dCS Scarlatti software update and firewire vs dual AES

jfrech

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I updated my dCS Scarlatti dac and trans software. This allowed me to swap my Audioquest Diamond firewire with Dual AES Transparent Ref XL digital cables. This new software allows all sample rates and DSD via Dual AES via something now in the Scarlatti menu called "Vivaldi mode"

The Transparent digital cables need 200 hours to break in...I have about 18 hours. But holy smokes is this a BIG improvement. I feel like I got a new DAC or something...will post more as the cables break in...but Dual AES is clearly the better path for dCS Scarlatti owners vs the firewire interface.

If you're a dCS owner...using firewire...you really should call your dealer...get the new software...and Dual AES cables and be ready to smile.

I also replaced my Purist Proteus Provectus Praesto digital bnc to bnc clock cables with the new Transparent Reference XL. The Purist were VERY good...Transparent however has quite a digital cable now....the improvement in resolution, quietness, and spaciousness is unmistakable and you can hear this is the first few seconds...it is not subtle. Now I said the same thing when the Purist replaced Cardas Lightning 15 digital cables...and when the Cardas replaced stock clock cables. More money on each step here is clearly equalling better sound. (Cardas about $300, Purist about $1100, Transparent about $3200)

Clearly digital cables are making a significant impact on sound quality. It's not just passing zero's and ones....
 

LL21

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Nice one! Congrats. I am a huge fan of Transparent for 7 years running now...I am watching you and a few others move steadily towards Opus...and I may slipstream into that migration as demo and second hand pieces come into the marketplace.
 

Elberoth

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Thanks for sharing !

Any plans to upgrade the DAC to Vivaldi ?
 

jfrech

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Thanks for sharing !

Any plans to upgrade the DAC to Vivaldi ?

Hi Adam...maybe in a few months...I have yet to hear a Vivaldi...but this cable upgrade I suspect is giving me a partial hint at what more their is to gain from better digital...it's part of the reason I took this step now...all the cables etc ready for Vivaldi :)

I take it you're quite happy with Trinity? I listen to mostly SACD's...

Did you get the chance to compare a Vivaldi to your Trinity or just Scarlatti=>Trinity?

Thanks
 
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LL21

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Hi Adam...maybe in a few months...I have yet to hear a Vivaldi...but this cable upgrade I suspect is giving me a partial hint at what more their is to gain from better digital...it's part of the reason I took this step now...all the cables etc ready for Vivaldi :)

I take it you're quite happy with Trinity? I listen to mostly SACD's...

Did you get the chance to compare a Vivaldi to your Trinity or just Scarlatti=>Trinity?

Thanks
We should see if we can get Audiocrack in on this one. He too owns DCS Scarlatti, Jfrech, and i think has heard Vivaldi full stack as well...and as we all know, he has gone for Trinity though he is keeping the Scarlatti.
 

Elberoth

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No, I didn't even had a chance to compare my old Scarlatti to the Trinity, as I sold my Scarlatti for the MSB, and then MSB for the Trinity.

I wonder how much of the reported improvement between the Vivaldi and Scarlatti comes from the Dual AES cables ? Maybe you are already half way there ?

Anyway, I'm always reading all your posts with great interest, and now looking forward for your Scarlatti vs Vivaldi assesment.

If my budget was twice as big and I had more SACDs than the odd 20 I have, I would seriously consider the Vivaldi. In fact, a friend of mine had chosen the Scarlatti over the MSB Diamond (that I felt was superior on RedBook) for its SACD capabilities, and had just recently upgraded to the Vivaldi. The Vivaldi sounds glorious.

Vivaldi, MSB Diamond or the Trinity - you can't really go wrong with any of those DACs.
 
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LL21

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Vivaldi, MSB Diamond or the Trinity - you can't really do wrong with any of those DACs.

Aint that the truth! And i would add Scarlatti to that as well! (And while we're at it, of course Zanden...;))
 

Audiocrack

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We should see if we can get Audiocrack in on this one. He too owns DCS Scarlatti, Jfrech, and i think has heard Vivaldi full stack as well...and as we all know, he has gone for Trinity though he is keeping the Scarlatti.

Well Lloyd, as you know I had the opportunity to listen to a full Vivaldi stack in my Genesis/Kondo set up. Before the Vivaldi (which was btw a demo stack with enough playing hours so it could be considered fully played in) was inserted in the system it was fired up separately for about one hour and we listened approximately 3-4 hours to the Vivaldi afterwards. In all honesty I was not convinced that it actually bettered my Scarllatti four stack. I know my experience contradicts most if not all the reviews in which the Vivaldi was considered (clearly) better than the Scarlatti. Although I liked the dxd performance of the Vivaldi I was not convinced otherwise which in included high res files through a computer. Btw, I was not alone in this judgement: a friend of mine/technician with very good ears and who helps me with my set ups - he is the guy who transformed the performance of my G 1.1 through the Duelund silver caps in the Genesis xovers and who is very familiar with my set ups - came to the same conclusion. Of course the Vivaldi is a very good cd-player as it should be given it's high price but that evening it did not better my Scarlatti (which we have tuned with halcyonic and shun mook devices as well as with a PS Audio p 300). So in all honesty I am not yet convinced that the Vivaldi should replace my Scarlatti. As I own quite a substantial amount of sacd's for now I will keep a sacd-player
 

microstrip

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Well Lloyd, as you know I had the opportunity to listen to a full Vivaldi stack in my Genesis/Kondo set up. Before the Vivaldi (which was btw a demo stack with enough playing hours so it could be considered fully played in) was inserted in the system it was fired up separately for about one hour and we listened approximately 3-4 hours to the Vivaldi afterwards. In all honesty I was not convinced that it actually bettered my Scarllatti four stack. I know my experience contradicts most if not all the reviews in which the Vivaldi was considered (clearly) better than the Scarlatti. Although I liked the dxd performance of the Vivaldi I was not convinced otherwise which in included high res files through a computer. Btw, I was not alone in this judgement: a friend of mine/technician with very good ears and who helps me with my set ups - he is the guy who transformed the performance of my G 1.1 through the Duelund silver caps in the Genesis xovers and who is very familiar with my set ups - came to the same conclusion. Of course the Vivaldi is a very good cd-player as it should be given it's high price but that evening it did not better my Scarlatti (which we have tuned with halcyonic and shun mook devices as well as with a PS Audio p 300). So in all honesty I am not yet convinced that the Vivaldi should replace my Scarlatti. As I own quite a substantial amount of sacd's for now I will keep a sacd-player

Audiocrack,

After you spend a long time tuning your system to a source component it is very difficult that a new contender of the same rank can make a nigh and day type victory. For a long time I have owned a complete Audio Research system with the CD8 cd player. The system sounded great and several high-end players that tried to take the CD8 position for short time comparisons were systematically unsuccessful. One day a borrowed Kalista/C2A arrived for a few days stay, and to my great happiness, although it had a little more detail, bass, scale and better soundstage, it was missing some fundamental fullness and envelopment of the CD8. However, a few days after, it was becoming too dangerous - I have managed to make it sound great with different borrowed signal/power cables, power conditioners (I am also a P300 fan), a little correction in Aida's positioning and settings and moving some RPG flutterfree panels. My ears told me it was really a great sound, my brains told me it was too expensive.

It is only a guess, but IMHO most probably if you had bought the Vivaldi today it would be sounding better today in your system than your current Scarlatti, as you would have optimized and tuned it, as you did with the Scarlatti. I have little experience with both - just some small listening sessions in different systems, but my heart tells me that I would prefer the Metronome system to the Scarlatti, but would vacillate against the Vivaldi. Curiously I prefer Domenico Scarlatti sonatas to Vivaldi concertos. ;)
 

jfrech

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... was inserted in the system it was fired up separately for about one hour and we listened approximately 3-4 hours to the Vivaldi afterwards. In all honesty I was not convinced that it actually bettered my Scarllatti four stack. ...

I my experience the dCS Scarlatti needs 2 or 3 days powered up to stabilize and sound right. It sounds dull and uninteresting...After just a hour being powered I doubt it's at it's optimum...I think your experience is possibly due to the Vivaldi not being effectively warmed up...
 

jfrech

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...

I wonder how much of the reported improvement between the Vivaldi and Scarlatti comes from the Dual AES cables ? Maybe you are already half way there ?...

Adam, not sure on 1/2 way...but certainly a few steps that way....these Transparent cables take about 200 hours...and cycle between nice sounding and dull...I am now in the very dull phase...break in hell so to speak :)...my dealer said the cables would sound good at first...then hit n miss ....then dramatically worse...before they emerge much much better...(he got his cables about a week before me but has sold a few sets already)

I'll make some more comments on the dual aes arrangement in the next 10 days...will just let em play 24x7 for a bit...
 

microstrip

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Jfrech,

I some one does not listen to files, just to CDs and SACDs using the transport-cloc-DAC, is there any improvement due to inserting the upsampler? Thanks!
 

jfrech

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John, I hope Casey didn't arrive too late. He left from my house, where he was adjusting my more modest digital front end.
Feel free to stop by soon ! His new car is pretty zippy :)
 

jfrech

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Jfrech,

I some one does not listen to files, just to CDs and SACDs using the transport-cloc-DAC, is there any improvement due to inserting the upsampler? Thanks!

I do not think so on SACD's...but apparently yes on redbook cd's. I have not tried a upsampler at home yet...I listen mostly to sacd's and haven't dived seriously into the hi rez download world just yet...
 

Audiocrack

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I my experience the dCS Scarlatti needs 2 or 3 days powered up to stabilize and sound right. It sounds dull and uninteresting...After just a hour being powered I doubt it's at it's optimum...I think your experience is possibly due to the Vivaldi not being effectively warmed up...

Might be. That is exactly the reason why I explicitly mentioned 'the timing' in my description. That said, the Vivaldi is clearly more expensive and according to a lot of folks way better or way more sophisticated than Scarlatti. I expected that this could be heard somehow after 4-5 hours of listening. After the listening session we set up the Scarlatti again after being of power for about 5 hours and I was immediately back at the level before I replaced it with the Vivaldi. Apart from the usual testing by Dietmar the Trinity units were new and I have never felt the need for serious tweaking in order to get state of the art sound. Anyway, I am still not sure about the Vivaldi and as I mentioned before on this forum: a mark 2 or 3 model or a new product is not necessarily better than a former one. Eg I clearly prefer the Kondo m1000 mk i preamp to the Kondo m1000 mk ii preamp and I had the same experience with a kondo dac: I prefer one of an older vintage to a newer one.
 
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Audiocrack

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Audiocrack,

After you spend a long time tuning your system to a source component it is very difficult that a new contender of the same rank can make a nigh and day type victory. For a long time I have owned a complete Audio Research system with the CD8 cd player. The system sounded great and several high-end players that tried to take the CD8 position for short time comparisons were systematically unsuccessful. One day a borrowed Kalista/C2A arrived for a few days stay, and to my great happiness, although it had a little more detail, bass, scale and better soundstage, it was missing some fundamental fullness and envelopment of the CD8. However, a few days after, it was becoming too dangerous - I have managed to make it sound great with different borrowed signal/power cables, power conditioners (I am also a P300 fan), a little correction in Aida's positioning and settings and moving some RPG flutterfree panels. My ears told me it was really a great sound, my brains told me it was too expensive.

It is only a guess, but IMHO most probably if you had bought the Vivaldi today it would be sounding better today in your system than your current Scarlatti, as you would have optimized and tuned it, as you did with the Scarlatti. I have little experience with both - just some small listening sessions in different systems, but my heart tells me that I would prefer the Metronome system to the Scarlatti, but would vacillate against the Vivaldi. Curiously I prefer Domenico Scarlatti sonatas to Vivaldi concertos. ;)

Might very well be but I am not sure. I expect from a product as expensive as the Vivaldi that it is able to demonstrate it's qualities without extensive tweaking. In that regard I was somewhat dissappointed but of course it is only my experience of one day listening. Let everybody be his/her own judge. And like you I love the music of the composer Domenico Scarlatti.
 

Audiocrack

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And just to be absolute clear on this: when I listened to the Vivaldi stack in my system the Trinity dac and Trinity cd-transport were not launched yet. So the reason I was not really impressed by the performance of the Vivaldi stack in my Genesis/Kondo set up has nothing to do with my fondness of the Trinity combo.
 

LL21

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Might very well be but I am not sure. I expect from a product as expensive as the Vivaldi that it is able to demonstrate it's qualities without extensive tweaking. In that regard I was somewhat dissappointed but of course it is only my experience of one day listening. Let everybody be his/her own judge. And like you I love the music of the composer Domenico Scarlatti.

Pletnev on Scarlatti is one of my favorites
 

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