Digital Processor Reviews

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Digital Processor Reviews
Gold Note DS-10 D/A processor
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jul 31, 2020  |  47 comments
I felt like I'd just been offered a choice of 31 flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream topped with up to 57 varieties of Heinz ketchup, 57 condiments, and 47 brands of coddled cream. My head began to spin, my stomach churned, and my mouth grew very dry as I read that Gold Note's DS-10 ($2995) was a "chameleon DAC" with 192 setup options that enable it to "completely blend in with different music genres, giving the listener the opportunity to adapt the behavior of the unit to the music playing, to one's stereo system and, most of all, to the listener's taste."
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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #39: HoloAudio May D/A processor & Intona USB isolator
Herb Reichert  |  Jul 30, 2020  |  22 comments
In contrast to phono cartridges and analog tape recorders, digital audio converters distinguish themselves by the fact that they can be fashioned in an almost infinite number of ways. Therefore, the odds against two manufacturers' DACs or ADCs sounding exactly the same are extremely large.
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Digital Processor Reviews
Weiss Engineering DAC502 D/A processor
John Atkinson  |  Jul 24, 2020  |  65 comments
Hi-fi system resolution has long been the cause of heated arguments. But when it comes to converting digital data to an analog signal, there can be no argument. Data go in at one end of a DAC and an analog signal comes out of the other end, with a noise floor directly rated to the combination of the converter's digital and analog resolution. Ever since I started measuring digital products for Stereophile, I have been expressing a D/A processor's effective resolution in terms of the equivalent number of bits.
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Digital Processor ReviewsHi-Rez Disc Player/Transport ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
T+A MP 3100 HV SACD player/streaming DAC
Jim Austin  |  May 15, 2020  |  28 comments
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.
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Digital Processor Reviews
GeerFab Audio D.BOB digital breakout box
Kalman Rubinson  |  Apr 27, 2020  |  24 comments
This unique device is a solution to a problem that previously couldn't be solved.

There are, of course, any number of little boxes that can extract audio from the HDMI video bitstream; they began to appear on the market to fill a need for a way to route audio from a player's HDMI output In the recent past, you could buy a good-quality—even audiophile-grade—universal player and listen to SACDs via its good-sounding analog outputs. But good-sounding universal players are becoming scarce.

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Digital Processor Reviews
Chord Electronics Hugo M Scaler upsampling digital processor
John Atkinson  |  Feb 25, 2020  |  62 comments
The idea of using digital signal processing (DSP) to convert digital audio data sampled at 44.1kHz or 48kHz to a higher sample rate is not new. I first heard the beneficial effects of upsampling at Stereophile's 1998 hi-fi show in Los Angeles, where a pro-audio dCS 972 digital-to-digital processor was being used to convert 16-bit/44.1kHz CD data to a 24/192 datastream.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Métronome Technologie AQWO SACD/CD transport and D/A processor
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Feb 21, 2020  |  9 comments
In an era when polar opposites compete as absolutes, it can be a challenge to acknowledge the different and equally valid ways in which audiophiles approach musical truth. But the reality is that our perceptions of how reproduced music should sound are determined, to a large extent, by how we approach the live experience.
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Digital Processor ReviewsHistorical
2020 Jitter Measurements
John Atkinson  |  Jan 20, 2020  |  19 comments
Even as digital/analog processors were becoming a hot product category in the early 1990s, audiophiles were also learning that timing uncertainties in the AES/EBU and S/PDIF serial datastreams—jitter—would compromise any improvement in sound quality offered by these DACs. Some companies therefore introduced products to reduce or eliminate jitter—in the November 1994 issue of Stereophile, Robert Harley reviewed three such products: the Audio Alchemy DTI Pro, the Digital Domain VSP, and the Sonic Frontiers UltrajitterBug. I still have Stereophile's review samples of the UltraJitterBug and VSP, along with two contemporary DACs: a PS Audio UltraLink and a Parts Connection Assemblage DAC-1.

As our reviews of these products were published before Paul Miller's and the late Julian Dunn's development of the "J-Test" diagnostic signal, I performed J-Test jitter measurements to bring that 1994 review into the 21st Century. You can see what I found here.

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Audacious AudioCD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Gryphon Ethos CD player-D/A processor
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Dec 19, 2019  |  47 comments
What kind of creature is this? Gryphon Audio Designs' new Ethos ($39,000)—pronounced EE-toss by its Danish manufacturers—is marketed as a CD player and digital-to-analog converter. It's decidedly au courant in that it includes two 32-bit/768kHz ES9038PRO Sabre DAC chips—one for each channel—with each holding eight individual DAC chips; offers optional upsampling to either 24/384 PCM or DSD128; and decodes up to 32/384 PCM and quadruple DSD (DSD512) via its USB input, or up to 24/192 (and no DSD) via AES/EBU or S/PDIF.
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Budget Component ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt USB D/A-headphone amplifier
John Atkinson  |  Nov 21, 2019  |  13 comments
Unlike the world of recorded music, where streaming has decimated sales of physical products, book publishing is seeing the reverse trend: sales of eBooks are declining while those of both hardback and paperback books are recovering. I have been a book junkie all my life—the two long walls of my listening room are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and I have many boxes of books in storage—but these days almost all my book reading is with the Kindle app on my iPad mini.
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Digital Processor ReviewsMusic in the Round
Music in the Round #100: Multichannel & Merging Anubis
Kalman Rubinson  |  Oct 15, 2019  |  19 comments
This is the 100th and—surprise!—final edition of Music in the Round. MitR began in mid-2003, shortly after SACD and DVD-A discs made high-quality multichannel music convenient and widely available. At the time, I was convinced that multichannel reproduction was superior to stereo because it was able to reproduce the full sound of the performance—not just the performers. Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, had promoted this idea many times, but the appearance of the new media finally brought it to a wider audience.
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Digital Processor Reviews
dCS Bartok D/A processor/headphone amplifier
Jim Austin  |  Oct 03, 2019  |  18 comments
The Vivaldi—the four-box flagship product from digital audio specialists dCS—is, in my opinion, misnamed. Vivaldi the composer was an asthmatic priest who worked in an orphanage for 30 years and died in poverty. The Vivaldi stack dedicates four separate products to converting into music digital code stored on silver discs (although you can play music—very well I am sure—on just one box, the Vivaldi DAC, footnote 1). Together, those boxes weigh about 148lb and cost some $115,000. The most expensive is the CD/SACD transport; leave that off and you can save 51lb and $42,000.
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Digital Processor ReviewsFloor Loudspeaker ReviewsMedia Server ReviewsMusic in the Round
Music in the Round #99: Revel & exaSound
Kalman Rubinson  |  Aug 29, 2019  |  10 comments
There is necessity as well as comfort in having a long-term reference recordings and, system. The necessity derives from the familiarity with the reference that allows for comparisons and contrasts with the equipment being tested. The comfort that comes from the familiarity lets me relax and enjoy recreational music, relieved from the need to focus my attention intently on the sound. I do relish getting my hands on lots of interesting audio equipment and getting to play it in my own home, but it's like a two-month one-night stand: The new stuff usually goes back even if I am impressed. I don't change my audio equipment often.
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Digital Processor ReviewsMedia Server Reviews
Mytek Brooklyn Bridge streaming DAC/network server
Jim Austin  |  Aug 27, 2019  |  27 comments
A DAC/preamp/headphone amp from Class A of Stereophile's list of Recommended Components, updated with streaming and network-server capabilities—and it still sells for less than $3000? If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. (Har, har!)

Most Americans have heard that line before, but many may not know the story behind it—I didn't. George C. Parker, a real American person born in 1860, is famous for perpetrating audacious frauds, specifically sales of property he did not own and could not possibly have owned. He is reported to have sold the Statue of Liberty, Grant's Tomb, the original Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and—most famously—the Brooklyn Bridge that last one twice a week for several years, at prices ranging from $75 to $5000. Or so some say.

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Digital Processor ReviewsMusic in the Round
Music in the Round #98: Trinnov Altitude 32 & Essence Evolve II-4K
Kalman Rubinson  |  Jul 02, 2019  |  13 comments
As I wrote before in these pages, I have long been acquainted with French electronics manufacturer Trinnov. Years ago, at an Audio Engineering Society convention in New York, a Trinnov rep used a mastering console equipped with their processor to move, at will, the sounds of instruments around the 3D soundstage and left me thoroughly impressed. That was before my conversion from stereo to multichannel music listening, and before the blurring of borders between home theater and mainstream audio.
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