I love Hungary.
I love the Hungarian language. Really.
I love beautiful speech, people who speak beautifully.
I love the way Latinovits recites József Attila.
I love beautiful sound in speech, I love it in music too.
I love beautifully sounding audio systems that show this beauty.
I especially respect the underlying meta-contents of language, our beautiful mother tongue shows magnificent richness here.
In
hi-fi, when listening to / assembling demanding audio systems, this
'meta-content' also appears, and as we move up our own ladder, it gains
more and more importance. Sometimes this goes against the technical /
engineering approach, sometimes it is in sync with it. After a while, it
is more appropriate to use terminology that includes 'fine-tuning to
one's own personality, one's own taste', or something similar. This is
because audio systems have many parameters, the stubborn immensity of
which plunges not only the equipment and cables, but also the entire
'High-Fidelity' movement into the uncertainty of subjectivity. Opening
any hi-fi forum, we find a enormous chaos, parties and faculties,
skeptics and fanatics, laws and their opposites flourishing in parallel,
and some terrifying money-laundering that is an absolute must for such
chaotic systems.
For
'High-Fidelity' simply does not prove to be enough; we desire something
more, something whose only true measure is perhaps the time spent
listening to music and its enjoyment factor, relative to the given
person.
So, the designers do not have an easy job, that is for sure.
*
Every
component of an audio system is important, but there is one category
that has undergone a dizzying evolution after decades of stagnation,
probably due to the spread of file-based music listening.
This is the
digital-to-analog converter, a device that converts a digital data
stream into an analog signal, into the music itself. Its importance
cannot be overestimated; although the mathematics of the conversion and
the decoding method have existed for a long time and are even somewhat
standardized, the sound produced will still be different when listening
to different DACs.
The
hifi market offers an incredible amount of converters, the Chinese
started the push with new chips, and then practically everyone got into
the business. Between $50 and $10k, there were a lot of great machines.
I
tried many different converters, and it turned out that there was some
secret attraction hidden in the sound of AKM chip solutions for me, so I
tried to listen to a few of the best implementations, and the one I liked
the most, I kept it, and this became the Gustard A26.
After a
few years of peace, some subtle rustling began, word got around in the
hi-fi circles that there was a new Hungarian development that sounded
extremly good, and that was based on the AKM chip, and in addition, it
had a volume control (this is a must for me), only XLR output (this is
great for me), and only USB input (this is a no-go for me, because I
only listen to CDs).
A couple of weeks ago, the AES/EBU input
version became available, so I borrowed one to listen to, and I would
like to thank you for making this possible, anonymously and without a
deposit.
*
K.
Ferenc wrote a great series of articles about technical details and
listening (here), you can read about the content. I only got my head
around this because he has heard a lot of things, he moves in a broader
coordinate system, and it is certain that our sound tastes differ
greatly, but he even has access to a 10M cable and the devices that
match it, so if he really gets stuck on something, he says it's good,
you can even go a little closer to it. :)
For my part, regarding the internal construction, only two comments.
One
is the volume control. I am somewhat familiar with it, because it is
also inside the Gustard used AKM chip, so it is a 'native', designed
thing, the signal 'comes out' with the given volume, no need for any
potentiometers, relay rows, resistor stacks, or other things in the
signal path of dubious quality. Its use in hi-fi circles is about
blasphemy, but I like it very much in the A26, I think it is better
sonically than any preamplifier, which only performs signal-conditioning
and coloring anyway, and can even enhance the sound of weaker systems,
the really good ones sound good, the weak ones sound bad. There is no
need for input selection, nor is there impedance matching, so their
presence is not technically justified - I am about alone in this
opinion.
Until
I spoke to Gábor Tóth, the designer, who also considers the sound of
this solution to be better from an engineering point of view. The
much-quoted 'bit loss' is of course a reality, they just forget that the
system is 32-bit, and the CD is 16-bit, meaning that the mathematical
loss itself would begin at the very, very low volume setting, but there
the narrowing due to the physiological loudness effect can be heard a
thousand times better. (Then when listening, it turned out that its
virtues remain even at very low volumes, just like with the A26.)
The
other thing is that the power supply is very small and switch-mode,
which automatically generates a half-smile of pity in hi-fi enthusiasts,
it's useless to explain that for example I tried about 10 types of
linear power supplies for my CD transport, but I like the original SMPSU
far better. Here Gábor only said that he designed this, believe me,
it's very good.
So, I finally have an engineer-ally on two important issues, that's good.
Oh,
and the chip itself. The A26 has the newest, 4499, this one has the
older, 4493. I ask why?, he says that it's not like we take the best
part off the shelf, put it in, and the sound will be good. In the 4493
he found the technical content to which he could fully adapt his own
design ideas, e.g. in the critical output stage, the 4499 was not
suitable for this.
*
The
handling, the services: everything you need is there, a great menu
system, everything can be controlled by remote. The setup takes about
half a minute, because I know the AKM filters, the big favorite 'Super
Slow' will also run here. These reconstruction filters are serious
industry secrets, AKM has put a lot of development into them to make
them sound like that.
The
other complexities, the 'gain' controls and the 'AES/EBU' things, and
the adjustable sound characters, these remain in the default position,
and new areas of play will open up for personalization.
Nice
metal case, good display, and even a 'demo clock' that counts down from
the first 48 hours, so that until this is over, there is a break-in
period, so don't expect miracles.
Well, it's funny because it's like it was made specifically for me, me, who is a firm opponent in break-in-time in and is able to throw the thing away after a minute if I sense the slightest tone defect on one of my beloved instruments... :)
*
The sound.
What is it like?
In short: fantastic.
I started with a solo gamba, a lot of things are revealed here.
Because it's very good. It has a very strange sense of presence. The seventh bass string is simply phenomenal. I've only heard something like this on the R30, but the tone there was rubbish compared to this. Here it's flawless.
Piano.
It's
very beautiful. The overtones, the wonder of the piano-forte,
everything is in place. It strongly resembles a real piano, and there is
that strange extra that one could write about in circles, but what it
is, I don't know either.
*
A little more complicated things.
The articulation and instrument separation are particularly good.
I would like to catch some slight tonal errors, but everything is good, everything is in place.
A little more open than I'm used to, this is completely unexpected from an AKM chip-equipped DAC. The very top doesn't go any higher than the A26, I know I caught something subtle there, but here it's something more airy. The fresh wind blew away the subtle, very slight 'Velvet' haze a little, but it left the essence, which I think is the ultra-resolution floating around the hearing threshold with these.
Big orchestra, big choir.
Some ethereal purity.
A
wonderfully beautiful performance, I completely forgot about it. I have
never heard M.F.'s voice like this before. Nice, wide choir, high
soundstage, but only about as much as it could be in reality,
fortunately there is no unrealistic 3D that I often heard with R2R dacs.
*
Finally, harpsichord.
On
the first day I didn't dare to put it on, because I started to like
it.... I was afraid of what would happen. What would happen there, where
big names and very expensive devices often bleed, so much so that their
career was only half a minute...
Let's get started, an Alpha right away, the legendary Pavana Dolorosa.
What kind of music is this? Well, anyone who doesn't get goosebumps from 1'27 on a good system is probably a robot... :)
Completely different from what I expected.
Or what I dared to hope for.
Some kind of aristocratic cool tone, and such a sound, such a cavalcade of overtones that I should immediately write to Hughues Deschaux to ask if he even knows what kind of sonic masterpiece they dreamed up for the record.
And such a bass that I literally just blinked. And the much-mentioned string multiplication is flawless.
With such a sound, you are guaranteed to fall in love with this overtone-sensitive instrument.
So, this is really, really good.
Some distant analogy comes to mind.
About road construction.
In the old days, the new asphalt layer was put on top of the old, the curb was raised, and voila. The old cracks, bumps, potholes, distortions, non-linearities remained there, buried, but still existing; the new flaws will come out there, just like before, despite the $5000 preamplifier. The road is good, smooth, especially at the beginning, but 'otherwise' smooth.
Here,
according to current technology, the old layer is scraped up, potholes,
cracks, the curb remains, the base level remains, there is order in the
depths, the smooth road is really smooth.
Purely metaphysics, isn't it?
*
There's something with the articulation. With the manner and the meta-language. The text is the same, we understood it before, the music came through. But now the pronunciation is nicer, we understand better what we understood before.
Will more data come out? I don't think so, the situation hasn't been bad so far, but the comb has picked out the mistakes that we are sensitive to even more.
A
bit of a BBC feeling. The clarity, the speech intelligibility, the
music intelligibility are what are really good here. Not the highs, not
the bass, not the dynamics, not the 'prat', these entrance cards were
already asked for at the door. I don't feel any coloration either,
although I'm not so against it in hi-fi, because we do it
unintentionally, mainly with cables and pads. There's more of a purity.
Some inner purity.
The A26 dares to approach Beauty a little from the side, a little more fibrous, more mystical, more fearful.
The
TT dares to show things more directly, better-in-the-face. And it can
be so brave because it can show good things, clean things. What's on the
record, really. And that's enough.
I constantly have the feeling
that the tone and the basic things are about the same, but there's
definitely less confusion, error, and distortion now. One thousand
percent that this is related to that spec. with power supply and
ultra-short signal paths.
*
I'm not a big 'Szittya Fattyak' fan, but you have to see that this converter is a Hungarian product, it was invented by a Hungarian person, it's his intellectual product, he put it together, even in terms of sound.
I
know that this is how it was for me and elsewhere - considering today's
market for dacs, it's like having a Hungarian racer on the Formula-I or a
podium finisher at Wimbledon, the tennis cup.
*
I
hold our father Széchenyi in high regard, and I'm a little ashamed that
I wouldn't be able to do in hi-fi what they did back then, 150 years
ago, to buy Hungarian products, even if they were a little more
expensive, and even if they weren't that good.
No.
I don't have such a pardon in my search for good sound.
If I buy this dac, I'll buy it because it sounds good.
So much so that there hasn't been, and currently there isn't, a better-sounding d/a converter on my horizon.
Absolutely recommended.
* * *
TóthTechnika Electronics - itt.
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