The balance was also a touch warmer, but more significantly, there was an improved sense of what the late Art Dudley used to call "force." For example, on "Vamp Till Ready," the first movement of Sasha Matson's Symphony No.3 for Jazz Orchestra from the album Molto Molto (24/96 WAV file, Stereophile STPH-023), the presentation with the MBL driving the Parasound amplifiers directly was, for want of a better phrase, polite. With the KX-8 in the chain, at the same volume level, the kickdrum and double bass were more effective at driving the music along. Similarly, Christopher O'Riley's…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Solid state line preamplifier with front-panel OLED display. Analog inputs: two balanced, three unbalanced. Analog outputs: one pair balanced on XLRs, one pair single-ended on RCA; balanced and single-ended headphone outputs. Other inputs/outputs: 2 AyreLink ports. Frequency range: DC–250kHz. Signal/ noise, output impedance, and channel separation: not specified. Input impedance: 2M ohms, balanced; 1M ohm, unbalanced. Maximum output level: 4V RMS, balanced line; 2V RMS, single-ended line; 10V RMS, balanced headphone; 5V RMS, single-ended headphone.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: Roon Nucleus+ file server; MBL N31 CD player/DAC; Ayre Acoustics C-5xeMP universal player; Ayre Acoustics QA-9 A/D converter; NetGear Nighthawk router.
Power amplifiers: Parasound JCA100 Tribute monoblocks, Ayre Acoustics VX-8.
Loudspeakers: GoldenEar BRX, MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 888, Stenheim Alumine Two.Five.
Headphones: Audeze LCD-X.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Vodka (Ethernet), AudioQuest Coffee (USB), DH Labs (1m, AES3). Interconnect: Ayre/Cardas, AudioQuest Wild Blue (balanced). Headphone: Nordost Heimdall 2.…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I performed a complete set of tests on the first sample of the Ayre KX-8, serial number 31B0101, with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system, then, when that sample failed, I carried out a limited series of tests on the second sample, serial number 31B0106, to make sure it behaved identically. (It did, except where noted later in this sidebar.)
Looking first at the KX-8's performance as an analog line preamplifier, all the inputs and outputs preserved absolute polarity, ie, were noninverting. The KX-8's input impedance was very high, at close to 480k ohms…
I tested the optional digital inputs using USB and optical S/PDIF data; the TosLink input accepted data sampled at rates up to 192kHz. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the Processor as "Ayre X-8 USB-2" from "Ayre Acoustics, Inc.," and indicated that the USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. The AudioMIDI utility revealed that the KX-8's USB port accepted 32-bit integer data sampled at all rates from 44.1kHz to 384kHz.
While the first sample of the KX-8's digital inputs were noninverting from all the outputs, the second sample inverted absolute polarity. With…
Photo: Paul Miller
It was during a visit to my music room by five members of the small Off-Islanders Audio Society that the magic of the dCS Varèse Music System ($267,500 as reviewed; $305,000 with CD/SACD transport) became clear.
One member had requested the 24/192 version of "Splendido Sundance" from Saturday Night in San Francisco (24/192 FLAC, Columbia-Legacy/Qobuz), performed by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucía and recorded live in the Warfield Theatre on December 6, 1980. I'd attended the unveiling of the LP remastering of this recording, presented by the…
So much tidier than the Vivaldi stack! The User Interface (top) connects via BT to the remote and via an ACTUS umbilical to the Master Clock (below). The Core (bottom) hosts USB-A and wired Ethernet inputs (there's no Wi-Fi), with ACTUS outputs to the two Mono DACs above. The Mono DACs each have two analog outputs, on XLRs and RCAs. (Photo: Paul Miller.)
The ACTUS cable
During my factory tour, I had the opportunity to chat for 51 minutes with one of dCS's younger engineers, Ben Ashcroft. In his almost 11 years with the company, he has risen from apprentice in the production…
Oh, the sound!
When the time finally came to write this section—the part of the review that, if you're like me, you may have eagerly jumped to after the introduction—I looked at my notes and was a bit aghast. How was it possible that after weeks of listening in both the UK and at home, I only had two pages of notes?
Only once before had I experienced something like this. In 2024, shortly before the start of High End Munich, I sat in row 6 of Vienna's acoustically fabled Musikverein as Riccardo Muti conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the 200th anniversary performance of…
Sidebar 1: dCS Managing Director David Steven on Varèse and its Mono DACs
Varèse really started with us as a team saying, "If there were no constraints and we had infinite time and infinite budget, what could we do? Where could we go? How can we make a system that is simple to use, easy to set up, and super reliable? How can we support higher sample rates? How can we support streaming services? How can we make it easier to control…
Sidebar 2: Varèse Unwrapped
The Varèse Core, pictured above—photo by Paul Miller—is the largest component in the system. All calls between boxes are integrated here, and the Core generates the system clock if the external Varèse Master Clock is not connected.
As the system hub, the Core is home to all the upsampling, the primary digital filtering, and a good deal of the modulation—truncation and the noise-shaping—but not the bit mapping, which happens on a dynamic basis within the Mono Ring DACs. More about this later.
All data, clock, and other signals are…