DCS Vivaldi

[MadFloyd]

I had the Vivaldi DAC (v2.01) today in my system for the whole ... 60 minutes

I have connected the Vivaldi DAC via USB to the Aurender W20.

What I have noted vs my Lampizator Golden Gate (the original version, without the superclocks or the new USB board) is that the vivaldi:

- offeres more see-through transparency;
- has more resolution;
- has vastly improved bass articulation (GG bass sounds bloated in comparison);
- has a bit less 'meat on the bones', sounding a bit leaner and less palpable.

I liked what I've heard. The differences between the two are quite stark and easy to tell. They are also consitent from PCM to DSD. I need to borrow one from the distributor for a little longer.

Just noticed this post. I would think a tubed DAC is going to suffer a bit with bass articulation (while bringing other nice qualities to compensate). I would also expect the Vivaldi to be leaner sounding; not only because you're comparing it to a tube DAC but I've compared it to the Aqua Formula (solid state) and the Vivaldi was much leaner.

What about instrument separation and soundstage layering? Were both DACs similar in that respect?

 

[bonzo75]

Just noticed this post. I would think a tubed DAC is going to suffer a bit with bass articulation (while bringing other nice qualities to compensate). I would also expect the Vivaldi to be leaner sounding; not only because you're comparing it to a tube DAC but I've compared it to the Aqua Formula (solid state) and the Vivaldi was much leaner.

What about instrument separation and soundstage layering? Were both DACs similar in that respect?

From my experiments the SS dacs get a focused hit, closer to the speaker, while tympani and bass with the Lampi gets a bigger hit in space, with depth, also in the middle of the speakers. Those who have used a 15 quid solid state recti have said that the bass for things like movie tracks improves, gets tighter, though I haven’t tried that. Fyi I have not seen this in other tube dacs including Lampi’s lower modelsso I would not generalize tube dacs. Regarding lean, even with SS amps, you will find some SS amps that are lean in the 100 – 200Hz region. Btw, Elberoth’s 101Ds are leaner than the other tubes I use, and Lampi through its own preamp is leaner still.

 

[Jazzhead]

Just noticed this post. I would think a tubed DAC is going to suffer a bit with bass articulation (while bringing other nice qualities to compensate). I would also expect the Vivaldi to be leaner sounding; not only because you're comparing it to a tube DAC but I've compared it to the Aqua Formula (solid state) and the Vivaldi was much leaner.

What about instrument separation and soundstage layering? Were both DACs similar in that respect?

I have a Formula doing duties right now ... And it's on the leaner side . The Vivaldi presentation is a lot denser , from what I have heard . So can't figure out quite how it reverses for you . The Trinity in my rig does the tympani with depth and space . The SMT acrylic panels help in this regard , with laying out the sound stage . You can adjust their angle for depth or more mid bass as a matter of choice .

 

[MadFloyd]

From my experiments the SS dacs get a focused hit, closer to the speaker, while tympani and bass with the Lampi gets a bigger hit in space, with depth, also in the middle of the speakers. Those who have used a 15 quid solid state recti have said that the bass for things like movie tracks improves, gets tighter, though I haven’t tried that. Fyi I have not seen this in other tube dacs including Lampi’s lower modelsso I would not generalize tube dacs. Regarding lean, even with SS amps, you will find some SS amps that are lean in the 100 – 200Hz region. Btw, Elberoth’s 101Ds are leaner than the other tubes I use, and Lampi through its own preamp is leaner still.

What's a quid?

 

[MadFloyd]

I have a Formula doing duties right now ... And it's on the leaner side . The Vivaldi presentation is a lot denser , from what I have heard . So can't figure out quite how it reverses for you . The Trinity in my rig does the tympani with depth and space . The SMT acrylic panels help in this regard , with laying out the sound stage . You can adjust their angle for depth or more mid bass as a matter of choice .

Interesting. The other thing I noticed between the two was the Formula had a much closer presentation whereas my Vivaldi presents vocalists far behind the speakers.

 

[bonzo75]

What's a quid?

Pound. Like British pounds which were once great

 

[MadFloyd]

Pound. Like British pounds which were once great

Thanks. Knew it was money but wasn't sure (I guess the american equivalent is 'bucks'). All the British money denominations/slang confuse me (e.g. is 'pence' a penny?)

 

[bonzo75]

Yes, penny wise and pound foolish refers to audiophiles who slowly upgrade through multiple components instead of directly buying the final component

 

[Kingsrule]

Vivaldi Dac v 2.01 vs. 2.02

Anyone notice any changes, either operationally and/or sonically?

 

[MadFloyd]

Vivaldi Dac v 2.01 vs. 2.02

Anyone notice any changes, either operationally and/or sonically?

Hard to say as I basically upgraded the Upsampler at the same time.

 

[jfrech]

I think he's plugging the network board via AES/EBU into the Rossini's inputs. Vs using the Rossini's ethernet input.

My dealer has a note into dCS for more info. And to see if a VUP update is on the way soon if this reviewers claims bear out to be true...

Spoke to my dealer today. He has a Vivaldi full stack and a Rossini. Plus he has a network bridge...he'll try it over the next few days and report back on his thoughts...

 

[Enatai252]

Spoke to my dealer today. He has a Vivaldi full stack and a Rossini. Plus he has a network bridge...he'll try it over the next few days and report back on his thoughts...

Interested to hear. I would not worry too much about it, if dCS feels the 820 board makes a big difference I imagine they will eventually make the HW upgrade available for both Rossini and Vivaldi. The Vivaldi upgrade to 800 board was a big improvement and dCS made that upgrade available after hearing the improvement during Rossini development

i have heard of several customers who are opting for the bridge and Vivaldi DAC...which is a pretty powerful combo that price wise is cheaper than the Vivaldi DAC/Upsampler but you lose the ability to upsample to DXD directly to DAC. If you do have a high quality NUC with ROON ROCK you can upsample within ROON and get close to the Upsampler performance....but still not quite there and you lose some of the filtering options.

Now comparing the Rossini to the Bridge/Vivaldi DAC combo- the Rossini is cheaper and does upsample all data to DXD or DSD. In fact the Vivaldi One implements the same upsampling as the Rossini. I am still in the process of comparing the Rossini upsampling on 16/44 material to DXD as compared to performing on ROON with dedicated i7 NUC. It's closer here. in a highly resolving system, the Vivaldi DAC would put the Bridge/VDAC above the Rossini in my opinion. But for the money, the Rossini is the most value for the money and I spend many hours listening to it in my study....and that is with a Vivaldi stack just down the hall in the media room. Bottom line is digital media playback keeps improving and dCS is not only on the leading edge... it keeps allowing me to keep my Now 5 year old Vivaldi system up to date. And it's still the best digital I have heard

 

[jfrech]

...Bottom line is digital media playback keeps improving and dCS is not only on the leading edge... it keeps allowing me to keep my Now 5 year old Vivaldi system up to date. And it's still the best digital I have heard

+1

 

[MadFloyd]

Interested to hear. I would not worry too much about it, if dCS feels the 820 board makes a big difference I imagine they will eventually make the HW upgrade available for both Rossini and Vivaldi. The Vivaldi upgrade to 800 board was a big improvement and dCS made that upgrade available after hearing the improvement during Rossini development

i have heard of several customers who are opting for the bridge and Vivaldi DAC...which is a pretty powerful combo that price wise is cheaper than the Vivaldi DAC/Upsampler but you lose the ability to upsample to DXD directly to DAC. If you do have a high quality NUC with ROON ROCK you can upsample within ROON and get close to the Upsampler performance....but still not quite there and you lose some of the filtering options.

Now comparing the Rossini to the Bridge/Vivaldi DAC combo- the Rossini is cheaper and does upsample all data to DXD or DSD. In fact the Vivaldi One implements the same upsampling as the Rossini. I am still in the process of comparing the Rossini upsampling on 16/44 material to DXD as compared to performing on ROON with dedicated i7 NUC. It's closer here. in a highly resolving system, the Vivaldi DAC would put the Bridge/VDAC above the Rossini in my opinion. But for the money, the Rossini is the most value for the money and I spend many hours listening to it in my study....and that is with a Vivaldi stack just down the hall in the media room. Bottom line is digital media playback keeps improving and dCS is not only on the leading edge... it keeps allowing me to keep my Now 5 year old Vivaldi system up to date. And it's still the best digital I have heard

Have you tried turning off the upsampling to see what difference it makes?

 

[microstrip]

I think he's plugging the network board via AES/EBU into the Rossini's inputs. Vs using the Rossini's ethernet input.
(...)

Then he is probably listening to the effect of using an isolated AES/EBU channel in the audio chain, not to the intrinsic quality of the boards. As far as I could see the main difference between the two boards(800 and 820) is that the 820 is wi-fi enabled.

But IMHO we should be able to assemble a very interesting system using a Network Bridge with a Vivaldi DAC. My DCS dealer told me they are selling a lot of Network Bridges.

 

[MadFloyd]

But IMHO we should be able to assemble a very interesting system using a Network Bridge with a Vivaldi DAC. My DCS dealer told me they are selling a lot of Network Bridges.

That was my original plan (as recommended by my dealer who talked me out of going the Rossini route). While waiting for the Network Bridge to be released I got greedy and went for the Upsampler instead. When I asked my dealer about how much of an improvement it would make he warned that it would be very cable dependent - that if I didn't invest in top quality cables I would be better off with the Network Bridge.

 

[Enatai252]

Then he is probably listening to the effect of using an isolated AES/EBU channel in the audio chain, not to the intrinsic quality of the boards. As far as I could see the main difference between the two boards(800 and 820) is that the 820 is wi-fi enabled.

But IMHO we should be able to assemble a very interesting system using a Network Bridge with a Vivaldi DAC. My DCS dealer told me they are selling a lot of Network Bridges.

From the Stream Unlimited site

"On top to the functionality of the Stream800 module the Stream820 offers the following:

Faster 1 GHz Cortex-A8 CPU with graphics accelerator
More memory (4Gb RAM, 4Gb Flash)
External audio clock support"

I have no data or experience as to what sonic differences exist between the boards. Also when reading the review it is unclear to me what basis the reviewer used to make the claim of better. He seemed to spend most of his listening using a single SPDIF cable into Chord DAVE DAC

 

[Enatai252]

Have you tried turning off the upsampling to see what difference it makes?

In my experience, I have found the best sound comes from providing the DAC with DSD or DXD rather than making the DAC do the work to take lower resolution up to its native rate. And I find the Vivaldi upsampler with filter options to do that better than ROON

So I disable all processing when using ROON as network source for Vivaldi. For the Rossini, the internal upsampling also sounds better than passing rough native rates but here I find using the NUC ROCK to upsample prior to sending to the Rossini sometimes yields an improvement. I think this is highly dependent on what system is running ROON. I would expect you would want a similar high quality upsampling prior to Network Bridge to get the most out of the Vivaldi DAC

In all cases I find well designed hard wired network connections to sound better than USB

 

[Kingsrule]

Just updated dac to 2.02 and having issues:

Roon, no processing

Using upsampler

set to DXD

When shuffling in Roon, if a 24/96 or 24/192 track comes up, Roon shows its playing but there is no audio. When a 44 track comes up, audio is back

If I set upsampler to DSD everything plays. Tried different resync times but behavior remains the same

Anyone experience this? Any solution besides reverting back to 2.01?

 

[Enatai252]

Just updated dac to 2.02 and having issues:

Roon, no processing

Using upsampler

set to DXD

When shuffling in Roon, if a 24/96 or 24/192 track comes up, Roon shows its playing but there is no audio. When a 44 track comes up, audio is back

If I set upsampler to DSD everything plays. Tried different resync times but behavior remains the same

Anyone experience this? Any solution besides reverting back to 2.01?

That's strange. I am using 2.02 with no issues. Curious if you use a server source rather than Roon to deliver a 24/96 or 24/192 file over Ethernet to upsampler do you have the same issue. Also are you using external clock. Could it somehow be locked on 44k for the DAC and not moving to 48k