Dcs vivaldi or rossini dac

[BrianLS]

I've been to that place in Omaha - The Sound Environment. I was there a few weeks ago for a DAC shootout between my iFi iDSD Micro (yup), the great Playback Designs MPS-5, and the splendid DCS Vivaldi. They had the mighty Rockport Altairs and the D'Agostino Momentum amplifiers/preamplifier. The system was wired up with all Transparent cables. BTW - The guys at The Sound Environment are a *rare* combination of passion, experience, and knowledge - Just my $.02.

Anyway - I'm considering the Vivaldi, but wouldn't get the clock or upsampler initially. But as sweet as the Playback Designs MPS-5 DAC was, the Vivaldi crushed it with pure resolution and soundstage. And it's not just a detail factory, either. We could hear the top of a cello's body as a 3-dimensional sound source in all of its woody goodness being played by a skilled musician in Rachel Podger's latest DSD project - Beautiful.

What I learned was that the Vivaldi only supports DSD-64, though. So I'm hesitating on the Vivaldi purchase in order to hear the Boulder 2120 and the DCS Rossini, both of which support DSD-128, and neither of which are available for an audition at this time. Perhaps by RMAF...

Brian.

 

Are you thinking of buying the whole Vivaldi stack? I heard it in Omaha, along with a set of Rockport mega-speakers, driven by a Dan D'Agostino amplifier. Sorry I can't recall specifics. What I heard was the most lifelike music playback I will likely ever encounter. I distinctly remember a simple jazz number with a female vocalist and a drummer during the part I heard. If felt like you could reach out and touch each individual drumhead in its own space, perfectly drawn. It was, in a word, incredible. We later heard Pink Floyd - Time SACD and that was absolutely sublime. Talk about being transported to a different dimension.

 

With that said, this was an easily half-million dollar system all-in (I was told the power cable to the D'Agostino was something like $37k just by itself). So, by all rights, the actual band should have been playing in the room at that point.

 

Regardless - I'm not one to judge, but that is one SERIOUS piece of kit to use for Netflix and TIDAL.

[BrianLS]

I agree with your sentiment about the room at The Sound Environment. I live in Colorado and have made the trip to Omaha several times just to audition one bit of gear or another in that room.

The Vivaldi is modular in the sense that it has the DAC, clock, upsampler, and transport, so that a customer's system can be composed of different components. It also allows for firmware updates to improve/optimize the various algorithms inside the DAC. But I don't believe the Vivaldi will support more than DSD-64 via a firmware update. Perhaps they will have a factory-update program in the future, though.

I'm wondering if they won't let this Rossini breathe a little, and then release a new flagship to replace Vivaldi.

Brian.

That's the place! That room they have is astounding, truly.

 

While somewhat surprising that it only supports DSD64, Vivaldi is a very modular system isn't it? I would think there is some hope for an upgrade path there but this equipment is well out of my league, I just feel privileged to have heard it once. We're going back to Omaha next year I think and I'm hoping they have something equally as impressive then