Sound Quality
Most digital replay gets blurred and confused when
playing complex material, mixing and
intermodulating the musical programme in a very
obvious way. With the dac-1, the complex threads
and intertwining harmonic 'fibers' of dense
passages remain clearly separated and accurate.
As the intensity of the music increases, you hear a
dazzling display of performance and emotion deep
into the mix thats incredibly easy to follow. This
ability regularly reveals things you never previously
heard in your recordings.
Another clear indication of the lack of systematic
distortion is the way music from the dac-1 images,
and remains detached from the speakers. To
explain a bit more, if you play a string quartet piece,
well recorded in a nice ambient environment, the
image should be spread well around behind the
plane of the speakers. When the dac-1 plays the
piece, the sound is clearly in the soundstage, and
remains there. With lesser sources, parts of the
music (particularly with lots of treble content like
strings) collapse back onto the face of the
speakers.
The next huge advantage with the dac-1 is the
vibrancy and richness of the midband, and a total
lack of harshness to leading edges. You get a
completely realistic sense of the body of
instruments - nothing sounds washed-out. And
sounds clearly stop and start in a totally incisive,
yet completely smooth manner.
And finally there is a significant improvement in the
way the dac-1 conveys the energy envelope. Most
D to A processing seems to accentuate quieter
passages, making them seem artificially spotlit,
then as the music builds, it gets to a certain level
then wont go any further without quite an obvious
increase in distortion levels. With the dac-1 the
music scales up and down over a huge range, and
remains stable and listenable over its whole output.
Overall, due to the ability of the dac-1 to track
accurately, there are huge benefits when playing
complex, dense material. Most digital replay gets
blurred and confused with such material, mixing
and intermodulating the musical programme in a
very obvious way. Conversely with the dac-1 the
complex threads and intertwining harmonic 'fibers'
of dense passages remain clearly separated and
accurate. The listening experience is hugely
improved with a dazzling display of musical
interplay that remains easy to follow. In these
situations other equipment clearly loses the plot.
More about tracking.
In our work in the knowledge alliance one of the
main drivers was the measurement of the huge
improvements brought about by the vertex AQ
accessory equipment. As we progressed with this
work we were indeed able to see significant
amounts of time related errors and that these errors
were, predominantly, related to the musical
program being played. Looking in the time domain
we can see the actual analogue output deviating
from the source data quite significantly and that this
deviation is proportional to the level and complexity
of the signal. In other words, whilst a conventional
player might supposedly output it's signal with an
error below it's specified noise limits of say +/- 1/2
of the least significant bit (LSB) (ie quantisation
noise) when playing a tiny sine wave, there are
much more significant processes driving its output
well off target when playing complex music (and
nobody ever tests with complex music).
The 'Vertex' Point of View
Another way of looking at the dac-1, and perhaps
better understand the balance of investment within
the product, is to consider it in it's 'Vertex
component' guise. There are 2 main elements to
this approach:
1.!Protecting the DAC process from the
outside world.
Although not in the normal heavy aluminum boxes
found on the Vertex cables, there are many Vertex
modules inside the dac-1. The internal mains feed
is fitted with a HiRez Roraima and HiRez Jaya. The
S/PDIF input wiring is fitted with a HiRez illimani,
and the analogue output wiring is fitted with a pair
of HiRez Solfonn modules. Furthermore, the signal
input and output sockets are physically decoupled
from the back panel to reduce ingress of chassis
vibration into these delicate circuits.
2.!Isolating the different elements of the DAC
processes from each other.
Once we get into the core of the dac-1, the thinking
is then applied to the mains transformer, and all the
way through the pre-regulation and second-stage
regulation - every step of the power supply is
vibration and RFI treated with HiRez techniques.
Every element of the core digital processing and
the analogue output stages equally has extensive
HiRez acoustic treatment and RFI absorption
techniques applied.
Aletheia dac-1
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