#Dcs vivaldi free#

I like to first evaluate a DAC using poor recordings. Which is not to say, 'Come back, Compact Discall is forgiven!' With hi-rez recordings at my fingertips, including some for which I also had the CDs, two things were clear: 1) While the best-engineered and -produced CDs can sound pretty good, CD sound pales next to SACD or hi-rez PCM and 2) Those who trumpet CD's transparency and claim that higher resolution is inaudible are being guided by mathematical 'proof'not their ears, which for some reason they fail to trust. No single overarching, obvious sonic character permeated every disc's or every source's sound: no bright overlay or etchy transient fingerprint that, once heard (usually quickly) in lesser gear, just can't be ignored.

#Dcs vivaldi free#

They also produced the most convincing musical textures I've yet heard from digital, 100% free of cardboardy or metallic artifacts. The Vivaldis' overall sound was as nondigital, transparent, andespeciallyas three-dimensional and spacious as I've experienced with digital. Yet while sounding more open, transparent, and spacious, the Vivaldis still retained the Scarlattis' warmth and transient delicacy, minus their tendency to softness. However, based on my aural memory, the Vivaldis immediately sounded more open and less reserved than the Scarlattis, which, while free of obvious digital artifacts, seemed to achieve that by hiding them in the folds of its warmish sound. With the MSB and Scarlatti systems no longer in my system, I couldn't perform direct comparisons. It was clearly a leap forward from the dCS Scarlattis' playback of CD and hi-rez PCM recordings, particularly in terms of overall openness and three-dimensional, widescreen sound, minus the usual associated brightness and brittle transients. (See Jon Iverson's review.) The MSB combo had produced the best digital sound I'd heard. I had the digital power!īefore doing any listening, I wondered how the Vivaldis' reproduction of PCM recordings would compare with that of MSB's Signature DAC IV with Diamond power supply ($43,325), which I'd borrowed along with their Platinum Data CD IV transport.

I now had at my disposal my collection of SACDs, more than 3000 CDs, and 24/96 downloads on the Meridian, and a large collection of DSD files on a hard drive (also provided by Quick) that connected to my MacBook Air, in turn connected via USB to the Vivaldi Upsampler and the iPad-controlled server. John Quick therefore provided a 'pre-filled' server running dCS's proprietary UPnP software. However, it turned out that my Meridian Digital Music Server was incompatible with the Vivaldi Upsampler, and could only be connected to the Vivaldi DAC via S/PDIF. When they are connected by the dual-AES/EBU link, both the Vivaldi Upsampler and DAC correctly switch between the clocks for 44.1kHz and its multiples (including DSD) and 48kHz and its multiples.įor use with a UPnP server and control point, you'll need to set the Upsampler to its Network input. As the Vivaldi Master Clock has two independent groups of word-clock outputs, you can set one to 44.1 and the other to 48kHz that way, you're less likely to get silence instead of music because the clock frequency doesn't isn't a multiple of the incoming bitstream's frequency.

When the Vivaldi Upsampler and DAC are fed audio data via USB or the Upsampler via Ethernet, the incoming sample rate can be anything from 44.1kHz to 192kHz or even DSD.