The Art of Elocution - TT D/A converter

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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... :)

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The sound.
What is it like?
In short: fantastic.

I started with a solo gamba, a lot of things are revealed here.

 

I admit, I didn't expect it to be this good. That it suddenly flew into the big boys' club because of the viola da gamba. Which is a particularly difficult task anyway.
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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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TóthTechnika Electronics - itt.
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Képek:
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The Sounds of Silence - Pro-Ject RS2T CD transport review

'Perfect Days' is a very good movie. It has many layers, a delicate spirit, I could write about it until the evening - and there is a tiny slice in it that belongs here, for hi-fi, for listening to music.

Do you remember?, in the story set in the present day, the main character always listened to old music, moreover, on cassette, and in the second-hand record store, the seller said that he would buy any number of program cassettes, because it was very fashionable now.

In Japan, of course.

Will the same thing happen to the CD? It is very difficult to predict this right now. What seems to be the case is that file-based listening has completely displaced the silver disc, and player development has practically stopped, even though large CD collections of several thousand have accumulated on the shelves of serious music listeners. Exceptions can be counted almost on one hand.

One of them is the Pro-Ject RS2T. 

Pro-Ject is a famous name and has always been famous for their LP players.

RS2T is a completely new device, apparently designed for those who still listen to music on CDs but want something better than before.

Why only transport?, but this is obvious: there are a lot of d/a converters on the market right now, especially because of the new file-listening, they're new, and they sound much, much better than the old DACs. New chips, previously unattainably low distortion values, new solutions, plus the rise of premium Chinese devices are typical of the current period.

CD transport - this is a complicated thing. Mostly because, besides cables, it is one of the biggest hi-fi labyrinths, full of unanswerable questions.

One of these questions is the incomprehensibility of the basic thesis itself: why do two CD transports sounds different from each other at all? Why spend a lot of money on this at all? Aren't the ones and zeros the same? 

10001110100001111010101 ≠ 10001110100001111010101 ???

Wasn't digital technology invented so that it wouldn't be, for example? How, for example, can there be a bass difference between two chassis? So, will the digitally controlled ABS in your car work differently if a different wiring goes to the sensors?

The answers or attempts to answer are almost ridiculous. Spaceships are landing on the surface of Mars, but knowledge is stuck here at the hifi-surface, it seems.

There was a time when the jitter was the main villain, everyone kneaded on it to make it as small as possible. There were decades when fabulous industrial artifacts were created, with half-kilogram plate clamps and sapphire bearings and industrial lasers and price tags over 10k.

There were times when the digital output stage and the coulping solutions and the digital interconnect was the main topic. Nowadays, for example, minimizing analog interference signals is one of the bridgeheads. However, the perceived sound quality did not want to show any clear correlation with these technical things.

If you want a good CD transport today, there's a good chance you'll get lost in the maze. Because there's serious chassis with bad sound, and there's swaying plastic transports with brilliant sound, and the opposite is also true.

From there, my own experiences follow, and the thoughts drawn from them. Err reserved, this is only natural (or should be) in hi-fi.

 

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The old, well-thought-out, proven chassis performed poorly for me without exception.

The legendary Sony mechanics work perfectly after 25 years, and their lack of musicality is downright alarming.

 

Philips-based solutions, led by the CD Pro2, which are 'the best CD transports available', gave a strange vagueness, shameless data swallowing in the top range, imitation of ill-conceived analog sound.

That's what got me from those. Even if they used to give you a good car for some. I've heard this even with revolutionary DIYer solutions. As if there were an invisible sphere that they could not break.

Today's players, the few I hosted, have already shed this veil of obsolescence, but in return there were huge problems with tone. In particular, upscaling solutions have brought something strange to the music, even though they measurably 'carry' specific distortions out of a range that is particularly sensitive in digital technology.

In the end, I had two devices that performed perfectly as CD transport for a longer period of time. 

One of them is the Heed Thesis Delta, which only has a coaxial output, and is not even optimized for transport-only use, but still, something special rolling-feeling and sound-beauty is what it produces.

The other is Mark Levinson №.512, the 'Lord' who, with the price of ex15k, obviously plays in the upper caste, where the most painful vocal errors can sometimes be heard. Here, the 512 is an aristocratic, big sound with a subtle tone, of course 10 kilos of unnecessary parts that don't play a role when used as transport, so it's a slightly unnecessary luxury, although I might add, this is true for the whole hifi / HighEnd.

So, that's the sound environment / background for me, and that's what the comparison went to the most. Concert experiences, instrument sounds, imagined tones, expected sound ideals, preferences according to individual tastes support the subjective account below.

Which is mostly about the experience, the feeling.

 

How did Géza Ottlik's character, Gábor Medve, say in the novel Buda?

"What we certainly have, says Medve, is feeling. There is nothing else so certainly. The existence of the world, of other people, is hypothetical, a presumption, an assumption that you can make probable with a sufficient number of trials. You accept it as existing, since you can't do anything else, but it's better not to forget that only the feeling is not hypothetical, surely it is.

However, the feeling is inaccurate before looking for words, trying to find it. It is fundamentally and inherently inaccurate."

 

 

 

 

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At the heart of the RS2T is the Pro8, a mechanism designed by Stream Unlimited in Austria, controlled by the BlueTiger CD-84 servo.

 

 

Top-loaded and mechanically suspended; he underneath the carbon fiber outer layer is surrounded by a solid aluminium housing.

 

 

 

There is no power supply inside, this is important. The external power supply that comes bundled with it is a 3A switching power supply, kind of like a laptop charger, and it's not bad at all. Optionally, a linear power supply can be ordered as a separate device with a toroidal transformer inside. 

Sonically, the linear power supply really seems to be better, but unlike the other testers, I don't think the difference is dramatic. And it doesn't make another approach. There won't be a new voice. The frames that make me love this device so much remain exactly the same.
The LPSU gives a livelier, buzzier, more hi-fi sound, a bit over-balanced. Nice, most of you will probably like it better. The SMPSU is calmer, perfectly balanced in the middle on systems with sufficient resolution, and gives the almost surprising lifelikeness that makes it clearly better for me.

The listening experiences below were born with the original, accompanying food.

The suspension was apparently made with special care; I imagine that they chose this version after many auditory tests.

Really touched, it's a very fine piece. Small, chunky, quite heavy. Gently opening / descending lid, an ultralight puck. And enormous display with big numbers, brightness adjustable, it can also have black base. It's 2024, so you can display CD metadata: both the album title and the track being played can be read.

The remote control is full metal, demanding, handy - of course I reprogrammed my teachable one to the basic commands.

 

Reading is fast, everything is nicely quiet. There is coax, symmetrical and I2S exit - the latter, like the Heed Delta, has the 'European' layout, so not detected by the Chinese Gustard DAC, so there is no experience of this. For me, XLR sounded better than coax, which is not surprising.

The quality of the digital interconnect is key; there will be a weak sound with a weak cable, this is also not surprising. He likes the ultra-thin Radnai bare wire just like the other transports; you have to go very high in price to find a better connection.

 

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Well, finally, the sound.

What is it like?

Well, it's just phenomenal.

I didn't think I'd ever hear anything like that from a 44.1 RedBook conventional player.

Let's consider it in more detail:

The noticeable difference, surprisingly, first appeared not in complex music, but in the single-threaded vocals. This Graindelavoix record, it's a difficult one, there were a couple of years when I thought there was a sound engineering flaw here, that it was so shouty.

 

Pro-Ject is simply magical here. I don't know how he does it. The layering of the midtone has increased into something incredible. Is there some sort of resolution improvement, or rather error exit?, I don't know. A straight, sustained sound, and hitherto unnoticed inner subtleties appear. You could say horizons. Spacious, infinitely free. There was no trace of sharpness. That is?, it turns out again that we are lame at the hifi, there is absolutely no problem with recording.

Savall disc, on SACD. The normal layer crammed into the crippled-small space must now be played.

 

Especially good. Suddenly, upon entry, the background becomes full of noises, noises and barely audible background information. So far, I've heard this about SACD the most, but here we're below the 44.1 limit, which is almost incredible.

Piano.

It's practically the first time I've heard exactly what tone that piano is in the night brothel where it was recorded. (Because I think it is.)

The piano-piano difference between the CD transports here is particularly interesting. Because the smaller the difference, the bigger it is. Actually, roughly objectively, the difference is probably minor. But our perception works with strange twists and turns. For large discrepancies, we immediately detect, compare, comment, OK.  With such small differences, our brain simply changes scale, much like a microscope, when we turn a more powerful lens instead of 40 and suddenly hear and imagine new sets of data, new sounds. And the experience will be quite powerful.

Harpsichord. The nightmare of digital technology. Because there are frighteningly many sensitive overtones. The analogue tends to beautify, swallow, transmit, simply smooth out the bad parts. Moreover, in even/odd class harmonic distortions, analog is simply in a more fortunate position, that is, more tolerable. LP fans jump right now for me, but I've only heard good harpsichord sounds from digital so far, quite rarely, I have to say. Because digital disturbances, distortions, deviations that cause all kinds of discomfort are not beneficially absorbed, but shine in the sun in their complete nakedness.

Here is 1 sec. below you hear that this is very good. Specifically, the best I've heard so far. However, I have a 'harpsichord-optimized' system. The many strings, we already had. However, their separation is now at its best. And something fabulous with instrumental case resonances.

 

Every piece of music tells you that the RS-2T is a deeper thing. Airier, lighter, bolder. The background is blacker, the silences are bigger, quieter, an imaginary basic noise level has jumped lower. The sounds of silence may be very important after all. The easily describable hi-fi parameters, e.g. bass volume, top registers, or space have been good so far; This is something more elusive. I am an advocate that good hi-fi is actually a matter of personalization, so it can happen that we look for and produce something more beautiful and better than real instrument sounds. Here with the RS-2T, however, I feel that the balance is not being embellished, but tilting the scales towards the more real.  And the point is that it feels like more data is what makes music. Because we simply hear more about the CD. Probably that's not the case, it's that what happens is that certain errors, distortions, strange-tasting nonknows, have somehow been subtracted and simply allow the music itself to 'come out'.

Finally, there's a plate where the RS-2T is particularly fantastic. 

A human voice, a monotonous humming, various short readings, accompanied by an electric bass. (article about it here). Yes, acoustic instruments, gamba, piano, so now that would be the real thing, only those are good to test, blah... blah.. and so on, but now, for some reason, it hasn't become.

It's that the humming is so realistic that it could be embroidered on the flag of the BBC school - that's pretty much what we expected, didn't we?, but I didn't expect this artificial bass accompaniment, this one in fact to break up into a thousand more threads, it got deeper, and it happened like string multiplication on the harpsichord - I had never heard anything like that.

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It's the top-loading mechanic, it's not that simple either; it's not just that Pro-Ject makes LP players, that's obviously where the idea comes from.

 

 

The situation is more complicated, gradually it turns out that this is almost a metaphysical issue.

Because you have to get up from the armchair, go there, open it with both hands, because you can't do it with one hand, take off a little weight, gently set aside a small weight so that it doesn't fall, roll, hold the disc skillfully, spread it with two fingers, it's not so easy, lift it, put it back in place, put the other CD in gently, put a little weight on it, pay attention to it right in the middle, close the lid carefully, go back to sit down, grab the remote control, finally press the 'Play' button... - well, this is far from ergonomics and speed and efficiency and purposefulness.

But if we strain our brains a little, we will slowly realize that, for example, the most famous and expensive porcelain teacups have such uncluttered ears and are so vulnerable that it is a complete stunt to hold them without breaking them.

And here's the point: this thing is actually civilizing.

 

 

 

 

It teaches careful, concentrated movements.

It teaches listening.

And the tea is guaranteed to have a different taste. Because it's a ritual like that, it's a rite.

What is a ritual?, well, a thing that sometimes seems complicated and meaningless, but we do it in order for certain things to happen. Here, in the case of the RS-2T, to make the system sound good, to make listening to music itself a great experience.

It will be.

I am absolutely sure of that.

Try it. There will be no disappointment.

Absolutely recommended.

 

 

 

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Thank you for the pictures
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