Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audio-perfectwave-directstream-mk2-da-processor

With the original DirectStream’s volume control set to its maximum of “100” and the Parasound monoblocks set to high sensitivity driving the KEF LS50s, I could hear no hiss with my ear pressed against a tweeter. (For my auditioning, I used the Parasounds set to their lower sensitivity and the PS Audio’s volume set to “76,” ie, 12dB below the maximum.) Repeating the exercise with the MK2, some noise was audible, but I couldn’t hear it if I moved more than a few inches away from the speaker. The level of this noise didn’t change if I lifted the USB ground via a Menu setting, and it wasn’t affected by the setting of the MK2’s volume control. It might be best, then, to avoid using the built-in volume control in a system with high-sensitivity speakers, like the Klipsch La Scala Alex Halberstadt reviewed in April 2023, where the music volume may need to be turned down to levels at which this noise becomes troublesome.

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/tad-da1000tx

Despite all these great things, there are still a few areas where we feel there is space for improvement. One of them concerns rhythmic drive. There is real momentum to Cave’s Babe, I’m On Fire but the DA1000TX doesn’t quite capture that energy. Our feet are still tapping but we know the similarly-priced Chord DAVE would capture more of the verve and drive of the track. It seems TAD’s search for refinement, analysis and control has sacrificed a little of the music’s fun in the process. That includes the way it pulls its punches when it comes to delivering the leading edge of transients and powerful large-scale dynamic shifts. This DAC prefers to err on the side of politeness, and on some more aggressive forms of music, we can feel the loss.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/dcs-vivaldi-apex-da-processor

I wasn’t feeling up to rock music, but I ventured as far as the first tracks of Roger Waters’s Amused to Death (24/192 MQA, Columbia/Tidal) and was wowed again by the Vivaldi Apex’s ability to harness detail in service to emotion. In Yosi Horikawa’s fascinating, gimmicky “Bubbles” (footnote 3) (16/44.1, Tidal), I felt surrounded by the dropping balls at the beginning—uncanny. In “Twilight Song,” from bassist Charlie Hayden and pianist Kenny Barron’s sublime live recording Night and the City (16/44.1, Verve/Qobuz), every note of the piano sounded like a precious pearl. And on Harmonia Mundi’s wonderful period-instruments recording of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, with violinist Isabelle Faust, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and pianist Alexander Melnikov, the sound was so natural and flowing that I closed my eyes and thanked the universe for the glory of it all.

I’m not trying to be all Rod McKuen here, but this will give you an idea of what I heard with the Aavik U-280 and that huge assortment of products from Audio Group Denmark. I knew I was listening to a very low noise floor–I feel like I’ve had a lot of practice identifying low noise floors after spending the last couple of years investigating high-end audio grounding gear. I did learn, for example, that low noise floors have very little to do with putting your ear up to the woofer cone and trying to hear some sort of electronic presence. It’s more of the same philosophy about lowering the noise floor so that more music comes through. It comes across as lower distortion and razor-sharp transient images. It’s funny that in 2022, a lot of audio manufacturers are starting to talk about these same approaches in their ads and seminars and exhibition rooms. Audio Group Denmark is at the vanguard, it seems, and not the fringe.

Still, I was tempted. I was all set to cue an LP when suddenly I noticed that my ear was fairly close to the woofer of the Børresen Z1 Cryo and I thought well, I’m right here. Let’s see what happens with this Aavik U-280 and all the other stuff in the system