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Article: EMM Labs DV2 DAC Review


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8 minutes ago, EMM Labs said:

Although we would encourage you to talk to Miguelito we do not believe this to be a valid comparison as Miguelito had the XDS1V2, now over 6 years old, which is now upgradable to V3 architecture, whereas the DV2 is our latest flagship DAC. A lot has changed since the days of the XDS1. We still regard it as a fantastic product and customers still revere them, especially with the V3 upgrade, but the advancements in both the digital and analog domain cannot be understated.

 

 

Since I have now been quoted twice, I will chip in.

 

Rossini vs XDS1v2 - Rossini is more detailed, more musical, and sounds more "like music" than the XDS1v2, which by comparison was metallic sounding. 

 

However, I think it's my responsibility to give full account of why I moved away from EMM Labs. In Feb 2017 I found a dropout bug in the XDS1v2. I sent a few example tracks to EMM Labs to show the issue - they could reproduce the bug. This bug was also present in the DA2 DAC. Over a few months they fixed the bug in the DA2 firmware - but never in the XDS1v2 firmware. I was told for ~8 months that the fix was coming, though I eventually figured out that they were never intending to produce a fix. In the spirit of getting past this debacle, I offered them to exchange my unit for one with the same retail price (a DA2 at the time) - and I said I was fine if it was a demo unit. They did not agree instead asking me to pay up a hefty amount for the exchange.   Money was not the issue to me, after all I ended up buying a dCS Rossini+Clock for $32k. It was having been lied to for so long that made me decide to never buy an EMM product ever again.

 

YMMV.

NUC10i7 + Roon ROCK > dCS Rossini APEX DAC + dCS Rossini Master Clock 

SME 20/3 + SME V + Dynavector XV-1s or ANUK IO Gold > vdH The Grail or Kondo KSL-SFz + ANK L3 Phono 

Audio Note Kondo Ongaku > Avantgarde Duo Mezzo

Signal cables: Kondo Silver, Crystal Cable phono

Power cables: Kondo, Shunyata, van den Hul

system pics

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I will also point out that both the product AND dCS customer service are stellar. When I pay this kind of money for a product, I expect this.

NUC10i7 + Roon ROCK > dCS Rossini APEX DAC + dCS Rossini Master Clock 

SME 20/3 + SME V + Dynavector XV-1s or ANUK IO Gold > vdH The Grail or Kondo KSL-SFz + ANK L3 Phono 

Audio Note Kondo Ongaku > Avantgarde Duo Mezzo

Signal cables: Kondo Silver, Crystal Cable phono

Power cables: Kondo, Shunyata, van den Hul

system pics

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