Digital Processor Reviews

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Computer Audio ReviewsDigital Processor ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsSolid State Preamp Reviews
Mytek Digital Brooklyn Bridge II Roon Core preamplifier
Tom Fine  |  Sep 01, 2023  |  9 comments
The concept of streaming digital music files over distances great (as with internet-streaming services like Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal, etc.) and small (from a home-PC hard drive, NAS, or networked music server) became mainstream only recently. But it was already brewing during the late 20th century, with people illegally downloading low-bitrate MP3 files made from CD rips and coming close to killing the recorded-music industry.

That wasn't streaming exactly, or not in the current sense, because the files needed to be downloaded, stored locally, then either played out of a computer or loaded onto a portable player, but from that point forward it was a steady march to the streaming-dominated present.

Never mind Napster—the first subscription audio "streaming" service was one you probably wouldn't think of: Audible, the audio book service now owned by Amazon, which started up in 1995. I did beta testing and editing work for early-days Audible, and around that time, I started loading up home-ripped MP3 files on a pocket-sized Rio MP3 player (which by then had replaced Audible's proprietary player), using it in place of a portable CD player. This led to experiments with a PC music library/player running Linux, controlled by a Handspring PalmOS device connected to the stereo system via a Sound Blaster 16 card.

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Digital Processor Reviews
iFi Audio NEO Stream streaming D/A processor
Sasha Matson  |  Aug 08, 2023  |  8 comments
Stereophile writers and website commentors often speak to the topic of the ongoing rise in retail pricing at the upper levels of the hi-fi market. Companies producing cost-no-object designs make regular appearances in the hardware reviews published here. However, a countervailing vector is also at play in the consumer hi-fi sector: a trend toward bringing to market products that are smaller and more economical than the competition while offering an ever-increasing variety of features and continually improved performance, notably in terms of measurable specifications.

This dialectic can sometimes play out within the same company. Abbingdon Music Research (AMR), which is based in Southport, UK, was founded in 2000. At first, under the AMR brand, the company focused on high-end audio component separates with price points toward the upper end of the spectrum. The world has a way of intervening, though, even with the best-laid business plans. AMR Director Vince Luke describes in a video how his company made a deliberate choice to "pivot from high end to low end" following the financial crash of 2008. AMR's iFi Audio division debuted at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in 2012, offering a handful of portable products. They were a hit. The iFi line has since expanded to include more than 50 designs, and new products are introduced with impressive frequency.

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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone DreamsHeadphone Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #75: dCS Bartók APEX; HiFiMan Audivina, HE-R10P, HE1000 V2 headphones
Herb Reichert  |  Aug 03, 2023  |  6 comments
I view poetry as more than a literary genre. It's a worldview and a state of being that frames my daily experience in the supernal. I've consumed a lifetime keeping my senses peeled for authentic, manmade mysteries, especially in art and music. Music is my favorite hunting ground, and nowhere have I found mysteries as DNA-deep as the 59 takes of 29 songs recorded in only five days by Delta blues legend Robert Johnson (1911–1938). I've played the Columbia Records 1961 anthology King of the Delta Blues Singers (Columbia LP CL 1654) 100 times since my days in Chicago as a teenager, and I still haven't grasped more than a portion of its juke-joint poetics.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
AVM Inspiration CS2.3 CD receiver
Sasha Matson  |  Jun 09, 2023  |  4 comments
In the 1960s, my dad gave me a Panasonic receiver with two cube speakers, just in time for the advent of FM stereo radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. Out of the blue one night, he just walked in with it. The receiver allowed me to plug in a record player, though I only had a few LPs. Later, when I went off to college, my mom took me shopping for a new stereo. I chose a Kenwood integrated amplifier—without a tuner but with the capability to plug in a tape deck, which I did. During my undergrad years, it served me well. Later, I switched to an NAD receiver, which allowed me to listen to the radio again.
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Digital Processor Reviews
PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream MK2 D/A processor
John Atkinson  |  Jun 02, 2023  |  6 comments
When Art Dudley reviewed the original PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream D/A processor in Stereophile's September 2014 issue, he very much liked what he heard. "For those who've waited for a computer-friendly DAC that offers, with every type of music file, the best musicality of which DSD is capable, the PerfectWave DirectStream may be in a class by itself," he concluded. It was computer-friendly because, with an add-in card, you could connect it with USB or to an Ethernet cable and use it with, for example, Roon or JRiver.

PS Audio discontinued the original DirectStream DAC in 2022, introducing its replacement, the DirectStream MK2, priced at $7999, in January 2023. At 17" × 4" × 14", the MK2 is the same size as its predecessor, and with its gloss-black MDF top panel, it looks very similar.

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Digital Processor Reviews
Arvus H2-4D multichannel Dolby Atmos digital processor
Kalman Rubinson  |  May 09, 2023  |  22 comments
It has taken almost three years, but Dolby Atmos is now permeating the music-streaming sites; note that most of the recent Grammy winners are available in Atmos.

Up to now, access to Atmos has been largely restricted to HT hardware; its success for music will depend on wide availability and non-HT options for audiophile music lovers to stream and to play discs or files in Atmos, especially in lossless versions. Enter the Arvus H2-4D.

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Digital Processor ReviewsIntegrated Amp Reviews
NAD C 3050 LE BluOS streaming integrated amplifier
John Atkinson  |  Apr 07, 2023  |  15 comments
Stereophile has favorably reviewed many NAD amplifiers over the decades. One of the most recent was the Master Series M10 class-D streaming integrated amplifier, which I purchased to use as my daily driver after I reviewed it in January 2020. The M10's price included a free license for Dirac Live low-frequency room equalization, which I found invaluable with my long-term reference standmounts, the KEF LS50s. So when I learned that NAD was introducing a 50th Anniversary integrated amplifier, the C 3050 LE, which also included Dirac Live, I asked for a review sample.
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Digital Processor Reviews
Mojo Mystique X SE D/A processor
Herb Reichert  |  Apr 05, 2023  |  59 comments
When I survey the realms of fancy-pants audio, the first thing I notice are cohorts of luxury-brand manufacturers selling pride of ownership with emblematic faceplates. After that, I spot another type of manufacturer, one that mocks the first type and aims its products at a younger, more working-class demographic, seducing potential customers with how much "truth" they are offering for only $15. But sometimes, when I look beyond the full-page ads and big rooms at audio shows, I discover a rogue manufacturer that is peddling a very specific type of listening experience, which they believe is the best. A listening experience only they could have created. I am grateful for manufacturers like this. They make my job more interesting, and I admire them for their courage in betting on their own taste in music reproduction.

I am relating these observations because this month I'm reviewing a digital converter from an off-the-paved-road audio manufacturer named Benjamin Zwickel. He operates a company called Mojo Audio, which is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Digital Processor ReviewsSolid State Preamp Reviews
Primare PRE35 Prisma streaming preamplifier
Sasha Matson  |  Mar 31, 2023  |  1 comments
Hygge might not be the first word that comes to mind when contemplating the Primare PRE35 Prisma preamplifier, but in Limhamn, Sweden, that is how Primare likes to describe their products. It means "cozy," and it's a very important concept in the Nordic countries, almost a way of life. Another term that appears in Primare's product descriptions is lagom, which loosely translates as "not too little, not too much—just right."
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Brilliant CornersDigital Processor Reviews
Brilliant Corners #3: On the Horns of a Dilemma—A for Ara speakers, the Lejonklou Källa streaming DAC
Alex Halberstadt  |  Mar 02, 2023  |  13 comments
The Amtrak Empire service snakes north along the Hudson River before reaching Albany, where it pitches sharply to the west, eventually winding up in Niagara Falls. In November I rode it—the Amtrak Empire service, not Niagara Falls—from New York City to the town of Hudson, New York. On my left, the sun beat down on the river's expanse while an occasional sailboat flashed by. Above the water, the undulating domes of the Catskills, with their fading yellow and red streaks, looked like the work of an unsuccessful colorist at a busy hair salon.

I was traveling upstate to visit Rob Kalin, a founder and former CEO of the online craft marketplace Etsy and proprietor of a newish speaker company called A for Ara.

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Audacious AudioDigital Processor Reviews
dCS Vivaldi Apex D/A processor
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Feb 17, 2023  |  24 comments
Within seconds after hitting play on the 2006 remaster of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," played back with the dCS Vivaldi Apex DAC, what I thought would be a lovely opportunity to wax nostalgic morphed into something far deeper. The first few bars of the song grabbed us like nothing else we'd listened to over the past 10 days. Flack's complete calm, unwavering focus, and unapologetic intimacy took our breath away. The soundstage was wide, the silence profound, the presentation pristine. The beauty of Flack's voice and passion, enhanced by John Pizzarelli's guitar, Ron Carter's bass, and Ray Lucas's drums, transformed the music room into a holy sanctuary. Toward the end of the first verse, right before "To the dark and the endless skies," I rose long enough to turn off the lights. We sat together in silence, barely breathing.
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CD Player/Transport ReviewsDigital Processor Reviews
Two Follow-Up Reviews: Benchmark DAC3 B & Rotel DT-6000
John Atkinson  |  Feb 13, 2023  |  1 comments
Stereophile's March 2023 issue includes two follow-up reviews of high-performance digital playback products: the Benchmark DAC3 B D/A processor; and the Rotel Diamond Series DT-6000 DAC Transport (a CD player with digital inputs).
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Audacious AudioDigital Processor Reviews
CH Precision C1.2 D/A processor
Jim Austin  |  Jan 27, 2023  |  29 comments
If you're reasonably handy, you can probably build your own digital-to-analog converter. It won't cost much, and if you're careful, and knowledgeable enough to understand and follow some rather technical instructions, or if you have patience enough to follow advice from a few different online discussion forums—and the judgment to distinguish the good advice from the bad—then the DAC you make may end up sounding very good.
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Digital Processor ReviewsGramophone Dreams
Gramophone Dreams #69: Trance Dancing on Maxwell Street & the Rotel DT-6000 "DAC Transport"
Herb Reichert  |  Jan 24, 2023  |  9 comments
Everyone knows I'm a lucky guy. I was born in Chicago in nineteen-hundred and forty-nine, and as far as I can tell, that was the perfect year to be born. I missed the war, plague, and Depression horrors of the first half of the 20th century, and I witnessed the art, music, and cinema inventions of the second half.
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Digital Processor Reviews
Topping DM7 8-channel D/A processor
Kalman Rubinson  |  Dec 30, 2022  |  9 comments
The Topping DM7 DAC ($599.99) is a high-resolution, eight-channel DAC that supports PCM and DSD sources but will not handle any of the common Dolby/DTS codecs. It employs the highly capable and respected ES-9038PRO DAC chip, ESS's flagship. It has just one input, and it's USB. Its eight analog outputs are fully balanced, but they are TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) phone jacks, which are more widely used in pro audio; most audiophiles will require adapters.
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