joelha Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Hey Marcin, I'm glad you posted because I owe you a very big public "thank you" for introducing me to Alex Peychev and APL. Spending time with you and hearing APL's components were absolutely the highlights of my visit to the Warsaw Show. Thanks again. Joel Marcin_gps 1 Link to comment
Marcin_gps Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 3 minutes ago, joelha said: Hey Marcin, I'm glad you posted because I owe you a very big public "thank you" for introducing me to Alex Peychev and APL. Spending time with you and hearing APL's components were absolutely the highlights of my visit to the Warsaw Show. Thanks again. Joel Joel, always a pleasure Marcin joelha 1 JPLAY & JCAT Founder Link to comment
Popular Post The Computer Audiophile Posted March 29, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted March 29, 2019 56 minutes ago, Marcin_gps said: Great review, Chris! APL DSD-MR is my reference DAC that I've had in my system for over a year now. Before that I had a previous model, DSD-M, and before that, DSD-S, which started my journey with APL. Each upgrade was a big step up and the DSD-MR is by far the best DAC I've heard. I also prefer the DSD256 & NORM filter setting in my system which is the most natural and detailed to my ears. That said, the DSD128 setting has a bit better trarnsient response and is a bit sharper, but it doesn't sound as spacious. The DAC is very sensitive when it comes to power cords and vibrations. It is worth playing with both to extract the full potential. Regards, Marcin Thanks for the kind words and comments. Alex suggested I use DSD128 for better transients as well. It’s all about engineering trade offs. No DAC is perfect. Over all I like what DSD256 gave me more than what it may have taken away from a more perfect transient response. All good. What a product. I feel like I’ve been driving a Ferrari for the last couple months. Marcin_gps and Perfect sense 2 Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
Marcin_gps Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 45 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said: Thanks for the kind words and comments. Alex suggested I use DSD128 for better transients as well. It’s all about engineering trade offs. No DAC is perfect. Over all I like what DSD256 gave me more than what it may have taken away from a more perfect transient response. All good. What a product. I feel like I’ve been driving a Ferrari for the last couple months. I agree. I've done many comparisons and I always came back to DSD256 setting. JPLAY & JCAT Founder Link to comment
Popular Post emcdade Posted March 29, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted March 29, 2019 Oh yeah, well my DAC does DSD512 😉 Marcin_gps and The Computer Audiophile 2 Link to comment
ThenewGearPPK Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 9 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said: Yes, my preference using the APL DAC was DSD256. There are already DACs that can do DSD512 & DSD1024 & much much cheaper. Seems having DSD256 max is incredibly outdated for a 2019 $50,000 DAC Link to comment
The Computer Audiophile Posted March 29, 2019 Author Share Posted March 29, 2019 7 hours ago, ThenewGearPPK said: There are already DACs that can do DSD512 & DSD1024 & much much cheaper. Seems having DSD256 max is incredibly outdated for a 2019 $50,000 DAC I’m not following your logic. Founder of Audiophile Style | My Audio Systems Link to comment
matthias Posted March 29, 2019 Share Posted March 29, 2019 Did someone compare the APL DSD-MR to an Aries Cerat Kassandra? Thanks Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
chrille Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 On 3/29/2019 at 2:25 AM, The Computer Audiophile said: Thanks for the kind words and comments. Alex suggested I use DSD128 for better transients as well. It’s all about engineering trade offs. No DAC is perfect. Over all I like what DSD256 gave me more than what it may have taken away from a more perfect transient response. All good. What a product. I feel like I’ve been driving a Ferrari for the last couple months. Hello Chris, I don't at all doubt that it is possibly in many ways one of the best dacs that money can buy. It'd better be, at that price! But to me the absolutely MOST interesting paragraph in your review was where you mentioned how it handled the extremely densely scored passages in Britten's Passacaglia from the Reference Recordings album. To me it indicates two things. You obviously have a very resolving system and you know where a link fails to deliver the whole truth. As someone who listens almost exclusively not only to acoustic music, but also LARGE SCALE symphonic like Britten, Stravinsky and Bartok to mention a couple of composers whose music is good material to "sort the wheat from the chaff", I have to conclude that this dac was possibly designed to sound euphonic? much like vinyl and analogue tape do? But not necessarily as live music ACTUALLY sounds? But for me the ONLY REFERENCE POINT there can be in REAL HI FI terms, is HOW CLOSE any link in a reproduction chain dac or whatever else can reproduce acoustic music to how it sounds LIVE in a real hall. And with the example you mention to you there are already other dacs that sort out very complex symphonic music better than this dac does with this particular recording. If I am not wrong that Reference Recording is a PCM recording recorded at 176.4 with the Pacific Microsonics chip used by Mr Jonsson for many of his recordings which would have had to be converted to DSD by this Dac. Some more recent recordings from the same label have been made at DSD 256. Do you have any of those as well to compare with other dacs? You also say that it's been like driving a Ferrari. Have you also driven a Chord DAVE with a Chord Hugo M Scaler yet? I suspect that with this particular recording and possibly others of the same complexity and dynamic range it might be an even smoother and possibly more REALISTIC drive than the dac you have just reviewed. Nota bene,I am not saying this as a fact. I am only guessing from actually hearing the DAVE/HMS and using the HMS with a Qutest dac since three months on a daily basis. I have yet to audition the dac you reviewed. And the DAVE/HMS would play the native 176.4 pcm file not a conversion of it. On the other hand the DAVE/HMS and TT2/HMS would do the opposite with a native DSD file. I would not rule out the possiblity that the "Ferrari dac" is one of the best DSD dacs around. But I guess DAVE/HMS would sound more realistic and closer to the real thing with NATIVE PCM material. If you haven't yet heard either the TT2/HMS or DAVE /HMS yet do try to do so while you still have the dac under discussion in your home. I would be very interested to hear your take on such a comparison with the MOST demanding material you have. Cheers Christer Link to comment
matthias Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 On 3/29/2019 at 2:25 AM, The Computer Audiophile said: All good. What a product. I feel like I’ve been driving a Ferrari for the last couple months. Which DAC would be like driving a Koenigsegg Jesko?😎 Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
AnotherSpin Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 37 minutes ago, matthias said: Which DAC would be like driving a Koenigsegg Jesko?😎 Matt Those who drive Jesko would not care about DACs. To own a symphony orchestra or opera theater would be a better fit. alwayslearning 1 Link to comment
kaka Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 Hi Did you ask what was behind the decision not to have a volume control? Source: Pink Faun Ultra - Chord DAVE Amps: VTV Purifi Speakers: Trenner and Friedel RA Cables : JCAT reference USB, Tellerium XLR, Kubula-Sosna Elation speaker Plus CEC TL 5 Cd transport - Blackcat Tron BNC - Chord DAVE Link to comment
matthias Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 12 hours ago, AnotherSpin said: Those who drive Jesko would not care about DACs. To own a symphony orchestra or opera theater would be a better fit. Certainly, but this was not my point. According to Chris the DSD-MR is not perfect. So is there a DAC which combines the virtues of the DSD-MR and some other top DACs? Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
matthias Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 9 hours ago, kaka said: Hi Did you ask what was behind the decision not to have a volume control? IMO, a volume control is not superior to a very good preamp. So you pay for things you do not need. Matt Perfect sense 1 "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
chrille Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 6 hours ago, matthias said: Certainly, but this was not my point. According to Chris the DSD-MR is not perfect. So is there a DAC which combines the virtues of the DSD-MR and some other top DACs? Matt That is basically the same question I was asking and with a suggestion of a combo that might be more resolving and ultimately "better", than the "Ferrari dac". According to the designer behind that combo ie Dave/HMS, DSD is a fundamenally flawed format with limitations that can not ever be solved. According to him he used a format identical to today's DSD 256 already in the 1990s but later abandoned it because of its too many limitations. Personally I am only interested in maximum transparency to the source. I am not interested in dac solutions that possibly only sound as good the best of vinyl. I already have a good LP player. I want dacs that sound clearly better and closer to real live acoustic music than even the very best of vinyl! Link to comment
matthias Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 3 hours ago, chrille said: According to the designer behind that combo ie Dave/HMS, DSD is a fundamenally flawed format with limitations that can not ever be solved. According to him he used a format identical to today's DSD 256 already in the 1990s but later abandoned it because of its too many limitations. I know what the mentioned designer thinks about DSD but the Chord products are not my cup of tea. Further I would not regard DSD as a flawed format. Some excellent guys like @tailspn and @Miska are working with it. I appreciate what Chris said about the emotional impact of the DSD-MR. Maybe the mentioned issue can be solved in the next version of the DSD-MR. Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
chrille Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 3 hours ago, matthias said: I know what the mentioned designer thinks about DSD but the Chord products are not my cup of tea. Further I would not regard DSD as a flawed format. Some excellent guys like @tailspn and @Miska are working with it. I appreciate what Chris said about the emotional impact of the DSD-MR. Maybe the mentioned issue can be solved in the next version of the DSD-MR. Matt Hello Matt, I am personally not stating the above as facts, I am merely and hopefully this time, correctly, quoting Rob Watts. I have quite a few DSD recordings especially from Channel Classics that I play often and like a lot. I also sometimes wonder why Rob finds DSD so bad? I am also aware of the fact that some companies still record in DSD64 in spite of the inevitable noise problems involved in post processing DSD64 recordings. I personally think that DSD64 raw and unedited can sound very transparent and in some ways more listenable than some pcm which still even in hi res, sometimes suffers from hardening and digital ringing that can be painful to hear. I sometimes prefer the slightly softer than live sound of DSD64 over hard ringing pcm. And I would absolutely love to hear the complete DSD256 recorded version of for example Mahler's 3rd which Tailspn recorded with a very simple five mic rig in parallel with Jared Sacks DSD64 Grimm multimic take already released. In that particular case and long before I had an M Scaler it was quite clear to me that at least via my systems both headphone based and via electrostatic speakers, that both the DSD128 ,the DSD256 and DXD samples from the sessions sounded closer to how I have myself heard that orchestra sound in that hall during the sessions for M5, than the slightly less resolved and softer but still very good DSD 64 version. My personal guess is that neither DSD 256 nor DXD are quite enough to capture a symphony orchestra in all its glory. I suspect that maybe 32 or even 64 bits and a sampling rate of 768khz may be necessary to do it full justice. But I also have reasons to suspect that Mr Watts actually knows what he is talking about very well and at least since first hearing his Dave/BLU2 and now Dave/HMS and Qutest /HMS, what I keep hearing from my best masterfiles both DSD and PCM tend to confirm his claims. It may unfortunately be a fact that the issue you hope can be solved in the next version of this dac is in fact an inherent nonsolvable issue of DSD as a format? One thing Rob Watts keeps mentioning as a really major problem with DSD apart from the well known and undeniable noise issue with DSD 64 in particular, is the softening and blurring of transients. And to me it is an undeniable fact that music in fact is simply a series of transients. Cheers Chris Link to comment
Axial Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 Awesome product with price to match; thanks for the great review. Sound Matters Link to comment
matthias Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 @chrille IMO, in 2019 DSD64 is obsolete. It is not an appropriate format for comparisons to high rate PCM or DSD. According to posts from @tailspn recordings in DSD256 seem to be superior to those in DXD. Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
matthias Posted March 31, 2019 Share Posted March 31, 2019 7 hours ago, chrille said: I suspect that maybe 32 or even 64 bits and a sampling rate of 768khz may be necessary to do it full justice. That would be comparable to DSD512 or DSD1024 and in this case I would prefer DSD. Matt "I want to know why the musicians are on stage, not where". (John Farlowe) Link to comment
Perfect sense Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 On 3/28/2019 at 9:16 PM, mevdinc said: Chris, Thanks for such a great review, I really enjoyed reading it. Well done. I wish you'd stated the price at the beginning though, so the shock would have been less perhaps. It maybe well be worth the asking price but one thing I find unacceptable is the lack of a volume control. I personally refuse to buy a DAC without a volume control and at this price level I would certainly expect one. Most of your description of the APL DAC sounds very similar to my Lindemann Musicbook DSD 20, which is also claimed to sound very analog like. It also upsamples everything to DSD 128 or DSD 256 with a preamp and a builtin streamer. Apparently there's an upgrade coming soon too in the form of both hardware and software. I was wondering you had heard the Lindemann DAC and or might be interested in checking out the upcoming version as a comparison. Again thanks for the great write up. Best. Mev The Lindemann Music Book series are wonderful but not comparable to the APL DSD-MR in terms of ultimate sound quality. / Marcus, www.perfect-sense.se PERFECT SENSE www.perfect-sense.se Showroom in Stockholm, Sweden | [email protected] | 08 518 368 00 | Follow us on Facebook Link to comment
Perfect sense Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 On 3/29/2019 at 5:42 AM, ThenewGearPPK said: There are already DACs that can do DSD512 & DSD1024 & much much cheaper. Seems having DSD256 max is incredibly outdated for a 2019 $50,000 DAC Extreme sampling rates might be considered a nice bonus, where sound quality will be the result of many other and more important factors. / Marcus, www.perfect-sense.se joelha 1 PERFECT SENSE www.perfect-sense.se Showroom in Stockholm, Sweden | [email protected] | 08 518 368 00 | Follow us on Facebook Link to comment
mevdinc Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 15 minutes ago, Perfect sense said: The Lindemann Music Book series are wonderful but not comparable to the APL DSD-MR in terms of ultimate sound quality. / Marcus, www.perfect-sense.se Thanks for that. I was more referring to the similarity in the digital is the new analog claim rather than comparing the two, the APL is 10 times more expensive for that reason alone it should sound so much better. I'm looking forward to hearing the upcoming Lindemann update before I start considering a new DAC. mevdinc.com (My autobiography) Recently sold my ATC EL 150 Actives! Link to comment
Abtr Posted April 1, 2019 Share Posted April 1, 2019 3 hours ago, Perfect sense said: Extreme sampling rates might be considered a nice bonus, where sound quality will be the result of many other and more important factors. / Marcus, www.perfect-sense.se Such as the DSD-MR DAC's Class A tube output stage (without volume control)? Current audio system Link to comment
Perfect sense Posted April 2, 2019 Share Posted April 2, 2019 14 hours ago, Abtr said: Such as the DSD-MR DAC's Class A tube output stage (without volume control)? There are design considerations involved here to obtain maximum sound quality basically. The technical explanation in short: The DSD-MR processes DSD in its native domain by using a balanced FIR filter, followed by analog filtering stage and balanced tube output stage. Since Lundahl transformers with OFC windings are used for the post-FIR filter analog filtration and I/V conversion, those audio transformers effectively ground the grids of the vacuum tubes in the output stage. This said, introducing a volume control will only deteriorate the audio quality of the DSD-MR. You could debate if driving a power amp directly is superior to having a dedicate preamp in your system. Based on experience (my own and others), a well built pre amp on a similar level will most often be beneficial adding to the overall performance of the system. A higher end integrated will of course be an option as well, where there are more options available than ever. / Marcus, www.perfect-sense.se PERFECT SENSE www.perfect-sense.se Showroom in Stockholm, Sweden | [email protected] | 08 518 368 00 | Follow us on Facebook Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now