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The Acoustical Standard (with follow-up) Letters

Letters in response appeared in July 1989, Vol.12 No.7

Again, the Acoustical Standard
Editor: Perusing the April issue's schedule of High End Hi-Fi show events (p.77), I noticed the variety of "live-music" recitals on the agenda. I also noticed that none of them featured amplified instruments, which is, of course, as it should be.

But...if acoustical instruments are really what Stereophile sees as the sounds we should be striving to reproduce, how can John Atkinson continue to defend his view that rock material is suitable for evaluating the quality of reproduced sound?
—…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter

Giuseppe Verdi gave the world more than two dozen operas, some good sacred music, and one string quartet. He also provided the young Arturo Toscanini with one of his first big breaks—conducting the singing of "Va pensiero" at his burial procession—and gave the flagship consumer product from England's dCS Ltd. its name. That the latter two gestures were posthumous and unwitting does nothing to diminish their poetry.

The dCS Verdi is a grandly expensive ($14,995) CD/SACD transport, introduced in 2001 and intended for use in the world's finest domestic replay systems. (dCS also…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter Page 2

But does upsampling sound better simply because it makes it easy for the best (digital) filters to do their job? Does it work, as some have suggested (footnote 1), because the comparatively shallow filtering that's part of the package leaves in the information stream some high-frequency artifacts that consequently act as another round of dither? Or is it something else?

I don't know. Neither do the good people at dCS—although they say they're working hard to find out.

Fun later
The two products at hand comprise a sort of economy version of the full-monty dCS front-end. I…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter Page 3

But you must bear in mind one unsmall matter: All that goodness depended on a number of things, some of which may confound your expectations:

• Without the slightest doubt, the combination worked better at playing music when the Delius was in Master mode—overriding, as it were, the word clock in the datastream and that produced by the Verdi La Scala. The former didn't so much sound different (although imaging junkies may not agree, given their heightened sensitivity to such things as stage dimensions) as simply allow me to relax and be fooled into thinking I was hearing strings of notes…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Verdi La Scala: Conjoined-twin-box CD/SACD transport. Formats supported: CD, CD-R, CD-RW, SACD. DSD & upsampled "Red Book" output jacks: IEEE1394. "Red Book" and downsampled DSD output jacks: XLR, RCA, BNC, TosLink. Word-clock input & output jacks: BNC.
Dimensions: 18.15" W by 5.4" H by 16.2" D. Weight: 37.4 lbs.
Serial number of unit reviewed: VLS098152.
Price: $14,995.

Delius: Single-box, two-channel digital-to-analog converter. Formats supported: multi-bit LPCM at 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192kHz sampling rates; single-bit DSD at 2…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter Associated Equipment

Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment

Analog sources: Linn LP12 turntable with Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim Aro tonearm; Rega Planar 9 turntable; Supex 900 Super, Linn Akiva, Lyra Helikon Mono cartridges; Audio Note AN-S2 step-up transformer.
Digital source: Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplifiers: Fi, DNM 3C Primus.
Power amplifiers: EAR 890, Lamm ML2.1 monoblocks, First Watt F1.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989, Lowther PM2A in modified Medallion horns.
Cables: Digital: various dCS. Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, homemades. Speaker: Audio Note AN-SPx,…

dCS Verdi La Scala CD/SACD transport & Delius D/A converter Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

Because Stereophile has already reviewed both the dCS Verdi SACD/CD transport (in April 2003) and the Purcell upsampler (in January 2001 and April 2003), I didn't feel it necessary to measure the Verdi La Scala, which incorporates the functionality of both units in one chassis. I concentrated, therefore, on the Delius D/A processor, feeding it DSD-sampled data from a Verdi transport and 16- and 24-bit LPCM data from a computer, using an RME Digi96/8 Pro soundcard and a TosLink S/PDIF connection. The Delius had no problem locking on to data sampled at rates up to…

Berning TF-10 preamplifier

Several issues back, we reviewed rather enthusiastically a pre-production prototype of this preamp. The original was an unprepossessing-looking device on two chassis, interconnected by a 3' umbilical, with a squat little preamp box and an even squatter power supply with humongous cans sticking out the top. We averred that it sounded nice. The production model is so nicely styled and functionally smooth that we wondered if it might not be another Japanese product. 'T'ain't.

The Berning TF-10 is what may justifiably be described as a basic preamp with frills. it has no tone controls, but…

Berning TF-10 preamplifier Page 2

The high end is open, delicate and downright exquisite, sounding as if it has no upper limit. Instrumental timbres are reproduced flawlessly, without a trace of hardness or edginess, and depth, detail and inner definition are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from that of the original program source. The low end is full and rich, yet as taut and detailed as the best we have heard from all-solid-state preamplifiers, and the entire middle range has that textureless liquidity we have only heard previously from tubed preamplifiers that fell short in various other ways. In other…

Berning TF-10 preamplifier Specifications

Sidebar 1: Specifications

Description: Hybrid (tube/transistor) basic preamplifier; 3 magnetic phono inputs, 5 high-level inputs including 2 Monitor, 2 Tape outputs, 2 Main outputs, tape cross-copy switch (1-to-2, 2-to-1), separate Input Source and Monitor switches, stepped volume control with vernier, remote Muting switch, 1 switched and I unswitched AC convenience outlet.
Dimensions: 19" W by 12" D by 3?" H, overall.
Price: $1395.
Manufacturer: Precedent Audio Products, Inc., 306 E. Oliver Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 (1979). David Berning Co., 12430 McCrossin Lane, Potomac, MD…