Audiophilepure

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Returning to our original conversation, you don’t have to be an aristocrat to have a dCS Bartok of your very own. If you love music, and you want a top-quality digital front end that will offer enough performance to stay put, the Bartok is a winner. The performance that it provides more than justifies the price asked. dCS has put a considerable helping of their top technology in a package that outperforms many far more expensive boutique DACs.”

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“Every manufactured chip has limitations and generally made to a price point and design criteria. The chip cannot be auditioned before production, and although it is logically and mathematically sound, you have to wonder if they’re designed with the utmost sound quality in mind?

At Chord Electronics, things are done a little differently. Rob Watts’ FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) approach allows him to design digital circuits with total control over the hardware. So by designing a DAC using FPGA and discrete analog components, it is possible to have increased flexibility over the rigid performance aspects compared to typical off-the-shelf DAC chips.

Watts’ considered approach to ultimate DAC design is to utilise far more complex calculations than was ever thought to be needed, with unheard of long interpolation filters which he designs using what’s known as a windowed-sinc technique. He calculated that a 1,000,000 tap filter (with the number of taps being the indicator of how complex the FIR filter is) is needed to guarantee 16-bit performance from the interpolation filter, a number that was so inconceivably high that many thought that it would be impossible to build. ”

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“I don’t have any real qualms with the Yggdrasil’s sound. Instead, most of my complaints are with its functionality and versatility. In my opinion, the biggest omission Schiit made for Yggdrasil was the lack of built-in volume control. There are other high-performance DACs out there, some that cost less than the Yggdrasil, that provide lossless digital volume control. I suppose the retort Schiit might have against digital volume control is that attenuating the output voltage creates a reduction in signal-to-noise ratio. But if you create a DAC with a low enough noise floor, you can still end up with no noticeable reduction in sound quality so I don’t think this is a valid argument, especially at Yggdrasil’s price point. Buyers should also be aware that this omission forces you into an additional preamp purchase (unless you’re using an integrated amp). As I said above, I don’t advise owners to use software volume control from the likes of Windows or MacOS as it will ruin the integrity of the audio you’re sending this high-performance DAC. If you simply must go this route, though, at least use something like JRiver Media Center. ”

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“Getting it to work with the Sony HAP-Z1ES HDD audio player was as simple as running a USB cable between the two units. With the Windows-based PC running jRiver Media centre, all you have to do is to download and install the drivers from the BAT website and select the relevant option on the media-playing software. For Mac users, it’s simply plug-and-play, of course.

As expected with a complement of six tubes, the REX does run hot, so ensure that it has sufficient ventilation; an air-conditioned room will also add to your personal comfort.

With all that in place, the only thing left to do is to let the music play and immerse yourself in the REX DAC’s marvellous sonics.

And simply glorious it is. It’s not about analysing in detail each and every aspect of its performance, it is the gestalt, the sum of its parts, the ability to draw you into the sonic landscape it paints that beguiles and keeps you listening hour after hour.