improvement that resulted in the wonderful music I was hearing and very much enjoying.

However as track 4 slipped into track 5 I halted things to see just how much of the anti CD rhetoric I have been reading was valid so onto the Moon Andromeda went the SACD of Into the Labyrinth and the CD layer was played.

I guess those making sweeping claims for the irrelevance of CD as a format have not been able to compare their computer set ups to many CD players in the class of the Moon Andromeda as frankly the difference in sound quality was not subtle but these improvements might not suit all.

The Carnival is Over via the moon had greater weight, presence, air and space, instrument separation, dimensionality, texture, nuance and detail. The soundstage was wider deeper and slightly more forward and despite being a tad leaner tonally and louder once the level was adjusted to match the DP777 the Andromeda was still the better sounding source. However after a lot of comparison between the HD track and the CD I felt that the despite the obvious shortcomings – as there should be to my mind between a £3500 DAC and a £10000 CD player – there was a beautifully beguiling and musical presentation from the DP777 that despite not being as good in the hifi areas as the Moon more than held its own in the pure musical enjoyment stakes.

I next compared the Marantz SA7 playing the track as an SACD to the HD version of the track and the overall sound was much closer to the DP777 though the Marantz was still better and in similar areas to where the Moon had been. However the gap between the two was narrower and the Moon was still the more open and detailed device but truth be told the presentation in comparison to the AMR DP777 and Marantz SA7 was more the afore-mention mailed fist in a velvet glove – albeit a pretty thick velvet glove – to the more musical approach of the other two. I guess what one might prefer will depend on system matching and overall listener preferences plus how deep ones pockets are.

The bottom line though is I guess that the physical CD can sound better than the virtual digital music than some loudly proclaim to be better and the results of comparing CD to computer will depend on the CD player compared. I can see that many budget to mid priced CD players may be surpassed in sound quality by a computer audio source but the high end CD players I had to hand held their own and offered more but that more might not be to all tastes.

In theory the HD Studio Master I used of Into The Labyrinth should have sounded better than the CD and the SACD but it didn’t in the context of this set up but it did sound very musically enjoyable via the AMR DP777.

Trying the same trick for some albums I also had on 24 bit 192 (5) did result in a further narrowing of the differences between the Moon Andromeda and the DP777 computer setup but the Moon kept the lead still.

Conclusions

The AMR DP777 DAC is a wonderful piece of kit that has helped open my eyes, ears and mind to the possible quality future that HD computer audio music can offer and I loved my time with the DP777 so much so in fact that I bought the review sample of the DP777 and I think it a real testament to the quality of this product, in terms of functionality, build quality, design and sound quality that it was with the DP777 that I stepped into the future with it – a light to guide my steps.

I realise that some may feel a bit cheated that I didn’t review the preamplifier section of the DP777 but I felt it would offer too much of a change to the reference system and thus too much to be explored on this occasion but I will in the future explore this option, though for me in the context of my day to day system with its analogue sources and tape decks (no tape loop in the DP777 preamplifier section) the DP777 as a preamplifier would not work for me but for those more digital in their set ups it might well be a fantastic all round solution.

Its my personal view that the AMR DP777 is another landmark product from AMR (with the iFi Audio iDAC and iUSB Power they seem to be doing this a lot recently) and as such I strongly recommend it with the caveat of trying it in your own system before buying one.

Neil

Retail Price:£3500

Source of Loan: Manufacturer/distributor.

Manufacturer: Abbingdon Music Research http://www.amr-audio.co.uk/index.html

UK Distributor: Select Audio http://www.selectaudio.co.uk/

DP-777 Specifications:

Operation modes: High-Definition 32-Bit DAC • Organic: 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192KHz • Apodising 808: 44.1/48kHz • MP Listen: 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192KHz • Traditional: 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192KHz

Classic 16-Bit Multibit DAC • Bit-Perfect I; no digital or analogue filter • Bit-Perfect II; no digital filter, sinc(x) analogue filter

Digital Audio Inputs:• 2 x XLR/BNC with HD Valve Digital Input technology • 2 x RCA/Toslink SPDIF Interface • 1 x 24/192 Asynchronous USB Input

Analogue Inputs:• 2 x RCA per channel

Analogue Outputs: • 1 x RCA/XLR per channel

Thermionic Electron Valves amplification stage:• 2 x 6H1n-EV / 1 x 6H11P fitted

Output voltage (Digital Full Scale): • >2V

Frequency Response:• 20Hz to 20 kHz +0.0, -0.5dB

Signal-to-noise ratio “A” Weighted:• >100 dB

Total Harmonic Dist. + Noise (THD+N):• <0.3%

Dynamic range:• >90 dB

Channel separation:• >90 dB

Power Transformer:• 32 VA Custom EI Transformer (Digital Section)

40 VA Custom EI Transformer (Analogue Section)

Power consumption:• Standby: < 1 W • Power on: < 60W

Rated voltage: :• 115/230V~ AC 50Hz – 60Hz

Colour:• Silver or Black

Dimensions:• 17.7 in W by 4.7 in H by 14.6 in D • 45 cm W by 12 cm H by 37 cm D • 57 cm W by 49 cm H by 25 cm D (shipped)

Weight:• DP-777: 25.4 lbs / 11.5 kg • Shipped: 34.2 lbs / 15.5 kg

(1) – In time using this combination I discovered that a program installed by the Acers original owner was creating a conflict re trying to decode audio codecs and thus was working against JRiver – thanks to Lisa for figuring this out. With this discovery I ended up stripping the Acer of all superfluous programs and to date it has as mentioned in the main body of the review run flawlessly but I still feel that using an esata connection between computer and external HD gives better sound (the Acer is USB only) so my main laptop the Sony sounds marginally better than the Acer but as its my main computer I have opted to keep the Acer in the music role until such time as I get a standalone dedicated audio only focussed computer custom built.

(2) http://www.windowsxlive.net/fidelizer/

(3) Full details re these revelations in the Wireworld Starlight and Ultraviolet review.

(4) Seperate review upcoming

(5) I am well aware that 192 does not guarantee anything re improved sound quality as is the case with other HD music, much depending on the mastering, transfer and source of the music but in the case of what I listened to the music being 24 192 narrowed the gap further between the AMR DP777 and the Moon Andromeda,

Further thoughts

Doing this review has been a real challenge to me personally as it has brought me face to face with a personal demon re the loss of physical playback media – a future I hated the idea of and indeed feared. The AMR DP777 review took me to the Rubicon and across it and I am now of the mind that a digital HD future is one I am no longer afraid of or indeed reticent about as its clear to me now that at least re sound quality HD 24 bit 88.2, 96, 192 music can compete with CD and may even be better (1).

Downloaded files can’t offer a tactile physical relationship as CDs, vinyl and tape can and do but at least there exists a possible future where sound quality is not a throw away lowest common denominator commodity but sadly that future will depend on record companies and increasingly artists feeling there is a market for high quality music and that can only come about if those that purchase mainstream music demand high quality full bandwidth recording.

There are a couple of sources for audiophile quality specialist music but sadly only one source for high quality downloadable mainstream and specialist music and that is HD Tracks in America (2). I say sadly because David Chesky for whatever reason some time ago decided to not permit any customers from the UK and possibly the rest of Europe access to downloads. Without this all UK computer audio enthusiasts can do is rip their CD collections and buy some of the audiophile music from Linn, Naim and B&W . Now I like quite a few of Naim’s and Linn’s artists but frankly it is the mainstream music that HD tracks sell – Van Halen, Yes, Genesis etc – that will help grow interest in high quality music and I don’t really include Apple in this as I suspect most users of Apples I tunes will not be that into HD soundquality and will be happy with MP3 quality.

This is the only cloud I see on my own personal horizon and the only thing that will keep me back from moving more into computer audio (I do intend on improving things for what HD music I do have) so I will be continuing to listen to physical media such as CDs, SACDs, vinyl etc until I can buy HD music easily – not entirely a bright future I feel but only time will tell where this journey ultimately takes me.

Neil

(1) I have since finishing the bulk of this review been made aware of the limitations of the laptop I was using (I did use a Sony VPCEB4E4E laptop too with broadly similar results) and suggestions have been made that getting more from the DP777 DAC is possible by using a music only focussed custom built computer, one that far outstrips the results I obtained via my fidelized laptops.

I await the opportunity to try that with great excitement as the suggestion has been made that the performance of my Moon Andromeda can be outstripped with such a set up. During this review I have learn’t that optimising the computer source can improve the sound so who knows what a custom music computer/server with an optimised USB output might achieve.

(2) https://www.hdtracks.com/

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012/2013 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio…..except for AMR, iFi Audio product photos and album cover. Copyright belongs with their original publishers.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without written permission or legal action may result.

The show’s rooms are taken and run by HiFi Wigwam forum members, the odd refugee from other forums and music/audio journalists but in the main its enthusiasts only, mostly HiFi Wigwam members and the majority of systems are vintage to equipment from the last few years.

New addition to Adventures in High Fidelity Audio Fernando Barbosa was at the show and has submitted this photo only report of his personal show highlights.

Neil

The End till next time……

Fernando

© Text Copyright and all photos 2013 Fernando Barbosa

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without written permission, failure to do so may result in legal proceedings.

Fernando is a long standing audio enthusiast from Portugal who is resident in the UK and someone I have been exchanging emails with for quite a period of time and it dawned on me that harnessing his enthusiasm for audio and AIHFA would be a worthwhile venture and this show report is the first fruits of that process.

English is not Fernando’s first language so unlike other articles submitted I have with his permission edited a bit more than I would normally.

So welcome aboard Fernando.

Neil

This is a report on a brief visit to the Akihabara district of Tokyo, Japan. I visited Japan in April last year and spent a month travelling around the country. Though I stayed a week in Tokyo I was only able to spend a couple of days in Akihabara, but this was enough to get a measure of Japanese tastes in audio equipment.

First of all, most audio enthusiasts will know of Akihabara as some sort of Mecca, but the Japanese themselves call the district ‘Electric City’. And indeed this is a much more accurate description, as the place is full of outlets selling just about everything to do with computers, mobile phones, ‘white goods’, televisions, as well as audio gear. In fact my first impression on visiting the area was one of frustration, as it was very difficult to actually find any stores selling quality audio gear. It was easy enough to find computer outlets and mobile phone outlets, even outlets catering to ‘adult’ entertainment – but high quality audio gear? No.

After about half an hour of wandering around, I realised my mistake. Japan is a country with a high population density, so in the cities they build upwards. It is no good expecting to find the audio stores to be necessarily at street level, one has to look upwards and spot signage for the likes of Sony, Technics, Pioneer etc. It will mean these outlets are on, say, the fifth or seventh floor of a building which may have conventional white goods on the ground floor.

So having learnt my mistake, here are my impressions. When you leave the subway station at Akihabara (and here I must say the Japanese public transport system is an absolute dream for foreigners to use, one which puts ours to shame), you cross the road and are confronted with a rabbit warren of small undercover stalls selling just about everything for the electronic hobbyist. Those interested in DIY audio are well catered for, with many stalls specialising in particular components. There are stalls selling transformers:

capacitors:

connectors:

cables:

valves:

as well as metalworking tools:

and small components such as ICs, resistors and capacitors. Some stalls even sell amplifier kits.

Having worked my way through this constructor’s rabbit warren, it was time to look at some of the audio outlets (now that I knew where to find them). Whilst there are some audio salons where equipment can be demonstrated, many outlets simply sold gear ‘off the shelf’ with no provision for demonstration. Even so visiting these outlets was instructive as one was able to get a feel of what brands are popular in Japan – and it is not only Japanese brands. Many foreign brands are well thought of, for example Tannoy speakers

and Mark Levinson electronics.

JBL and Altec Lansing speakers and McIntosh electronics are also well regarded, as are the more up-market Japanese brands such as Accuphase.

(For some reason the Japanese shop owners don’t like you taking photographs. Maybe it is fear of completion, but this proscription seemed to apply to all shops, especially high quality department stores. As such, these photographs were taken covertly.)

Another British speaker manufacturer the Japanese like is B&W, especially their smaller models. It must be remembered a lot of Japanese live in small apartments, so don’t always have the room for large speaker systems.

The small room size applies to the demonstration rooms of some of the audio ‘salons’. There can be up to fifteen pairs of speakers on display as well as up to half a dozen large amplifiers all crammed into a room about the same size as a typical UK living room. How one is to fully assess the products is a bit of a mystery, especially as there are racks of exotic looking interconnects, mains cables and plugs and sockets, all jostling for space. And the Japanese do love specialist mains cables; some I saw were up to an inch in diameter, almost as large as the American style mains plugs they use!

Some audio salons were a little less cluttered but all exuded a sort of calm authority, one that assumes the visitor has some sort of idea of what he wants. At no time did a salesman approach me. All were playing music, using a mixture of CDs and records as a source. One particular outlet impressed me: not only was there an EMT 930 turntable awaiting dispatch (the Japanese are almost fanatical admirers of these decks), but they were playing a Nina Simone record (on a deck I could not identify) through Audio Note valve amplification into speakers I could not identify, but they could have well been a pair of medium sized Magnaplanars. When I mentioned that I was an EMT user to the sales assistant, he was not particularly impressed, but neither did he regard me as a time waster. I was left to enjoy the record he was playing; one of many ‘50s American jazz records on Verve and Blue Note available for audition.

The Japanese are also keen on vintage UK products: Quad II amplifiers, Garrard 301 and 401 turntables as well as SME 3009 and 3012 tonearms. I saw several examples of Garrard decks in various conditions for sale – and the prices being asked were not cheap.

When it comes to pickup cartridges, the Japanese tend to excel and I saw Denon, Ortofon SPU, Grado and Shure M95 cartridges for sale. Many of the stores will sell items free of tax to foreign visitors – one has to keep a tight hold on one’s credit card!
Unfortunately I didn’t see any Koetsu, otherwise I would have bought one ‘tax free’.

I have already mentioned the small size of the demonstration rooms and of the difficulty of properly assessing the equipment, and I have to say that nothing I heard was in any way superior to what can be readily heard in the UK and in Europe. But then again nothing offended my ears either.

If there was a ‘common denominator’ to the preferred items of audio gear, base on what I saw and heard, I would say the Japanese audio enthusiast does tend to favour horn-loaded loudspeakers, valve amplification, moving coil cartridges and idler driven turntables. This would perhaps suggest the Japanese place great importance on leading edge information and on pitch accuracy. Despite a growing appreciation of Western style music, both classical, jazz and rock, traditional Japanese music involves plucked string instruments (shamisen and koto), bamboo flutes (for example the shinobue) and percussion (such as wooden clappers: hyōshigi). With these instruments, the start of the notes and their subsequent decay is important. That was my impression gained through witnessing the miyako-san Spring dances, which were performed to Japanese traditional music. (Miyako are apprentice geisha.)

I also visited a few stores selling professional music equipment, not so much to look at the electric guitars and keyboards, but to see the amplification, graphic equalisation and processing units, such as:

On the question of prices, where it was possible to compare such on new equipment, it would seem that the Japanese pay as much as we do for their quality audio. The same would appear to follow for quality photographic equipment. (The Leica M9 digital camera was for sale for ¥800,000 or £6,400)

Finally, I paid a visit to Tower Records in Akihabara, as well as to another branch in the Shinjuku district. Both of these stores were on several floors, depending on the music genre. As would be expected of a major retail outlet in a country’s capital city, these stores had a phenomenal range of stock. For example: all of the Furtwängler mono recordings of the Beethoven symphonies were available off the rack. The same was true of some of the more obscure jazz recordings. The Japanese like to be offered several different versions of ostensibly the same recording. It was a bit like being a kid in a sweet shop – I made up for what I hadn’t spent on a Koetsu cartridge on CDs, especially the Japanese ‘obi band’ pressings. One odd thing I did notice was that despite everything being filed in alphabetical order, for some strange reason Frank Zappa was filed under ‘F’.

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Products that benefit from the trickle down of technology from designs much further up the range are always eagerly desired by those, who for whatever reason are unable to buy top of the range products and are perhaps on a tight budget but are still looking for excellence at an affordable price. New to the audio market – late 2012 – are a number of products that embody this in no uncertain terms and the company in question is iFi Audio a spin off from AMR – best know for their high end multi-bit valve based CD players and DAC – and the products are the iFi Audio iDAC, iCAN. iPhono and iUSB Power.

In the case of AMR (Abbingdon Music Research) they have, pretty much as a policy – very slowly introduced new designs to their range and only when they have felt them ready to be brought to market. So it comes as quite a surprise and a delight to find that AMR have introduced 4 new designs late last year and even more of a surprise that they are aimed squarely at the budget end of the audio market and at prices that nearly everyone can afford. These may well be bargain priced but as I found out they punch well above their individual price points in terms of performance.

While these are primarily AMR designs  - Thorsten Loesech AMR’s chief designer (among others) having had a hand in their design – AMR have chosen to brand them iFi Audio (though it says micro on their packaging) thus setting them apart from the main AMR product range which considering the style and flavour of the iFi designs and packaging is not a bad idea, as these products will – I feel and AMR hopes – appeal to a different type of audio enthusiast in the know but also to the hip/trendy computer users (1) who have little interest in high end HiFi but do in stylish products that can be easily integrated into their existing way of listening to music.

The subject of this particular review, which was originally to be just about the iFi iDAC, but another item in the iFi Audio range, the iFI USB Power, has had such a large effect in conjunction with the iDAC that I am going to include it in the review rather than giving it its own separate review.

Close Encounters of the iFi kind

My first encounter with the iFi Audio designs came at last Septembers National Audio Show in the Head Zones mini Show which featured the best in headphones and headphone related designs – to say I was impressed with iFi’s miniature products once I clapped eyes on them and then heard them is putting it mildly.

I had already heard a bit of a buz at the show about these items – a buzz that has grown steadily louder online – but I was determined to be disciplined and visit each exhibitor in turn as the show flowed around the hotel so it was the Saturday afternoon before I visited Vincent Luke of AMR and to say he was very animated and passionate about these new designs – as he is about all he and AMR does – is a bit of an understatement.

I try very hard not to let a show experience either put me off too much or equally push me into gushing praise of something I have not spent a fair amount of time with or getting to know in my own system but there are times when one knows that one is in the presence of something special, very special but it wasn’t until I had these items in my own system that I got the full sense of how good the ifi products are.

I am getting way ahead of myself here – though I have let the cat out of the bag early on, as these products are very special indeed – so lets rain back a bit and look at the iFi DAC and iFi USB Power in more detail.

Description and Technical

Both items are compact, both being 16cm long, by 6.5 cm wide, by 2 cm tall, fairly light weight though made of metal beautifully made, though I am no fan of recessed RCA jack plugs – as found on the iDAC – as they can present some issues with some types of RCA connectors used on quite a lot of higher end interconnect cables.

The iDAC has a single full sized USB2 B socket digital/power input, two nicely made RCA analogue outputs, a mini jack headphone output and a volume control that has a nice action in use but unless one uses the supplied clear rubber dome feet the iDAC will slide when the volume control is turned – well that was my experience when using it. The iDAC as it derives its power from the laptop came with no external power supply but it did come with a nicely made start you up USB cable and RCA stereo audio cable and a set of four attachable rubber feet.

The iUSB Power has one USB full sized B input and two USB A output sockets one is both audio and power and one power only – useful if you need to power an other device or charge one up. The iDAC comes with an external wall wart PSU that is switch mode but has been designed to not affect sound quality – something switch mode power supplies are notorious for doing.

The individual packaging is beautiful made and designed with nicely set out instructions both on separate cards and also printed on the bottom of the iDAC and iUSB Power cases.

iDAC

I will let iFi Audio describe the iDACs features and technology…….

‘A fantastic dynamic range means more of everything. More detail, more musical, and most of all: more fun. When it’s relaxation time – your ears will be treated to a rarefied, luxurious sound. All your music will sound striking on the iDAC.

Resolution matters. Yet the realism of playback matters more. These are all determined by a number of factors — like the USB interface technology, power supply quality, and the analogue output stage. The iDAC uses a highly-advanced Asynchronous/Jitterless USB interface (trickle-down technology from AMR’s high-end audio equipment) to give not just good but perfect audio transfer.

With 3 dedicated internal power supplies, they provide a clean environment for the DAC to produce high-resolution audio. Augmented by the ESS Hyperstream Chipset — typically reserved for expensive high-end audio equipment, music reproduction is startling realistic.

Advances in Computer Audio technology have pushed the quality past CD. Only a DAC that is capable of replaying the highest-quality recordings unhindered can realise the full, stunning potential from modern High-Definition digital formats – up to 24Bit/192kHz and beyond.

These recordings are almost all exclusively available as downloads for replay via computer. To accept anything less from a DAC designed to partner computers for music replay is to accept a compromise in sound quality. For iFi, this was not an option.

The ESS Sabre is one of the highest-quality DACs bar none. That’s because the ESS Sabre chip’s advanced Hyperstream technology provides up to 10x better signal-to-noise ratio, superior dynamic range, and unrivalled jitter rejection making it audibly superior to the competition.

Music is incredibly clear, virtually tangible. Bass lines are sharper and more powerful than ever, music is life-like.

Realism and resolution matter. These and other qualities are determined by a number of factors — the USB interface technology, power supply quality, and the analogue output stage. The iDAC uses an advanced Asynchronous/Jitterless USB interface to give the best audio data transfer possible.

With 3 dedicated internal power supplies, they provide the purest environment for the DAC. In conjunction with the discrete analogue stage — found in high-end audio equipment — the iDAC reproduces the most faithful and musical high-definition music ever.

The Asynchronous USB audio connection is now commonplace and lauded as the cutting-edge. This was only the starting point for iFi; the iDAC has a super low-jitter Asynchronous USB connection with Bit-Perfect technology. Before the iDAC, this superior technology was reserved for AMR’s expensive high-end DACs. Our engineers bring these advanced technologies to the iDAC at a truly remarkable price point.

DirectDrive technology (which originated from top-end studio equipment) has negated the need for coupling capacitors to offer a purer, shorter signal path. Behind this technology is direct-coupling and more; resulting in greater power output and lower distortion than most USB-powered audio devices. Headphones are responsive across the frequency range; to give the most undistorted, uncoloured sound. Your ears will be enthralled by the iDAC’s audible superiority.’

Specifications:

Signal to Noise Ratio: >111dB(A) Dynamic Range(-60dBFs): >111dB(A) Crosstalk: <-102dB(1KHz) Total Harmonic Distortion(THD): <0.005%Jitter: Below measurement limit Frequency Response: 3Kz to 33KHz + 0.1dB/0.3dB Headphone section: Output Power: >150mW(15Ω) Signal to Noise Ratio: >97dB(A) Total Harmonic Distortion: <0.003%(400mV/300R) Noise: <-86dBu(A) Output Impedance:(Zout): <10Ω Power Consumption: < 2.5W Dimensions: 158(l)x68(w)x28(h)mm Weight: 193g(0.43lbs)

iUSB Power

iFi Audio’s words about the iUSB Power…..

‘The most important feature of any USB audio device (USB DAC, USB Amplifier and USB Speaker etc.) is the power supply. The USB system as well as audio, carries its own power. Perfectly adequate to power anything from USB memory sticks to tablet computers; it falls far short from being a suitable noise-free power supply for high-quality music reproduction.

To improve all USB audio devices out there, we wanted to develop not just a better power supply, but the best power supply for all audio devices. With the iUSB, quiet passages are whisper quiet. The climaxes are fiercer, and everything in between is richer, more vibrant and no longer grainy.

To create a USB power supply that is ultra-quiet is an engineering feat in its own right. We went several steps further. The Super Regulator technology encompasses; multi-stage and multi-order power purifying with filtering. We even commissioned a special, audio-grade USB power supply unit. The iUSB with an excellent voltage accuracy of 0.5% is even quieter than a 9V dry cell battery.

To put it into perspective, if the DC power supply voltage from the iUSBPower was taken as equivalent to the sound level of a large calibre gun fired right next to you (painfully loud, usually taken as around 140dB), the noise produced by the iUSBPower would be completely inaudible to the human ear.

The IsoPower system is a completely new way to connect your USB audio device. There is the standard USB connection option; but with the upcoming iFi dual-path Gemini USB cable, our engineers developed the IsoPower system which offers the option to run separate power and audio data lines. You wouldn’t place interconnects and power cables together so why should the USB connection do it?

IsoPower eliminates any pollution between data and power lines. It keeps your USB audio data free from contamination and removes the USB Signal noise from the power supply lines, to enjoy the maximum performance from your USB audio device, unhindered.

Our engineers developed the advanced IsoEarth technology specifically for the iUSBPower. By breaking the noisy DC ground connection between the computer and your USB audio device, this further reduces the ground noise by a factor of 10. Your USB audio device can now operate in the cleanest environment possible; allowing your music to flow.’

Specifications:

Output Voltage: 5V±0.5% Output Current: 1A Output Noise: 0.1uV(0.0000001V) High-Speed USB 2.0: 480Mbps Input Voltage: AC 100 – 240V, 50/60Hz (Ultra Low-Noise Power Supply included) Power Consumption: < 9W (includes powered USB device) Dimensions: 158(l)x68(w)x28(h)mm Weight: 195(0.43lbs)

System Used

The review system was my current main one which consists of : Balanced Audio Technology VK300SE integrated amplifier, Anthony Gallo SA Reference amplifier, AMR DP777 DAC, Acer 1810TZ Notebook, Freecom 2TB hard drive. Speakers Anthony Gallo Reference 2.1. Digital cabling; Wireworld Ultraviolet/Starlight USB A to B, Line level signal cabling; Atlas Mavros RCA to RCA and XLR to XLR, Kimber KCAG. Speaker cable: Atlas Mavros, QED Genesis. All equipment was housed on Clearlight Audio Aspekt racks, with SSC isolation platforms and Brightstar Isonodes under the laptop and hard-drive. Headphones: Sennheiser PX30, Sennheiser HD560 Ovations 2 and Grado GS1000.

Music

Dead Can Dance – Into The Labyrinth

Stanley Clarke – 1,2, To The Bass

and various other standard definition and high definition music.

Listening to the iDAC

Setting up the iDAC was relatively painless with the only small issue being positioning it so that I could run all the cables neatly to it from the laptop and then to the BAT VK300se amplifier. As mentioned earlier with the RCA jacks being partly recessed into the body of the iDAC you may need to change your interconnects as I can see some heavy duty plugs not fitting well and very heavy cables will no doubt lift the iDAC into the air. I pressed some Kimber KCAG interconnects into service and they worked a treat both in terms of fitting and sounding right with the DAC, plus they are light weight enough to allow the DAC to not slide about the Clearlight Aspekt racks top shelf – fitting the four supplied rubber feet helped as well. I used Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cables initially but then switched to the Wireworld Starlights which was well worth doing despite the iDAC’s modest price.

Once I had downloaded the driver off ifi’s website opened it and set it up I was good to go and go I did using JRiver 17 via my Acer notebook laptop. Up first was Dead Can Dances album Into The Labyrinth which is an 88.2 flac file and I was gob smacked at just how good – this previously used and thus run in – USB DAC sounded.

It was very obvious right from the get go that the iDAC shares similar DNA to the AMR DP777 (despite not having a valve digital input stage or output as the DP777 has) as the tonal balance was pretty similar, though the iDAC sat just to the slightly leaner side of the marginally warmer but neutral DP777. Soundstage height, width and depth were also pretty good with standard USB cables but were much better with the Wireworld Ultraviolets and considerably better with Starlights in situ but I should point out not as good as those produced by the DP777 DAC.

Comparing the iDAC to the DP777 DAC was not really fair as there is a massive price difference between the two but it was an interesting comparison none the less and the little iDAC was very much a chip off the old block with very similar DNA coursing through its veins.

Listening to The Carnival is Over by Dead Can Dance the iDAC presented the music in a well balanced way with nice instrument separation detail and focus, the music ebbed and flowed well and Brendan Perry’s voice was nicely portrayed. Switching to the DP777 showed that the iDAC’s performance was all about sins of omission not commission and in away was a DP777 lite. I don’t say that to insult the iDAC but in reality at the price the iDAC is quite an achievement as it offers a fair taste of what the DP777 does.

The main differences where in the following: areas via the DP777 images were more solid, more real and dimensional, there was real space around them whereas via the iDAC they were flatter less solid, less real. The DP777 had greater clarity allowing more insight into the music and how it was made up plus more weight and scale. Bass went deeper and had more texture with the DP777 but that is not to say that the iDAC sounds bass light as it does not, but overall it has a lighter less tonally rich or expansive sound. However without doing a direct comparison to the DP777 (2) it sounds very good and its only when compared to the much dearer DAC that any of these characteristics are really that evident.

Listening via headphones

I am not a massive user of headphones despite having a few pairs and a very expensive pair in the form of the Grado GS1000′s but as the iDAC is also has a headphone output I felt I should have a listen to it this way as well.

Well listening this way was very enjoyable, with the quality of reproduction increasing as I changed headphones, with the Grado GS1000 producing the best sound. These quite hard to drive headphones seemed to present the iDAC with no challenge and the way The Carnival is Over by Dead Can Dance was reproduced was beautiful, beguiling, open and detailed, with excellent bass (even with the tiny PX30s) articulation and punch. Certainly higher end headphone amplifiers with external DACs will give a better sound but if you want something compact and neat I would imagine one would have to look around long and hard to find a much better integrated solution at this price point (3)

Conclusion

Listening to the iFi Audio iDAC was my first exposure to a near entry level USB DAC and I was not sure what to expect but the brief exposure at the National Audio Show 2012 seemed to promise great things and the reality in my system matched the initial impression and exceeded it by quite a big margin whether listening via an external amplifier and speakers of headphones.

Where it sits in context to what else is available on the market at this price point I can’t say but the iDAC compared quite well to its much bigger brother the DP777 and while the dearer DAC was much better the iDAC was not slaughtered, providing a fair taste of what the dearer DAC can do. Moving from the dearer DAC to the cheaper DAC did not create such an overwhelming feeling of loss as to make the cheaper DAC unlistenable or a turn off and that is quite an achievement in my book.

As I said above its sins are those of omission not commission (in comparison to the DP777) and as such it should really be on the list if anyone is looking to buy a DAC at or in and around this price point and dare I say it more. I would not be surprised to learn, and I hope to compare it to similar priced DACs in the future, that it actually stands way out in front of them, but for now that must remain pure speculation only.

Listening to the iUSB Power

Like the iDAC setting up the iUSB Power was also straight forward though unlike the DAC one needs to have a power socket to hand, as the iUSB requires power, which is supplied to it by a wall wart PSU; that while being of the switch mode type has been according to ifi Audio designed and implemented properly to remove the polluting effect that most other switch mode PSUs generate.

Using the iUSB is simple, plug a USB cable into the USB B input and if you need power only the clearly marked left USB A output and if you need power and audio the right hand USB A output. I tried the iUSB with the iDAC and my AMR DP777 the USB input of which does not require any power.

Adding the iUSB Power to the signal chain, directly after the USB output on the laptop was one of those jaw dropping revelatory moments when what you thought what was as good as it could get gets better and that comment goes for the iDAC and the DP777.

Having read a fair bit about the potential effect noisy power from USB outputs could and do have on items being powered via them to hear that affect in such a clear way it was quite shocking to hear this first hand.

Using the iUSB Power does not change the tonality of the device that is hooked into it – at least that was my experience with the iDAC and DP777 – but what it does do is remove a whole layer of grunge that is holding the signal from the computer back. The degree of opening up of the music was quite shocking as there was greater depth, width and height to the soundstage, greater clarity, a better defined and extended bass (quite a bit more with the iDAC not as much with the DP777) and the music seemed to hang together better when hooked up to the iUSB Power.

The improvement with the DP777 was not quite as great as with the iDAC but it was big enough of a one to really offer a very reasonable upgrade to the DP777 performance and thus I would strongly recommend the purchase of one when you are buying a DP777 – the review unit won’t be going back to the supplier I will be buying it.

Conclusion

Frankly buying an iUSB Power to use with any USB powered audio device is a no brainer and the degree of improvement it brought to the already very good iDAC really means the two should be viewed as one unit and bought together – you won’t be disappointed.

Based on my experience with the DP777 DAC I think it safe to say that improvements can be obtained – possibly to varying degrees based on the DACs USB input implementation – with even high-end DACs and thus I recommend strongly that those using a laptop as a source via USB should give the iUSB Power ago.

Overall Conclusion

Once again AMR has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible and at a new price point I look forward to see where they and iFi Audio go next (4)

Neil

This review, my first of 2013, is dedicated to the memory of my Dad, he who gave the love of music to me. Thank you Dad I will always love you.

My Dad  Dec 1937 to Nov 2012 Rest in Peace your labours are now done.

iFi Audio iDAC £275

iFI Audio iUSB Power £175

Source of loan – iFi Audio and Select Audio.

iFi Audio - http://www.ifi-audio.com/en/index.html

Select Audio UK Distributors - http://www.selectaudio.co.uk/

(1) It has to be said and its probably no accident that iFi products packaging have a touch of the Apple look about them and if this gains AMR a wider customer base then good on them.

(2) I am very concious that the only other USB DAC I had to hand for the comparison is AMR’s own £3500 one. It would have been better to have had other DACs in and around the same price point as the iDAC to see where it sits in that end of the market but comparing it to the much dearer DAC was interesting and useful re sussing out the DNA of the design and the trickle down of higher end technology to the lower end market.

(3) I did encounter a problem when hooking all three of my headphones up in that there was a problem with the socket on the iDAC which unless the headphones plugs were inserted and held a particular way I would get odd left right channel imbalances, frequencies missing or a phasy sound with echo – all very odd but when working music sounder very good as reported above.

(4) I have the iPhono here for review and I will also be reviewing the iCAN, my first headphone amplifier review, very soon.

© Text and Photos Copyright 2012 Adventures in High Fidelity Audio…..except for iFi Audio product photos and album covers. Copyright belongs with their original publishers.

NB No part or portion of this article may be reproduced or quoted without written permission or legal action may result.