In one of those rooms I saw some of the company's less-expensive gear: I stopped in briefly—yet I spent so much time in their high-end room that I lost track of my coffee…
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At the 2019 AXPONA, I took part in one of my first official meetings, as editor of Stereophile, with members of the manufacturing community: the German company T+A. They were presenting in the room of Texas dealer Lone Star Audio, which was owned by the late Jim Hench. They had a corner hallway to themselves: two rooms and, at the time when I arrived, a hallway table brimming with coffee and pastries. Fortuitous timing.
Absent a Windows 10 source, the best I could achieve with DSD data was DSD128 via DoP. The MP 3100 HV is Roon Tested, which means that Roon keeps a device on-hand and tests it to ensure it is utilized as well as possible. In my tests, Roon down-converted higher-rate DSD data to DSD128 and then delivered it to the T+A over DoP. (Say that five times fast.) When DSD data came in via the Ethernet jack, Roon converted it to PCM (footnote 2).
For those seeking the best possible high-rez performance, especially via an Ethernet connection, T+A offers a high-performance Network Audio Adapter (NAA…
That list shows what the MP 3100 HV can do: The built-in transport plays CDs and SACDs. There's a Bluetooth receiver, which works well. You can directly connect USB storage media, from either the front panel connection mentioned above or the one on the back. All the usual digital inputs are included. There's over-the-air radio. And there are no fewer than seven options for data delivered over the network to the MP 3100 HV's streaming client.
USB is by far the most versatile connection; it's capable of PCM up to 32/384 (I corroborated up to 24/354.2, the highest-resolution PCM files I…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Multisource streaming disc player/DAC with app support, radio-frequency remote control. Total harmonic distortion: <0.001%. S/N ratio: >116dB. Channel separation: >110dB. Frequency and actual dynamic range varies with data format. Disc player: Plays SACD Stereo, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, CD Text. Streaming client (Ethernet, Wi-Fi): Supports MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC/UPnP AV; Data rates: PCM up to 32/192, 16/24 bit; MP3 up to 320kbps, constant and variable; Music services: Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Roon Ready (subscription required…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Thorens TD 124 turntable (reconditioned by Schopper AG) with Thomas Schick 12" tonearm; Ortofon Xpression cartridge; SME 30/12 turntable with V-12 tonearm and Ortofon Windfeld TI cartridge (in for review).
Digital sources: Intel NUC computer with SSD drive running Roon Optimized Core Kit; Synology DS918+ Diskstation 4-bay Network Attached Storage device with 16TB; TP-Link 8-Port Gigabit network switch (unmanaged); PS Audio DirectStream DAC; Mytek Brooklyn DAC+.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Standard step-up transformer, Sutherland…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the T+A MP 3100 HV with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"). Looking first at the MP 3100 HV as a disc player, its error correction was the best I have encountered—there were no glitches in its output with any of the gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD. The optical and coaxial S/PDIF inputs and the AES/EBU input locked to datastreams with sample rates up to 192kHz. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the processor as "MP 3100 HV HD-Audio" from "T+A elektroakustik" and indicated that the T+A'…
Denver’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) has canceled its 2020 show. In an email to exhibitors signed “Your Friends, Marjorie and Marcie,” show director/owner Marjorie Baumert and Operations Director Marcie Miller state, “The course of action that we must take to remain a viable entity is to cancel our show for 2020. As we stated in March, RMAF will be issuing full refunds to those exhibitors who made their initial deposits.” (See the email.)
In the message, which was distributed in the early hours of May 19, the RMAF organizers cited Centers for Disease Control projections of “an even…
Finally—a way to get a handle on the sound of Aavik Acoustics electronics. I'd heard the Danish-made components many times at shows, but always in the context of Ansuz Acoustics cables and Børresen Acoustics loudspeakers. As much as the threesome was inevitable—all three companies are owned by Michael Børresen, Lars Kristensen, and a third shareholder—there was no way to determine the unique sound of each component in the mix.
Not that I hadn't tried. Reporting from the 2019 High End show in Munich, I noted the distinguished "earth-rooted bass and midrange" produced by the combination of…
Asked why the U-380's DAC does not decode DSD or MQA, he said, "We saw DSD sort of blooming up but then fade away again. All but one digital audio workstation worldwide is PCM. Because almost everything you get these days is PCM converted to DSD (footnote 1), it makes absolutely no sense. [In addition,] a mixed mode DAC really isn't optimal because the filtering needed for DSD is so different. Similarly, we don't do MQA because it requires an XMOS receiver, which affects the quality of non-MQA signals." Taking this into account, I took advantage of an option in my Roon music playback…
Returning to planet Earth, I was forced to admit that my reference dCS/D'Agostino setup conveyed more complexity in strings and greater detail, a livelier top, stronger bass (albeit not always so impeccably controlled), a wider soundstage with greater continuity between soundstage boundaries, and greater color contrasts, liquidity, air, and depth, but at much greater cost. The more I listened, the more the class-D U-380 impressed with the amount of color and life it could deliver from tracks I knew very, very well.
Phono and digital at Gary's
One afternoon, the Aavik U-380 made its…