Sound
All of the BAT VK-D5's best qualities were those I most often associate with tubes…
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Remember, the review process is a starting point from which to build your own tastes with continued experience. Don't panic—the search for best sound can bring great satisfaction and enrichment to your life. Why else would everyone gets so crazy behind it, as K-10 would say? In line with this, another, more reasonably priced footering system that worked extremely well was Bruce Bodiak's PolyCrystal cones and spikes. The slightly more upscale G-Flex Schwingungsdämpfer Kugeln were also effective.
Tiger Okoshi's Echoes of a Note: A Tribute to Louis "Pops" Armstrong is one of those great Taguchi-produced JVC XRCDs (JVCXRC-0030-2), and "Basin Street Blues" showed off perfectly the best the VK-D5 can do. And what great music! I was connected, with a strong sense of Okoshi's delight at playing these classic tunes. My notes: "Completely effortless, incredibly airy, with space and bloom. Low-level dynamics are superb. Tiger's horn is razor-sharp, with not a hint of hardness or grain. Transparency is of a very high order; the Radians truly disappeared. Timing is everything on 'St James…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: CD player with tubed output section using six 6922 tubes. Analog outputs: XLR and RCA. Digital output: BNC, 75 ohms. Output voltage: 2V (each phase). S/N ratio: 100dB. HDCD$r compatible. Power consumption: 150VA maximum.
Dimensions: 19" W by 5.75" H by 15.5" D. Weight: 30 lbs net.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 0D070075.
Price: $4500. Approximate number of dealers: 50. Warranty: 5 years if registration form sent in within 30 days of purchase, 1 year otherwise.
Manufacturer: Balanced Audio Technology, 26 Beethoven Drive, Wilmington, DE…
Sidebar 2: I Sing the Body Electric (or Let's Get Differential)
Designer Victor Khomenko goes through a lot when designing BAT products. For one thing, he "listens" to the circuit boards and components.
Victor: "We have to listen to the noise they make to know how they're behaving. Listening through a normal home audio system, you'd hear no noise and think everything's fine. But we have to go deeper than that. Like a doctor with a stethoscope, we amplify the completed boards to check their heartbeat and breathing. The nature of the noise tells us a lot. It should sound uniform,…
Sidebar 3: Associated Equipment
Most of the time the VK-D5 was wired up to the VK-5i preamp to take advantage of differential operation. Unsurprisingly, the two pieces mated beautifully. I wired up the front-end, the VTL Wotan amps, and the JMlab Utopia speakers with either Synergistic Research Designer's Reference or TARA Labs The One, with its multiple Isolated Shield Matrix Floating Ground Stations. The VK-D5 also served the Forsell Statement amplifier on the Radian HC speakers. (This combo must be heard to be believed. The Forsell's inherent bloom perfectly complements the HC's…
Sidebar 4: Measurements
The BAT offered superb error correction, playing without skipping through the Pierre Verany test CD's track 33, which has a deliberate 2mm gap in the data. The BAT's output was noninverting from both single-ended and balanced jacks with the blue Invert LED off. (Pin 2 on the XLRs is wired to be "hot.") At 2.175V, the output level from the single-ended RCAs was 0.7dB higher than the CD-standard 2V. From the balanced jacks, the output level doubled to 4.36V. The single-ended output impedance was a moderate 882-908 ohms at middle and high frequencies, but rose to a…
This slightly higher noise floor can be seen in the high-resolution jitter spectrum (fig.6) (footnote 1). The grayed-out trace is the Meridian's noise floor, which is close to the theoretical 16-bit limit; the black trace is that of the BAT, which can be seen to be between 9dB and 13dB higher. I suspect the noise comes from the passive I/V topology used by the BAT player. While this gives better performance in many areas compared with the ubiquitous topology featuring an op-amp chip, the price to pay is an increase in random (thermal) noise.
Fig.6 BAT VK-D5, high-resolution…
John Atkinson compared the BAT with the Wadia 850 in May 1998 (Vol.21 No.5):
The analog output levels of the $4500 Balanced Audio Technology VK-D5 and the $4950 Wadia 850 matched to within 2mV, so no additional level matching was necessary. All comparisons were done using the Levinson No.380S preamplifier. As well as side-by-side comparisons involving disc swapping from one player to the other, I used the BAT to drive one of the Wadia's coaxial data inputs via a 0.5m length of Mod Squad Wonderlink I fitted with BNCs. Interconnects were balanced: initially, the softer-balanced CZ-Gel for…
Jonathan Scull wrote about the BAT VK-D5SE in March 2002 (Vol.25 No.3):
There's plenty of nail-biting over digital these days, and with good reason: SACD, DVD-Audio, "Red Book" CD...it's enough to get an audiophile totally confused. Balanced Audio Technology's solution to the dilemma is the VK-D5SE, a $6000 one-box player that simply gives you, according to BATman Victor Khomenko, the best playback possible of that big collection of 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs bending your shelves.
The VK-D5SE is an updated version of BAT's VK-D5, that I reviewed in the May 1998 Stereophile (footnote 1).…
Having evaluated any number of integrated amplifiers in the past year or so, I've repeatedly been impressed by the ways in which designers build versatility and sonic distinction into their single-box designs. In matching those that sounded and measured the best—such as the tubed E.A.R. V20 (October 1999) and the solid-state Magnum Dynalab MD 208 receiver (January 2001)—with appropriate speakers and source components, I was able to attain high-resolution musicality with a minimum of fuss. Crave high-end sound but require even less complexity? You could dispense with interconnects altogether…