Pale Rider
1000+ Head-Fier
I recently had my first demo session with the Bartok and Rossini, and the Clock. TL; DR version: I am really impressed, and have ordered Rossini+Clock for my speaker system. I took along about 55gb of my own music, and the good folks at Music Lovers in Bezerkeley loaded it on to their Roon server. (I did not inquire into their server architecture or network topology.) I took the following cans for the demo:
1. Susvara;
2. MySphere 3.2;
3. RAAL SR1a + Jotunheim R.
I ended up not using the MySphere for reasons I will explain in a moment. We set up to listen to the components in the following sequence:
1. Bartok;
2. Bartok + Rossini Clock;
3. Rossini DAC;
4. Rossini DAC + Clock.
I listened to each of the following tracks (though not always in their entirety) on each piece/combo:
1. Propellerheads / Take California (Redbook)
2. Dead Can Dance / Wind That Shakes the Barley & Yulinga (DSD64)
3. Mark Knopfler / Boom Like That (Redbook)
4. Fugees / Killing Me Softly (Redbook)
5. Sara McLachlan / Sweet Surrender (DJ Tiesto Remix) (Redbook)
6. Robert Shaw & the ASO / Verdi Requiem (the Dies Irae) (Redbook)
7. GoGo Penguin / Murmuration (Redbook)
8. Cowboy Junkies / Blue Moon Revisited (Trinity Revisited) (Redbook)
9. Jesse Cook / Mario Takes A Walk (Redbook)
10. Chris Rea / Road to Hell 1&2 (Redbook)
11. Getz/Gilberto / The Girl From Ipanema (Verve AP DSD)
12. Zubin Mehta & LA Philharmonic / Also Sprach Zarathustra (Decca K2HD)
13. Renaud Garcia-Fons / Bosphore (Redbook)
This is not a review. This was a demo of three different components in four different configurations. So, there is some serious apples-to-oranges comparison here. The purpose of this demo was to determine whether the dCS components are intriguing enough to try them out in my home. These are, of course, just initial impressions, but I feel reasonably confident in them:
1. The Bartok is a very nice piece of equipment. If I had come across the Bartok 3-5 years ago, and I wasn’t such an electrostat person, it could have been an end game. I’ve been a network audio and headphone guy for a long time, and this component ticks so many boxes. The HP amp in the Bartok is quite good. For a company like dCS, as good as they are, I don’t think there should have been any reason to expect they would so knock it out of the park on their first HP effort. An amp this good for $1500 without the need for extra space and cables is a steal. The Bartok drives the Susvara with relative grace. I was expecting the Bartok to have a more difficult time. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. I could have listened to the Bartok/Susvara combo all day long. I took the MySphere along in case the Bartok had difficulty driving the Susvara. Since it did not, I never plugged the MySphere in.
(NOTE: I still believe the Susvara benefits from more power, though. Even on the HeadAmp GS-X mk2 at home, which drives the Susvara well on High gain and balanced output, there is some “authority” missing. You can feel this in the large Verdi and Strauss works. For that reason, I have a Trafomatic Primavera on order.)
2. Soundstage, resolution, and depth of the Bartok are competitive with most else I have heard. Playing the Bartok over the Susvara was very pleasing. It is a similar soundstage to that of the Susvara on the GS-X mk2. Three-dimensionality and air are extremely realistic. Tonally, the Bartok reminds me of the PS Audio DirectStream, only with better resolution, depth, clarity, air, and foundation. In fact, both the Bartok and Rossini were reminiscent of characteristics of the PSA DS, but better.
3. As good as the Bartok is, it’s better with the Clock. I hadn’t planned to try the Rossini Clock with the Bartok, for two reasons: (a) much as I wish I had a use case for the Bartok, I really don’t; (b) I did not expect to hear a significant difference between the Bartok+Clock versus the Rossini alone; and (c) the cost of the Bartok+Clock is essentially the same as a Rossini DAC. I tried it anyway, and I am glad I did. The Clock makes an audibly significant difference. The soundstage is both closer and deeper, slightly wider, and with an additional sense of air around instruments and space between notes that’s just “more real.” Murmuration and Blue Moon Revisited are excellent tracks for hearing these changes in soundstage width, depth, and height, and what I think of as foundational solidity. That last element is a bit related to bass extension, but also shows itself in the sound of bass and double bass that isn’t swallowed up in flabbiness, and kick and kettle drums where you can hear the sound of the skin distinct from the boom of the air. This combination of Bartok+Clock is very musical and unstrained. No surprise though that the Clock does not change the perception that Susvara would like more power on the large orchestral works.
4. As I mentioned, the tonal character of the Bartok reminds me of the PSA DS, but it has greater resolution and depth, a greater sense of three-dimensionality and musicality. That last quality is a strong suit of the PSA DS, and it’s one of the qualities that lends to the perception that the DS punches well above its price class. @CreditingKarma mentioned here that they thought the Bartok and MSB Premiere DAC sounded more alike than different. That might mean just that they are both very good. I’ve not heard the Premiere, but my impression is that dCS lineup is more like other FPGA DACs, such as the PSA DS and maybe the Chords, than it is the ladder DACs like the MSB Select. It’s been a long time since I had the TotalDAC (another ladder DAC) in the house, but I sure wish I had it and the MSB side-by-side for a little while.
5. Given the electronic nature of all recorded music, and the fact that it is “processed” starting with microphones, maybe compression, through either an RIAA curve, or an ADC-DAC chain, it’s hard to have a true reference for what it’s supposed to sound like. I never bought the “a live performance is the reference” point of view. Yes, I agree that hearing a violin or piano or voice will help teach your ear what those things sound like in real life, but that only gets you part of the way. It can inform you whether your DAC or headphones sound “natural” I think, but that’s about it. A specific recording on two different systems could still sound natural and yet quite different. And still different to different listeners, given what we know about psychoacoustics. So, one commenter describes the Bartok as “darker,” while I perceive it and the Rossini as warmer than the MSB Select and more similar to the PSA DS.
6. Anyway, I have no illusion that my demo was scientific at all. But we tried to at least make it interesting. The staff and I switched the Clock in and out a number of times. Each time you do that, there is a brief audible interruption of playback until the DAC re-locks on whichever clock has been made active. So, you always know a change has happened. And in this case—even with my back to the equipment rack and the Clock switched in and out repeatedly so I lost track of which state it was in—I always could hear correctly which state it was.
7. I was concerned before the demo that the SR1a/JotR combo would not be sufficiently revealing for comparing DACs of this quality. That was a baseless fear. Once I finished demoing the Bartok+Clock with the Susvara, we connected the SR1a/JotR next. The SR1a and the Susvara are very different TOTL cans. So it was important to get a baseline with the Bartok and the SR1a. Same tracks. Similar conclusions, but as filtered through the speed of the ribbons and their slightly less weighty bass. I don’t much care for the finickiness of getting the SR1a properly fitted, but once it’s in place, it’s lightweight and exerts little pressure. It can be worn for hours. And its experience is very different from the Susvara. First, there is no sense of “enclosure.” The MySphere has some of this, too, but the SR1a is unsurpassed at its presentation of sound in a venue as opposed to “on your ears.” The soundstage width is just so flipping believable. Accuracy and resolution are amazing. And though some complain that the ribbon speed detracts from certain “lush” sounds like female vocals, I do not find that to be the case at all. But then, I am a bit of a detail freak. The Bartok+Clock/JotR/SR1a rig is a knockout. On some music, it’s better than everything I have heard but, to be clear, that’s largely because of the SR1a. At home, it is also better on some music than the T2/009S. That’s not a low bar.
8. Running the SR1a means no longer using the headphone amp in the Bartok. Now, it’s just a network DAC. Price-wise, the JotR is a big step down, but it’s a purpose-built box. You can only use it with the SR1a. And it serves the SR1a well. When one considers that the SR1a/JotR costs less together than several other TOTL cans, it becomes a very intriguing kit to add to the Bartok. Because the Bartok has a very good amp built in, you can still drive all your other non-electrostats, and have a wonderful system with a DAC that is upgradeable with the Clock and future firmware.
9. Once I felt comfortable with the sound of the Bartok+Clock on the SR1a/JotR combo, we moved on to the Rossini. This presented a surprisingly significant difference in SQ, much like skipping a firmware upgrade for the PSA DS. Same tracks, just bigger and better. Deeper, increasingly tangible. I realize that sounds very simplistic, but it should surprise no one that the Rossini sounds like the Bartok but better, with or without the Clock. I’m not knowledgeable on what differences—if any are known—there are between the deployments of dCS’s RingDAC technology in their respective model lines, especially between different firmware updates, but it makes sense that there are differences in everything from power supplies to d-a isolation to network isolation, etc. All of these things could contribute to improved SQ, even if the RingDAC topology itself is identical across all the model lines. (I was told both units were running current firmware, but I believe that means Bartok is at least one cycle behind Rossini.)
10. Rossini+Clock is—surprise!—even better. My wallet was hoping that perhaps I would not hear the difference. But I did. Simply superb. I spent a lot of hours before this demo listening to the MSB. But it’s a two hour drive to the shop, and you can’t do an A/B or A/B/X comparison that way. Still, it’s possible to know and feel how a recording sounds in a given setup. And I can say with confidence that the Rossini+Clock resolves more like the MSB than any other DAC I have heard while still maintains that smoothness and tonalityv
11. There is probably a lot of confirmation bias at work here. Of course the most expensive combination sounds the best—it’s the most expensive! Yes, well . . .. The most startling thing about this demo was how readily discernible the differences were between excellent components. I was struck by how each move up the chain (to borrow a photo metaphor) seemed to remove some amount of haze that I wasn’t aware was there before, and add clarity and depth that I was not aware were absent. This was especially true with the removal of the Clock. While the addition of the Clock noticeably improved the sound, its removal even more noticeably degraded it. (These are strong words to be using on components that are in fact musically superb. It’s a weird sensation to think: “for $23k, it ought to sound heavenly,” and it does; and then to add a $7k piece which “ought to make a difference for that price,” and it does.)
12. For anyone without a TOTL DAC, and with a keen interest in non-electrostatic/ribbon cans, the Bartok is a superb end-game, and you can still discernibly improve it with the addition of the Clock. The Clock doesn’t quite make Bartok a Rossini, but it’s damn close. And with dCS rolling out firmware upgrades, neither unit is a dead end (a not inconsequential factor at this price level).
13. I did not play with any of the filtering or upsampling options. When the Rossini comes home, I guess I will have to do so. The MSB Select has no such options. It presents its case for the conversion with a “you either like this or you don’t, and if you don’t, it’s not because of anything we added or subtracted; we just showed you what’s there” ruthless clarity. There’s nothing to fiddle with on the MSB, nothing to tune filters or upsampling parameters. Personally, that’s my preference when listening on headphones. On my speaker system, I’m not averse to a few euphonics. I’ll roll tubes in my amps and preamps, and I use room correction software. The PSA DS is very musical in my speaker system. The fact that its firmware/FGPA updates change its SQ tells me the designer (Ted Smith) is still seeking to extract “more there, there.” I think the dCS team is on a similar path, but I think their version is better. Rossini has all the musicality and sense of organic life, and much of the resolution and detail of the MSB. So the Rossini+Clock are coming home to take the place of the PSA DS. I will most likely put the DS in the headphone rack to take the place of the Lumin A1. The Lumin is an excellent, musical DAC, but the DS is to my ears more resolving than the Lumin. So it makes a decent comparison point/backup to the MSB.
1. Susvara;
2. MySphere 3.2;
3. RAAL SR1a + Jotunheim R.
I ended up not using the MySphere for reasons I will explain in a moment. We set up to listen to the components in the following sequence:
1. Bartok;
2. Bartok + Rossini Clock;
3. Rossini DAC;
4. Rossini DAC + Clock.
I listened to each of the following tracks (though not always in their entirety) on each piece/combo:
1. Propellerheads / Take California (Redbook)
2. Dead Can Dance / Wind That Shakes the Barley & Yulinga (DSD64)
3. Mark Knopfler / Boom Like That (Redbook)
4. Fugees / Killing Me Softly (Redbook)
5. Sara McLachlan / Sweet Surrender (DJ Tiesto Remix) (Redbook)
6. Robert Shaw & the ASO / Verdi Requiem (the Dies Irae) (Redbook)
7. GoGo Penguin / Murmuration (Redbook)
8. Cowboy Junkies / Blue Moon Revisited (Trinity Revisited) (Redbook)
9. Jesse Cook / Mario Takes A Walk (Redbook)
10. Chris Rea / Road to Hell 1&2 (Redbook)
11. Getz/Gilberto / The Girl From Ipanema (Verve AP DSD)
12. Zubin Mehta & LA Philharmonic / Also Sprach Zarathustra (Decca K2HD)
13. Renaud Garcia-Fons / Bosphore (Redbook)
This is not a review. This was a demo of three different components in four different configurations. So, there is some serious apples-to-oranges comparison here. The purpose of this demo was to determine whether the dCS components are intriguing enough to try them out in my home. These are, of course, just initial impressions, but I feel reasonably confident in them:
1. The Bartok is a very nice piece of equipment. If I had come across the Bartok 3-5 years ago, and I wasn’t such an electrostat person, it could have been an end game. I’ve been a network audio and headphone guy for a long time, and this component ticks so many boxes. The HP amp in the Bartok is quite good. For a company like dCS, as good as they are, I don’t think there should have been any reason to expect they would so knock it out of the park on their first HP effort. An amp this good for $1500 without the need for extra space and cables is a steal. The Bartok drives the Susvara with relative grace. I was expecting the Bartok to have a more difficult time. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. I could have listened to the Bartok/Susvara combo all day long. I took the MySphere along in case the Bartok had difficulty driving the Susvara. Since it did not, I never plugged the MySphere in.
(NOTE: I still believe the Susvara benefits from more power, though. Even on the HeadAmp GS-X mk2 at home, which drives the Susvara well on High gain and balanced output, there is some “authority” missing. You can feel this in the large Verdi and Strauss works. For that reason, I have a Trafomatic Primavera on order.)
2. Soundstage, resolution, and depth of the Bartok are competitive with most else I have heard. Playing the Bartok over the Susvara was very pleasing. It is a similar soundstage to that of the Susvara on the GS-X mk2. Three-dimensionality and air are extremely realistic. Tonally, the Bartok reminds me of the PS Audio DirectStream, only with better resolution, depth, clarity, air, and foundation. In fact, both the Bartok and Rossini were reminiscent of characteristics of the PSA DS, but better.
3. As good as the Bartok is, it’s better with the Clock. I hadn’t planned to try the Rossini Clock with the Bartok, for two reasons: (a) much as I wish I had a use case for the Bartok, I really don’t; (b) I did not expect to hear a significant difference between the Bartok+Clock versus the Rossini alone; and (c) the cost of the Bartok+Clock is essentially the same as a Rossini DAC. I tried it anyway, and I am glad I did. The Clock makes an audibly significant difference. The soundstage is both closer and deeper, slightly wider, and with an additional sense of air around instruments and space between notes that’s just “more real.” Murmuration and Blue Moon Revisited are excellent tracks for hearing these changes in soundstage width, depth, and height, and what I think of as foundational solidity. That last element is a bit related to bass extension, but also shows itself in the sound of bass and double bass that isn’t swallowed up in flabbiness, and kick and kettle drums where you can hear the sound of the skin distinct from the boom of the air. This combination of Bartok+Clock is very musical and unstrained. No surprise though that the Clock does not change the perception that Susvara would like more power on the large orchestral works.
4. As I mentioned, the tonal character of the Bartok reminds me of the PSA DS, but it has greater resolution and depth, a greater sense of three-dimensionality and musicality. That last quality is a strong suit of the PSA DS, and it’s one of the qualities that lends to the perception that the DS punches well above its price class. @CreditingKarma mentioned here that they thought the Bartok and MSB Premiere DAC sounded more alike than different. That might mean just that they are both very good. I’ve not heard the Premiere, but my impression is that dCS lineup is more like other FPGA DACs, such as the PSA DS and maybe the Chords, than it is the ladder DACs like the MSB Select. It’s been a long time since I had the TotalDAC (another ladder DAC) in the house, but I sure wish I had it and the MSB side-by-side for a little while.
5. Given the electronic nature of all recorded music, and the fact that it is “processed” starting with microphones, maybe compression, through either an RIAA curve, or an ADC-DAC chain, it’s hard to have a true reference for what it’s supposed to sound like. I never bought the “a live performance is the reference” point of view. Yes, I agree that hearing a violin or piano or voice will help teach your ear what those things sound like in real life, but that only gets you part of the way. It can inform you whether your DAC or headphones sound “natural” I think, but that’s about it. A specific recording on two different systems could still sound natural and yet quite different. And still different to different listeners, given what we know about psychoacoustics. So, one commenter describes the Bartok as “darker,” while I perceive it and the Rossini as warmer than the MSB Select and more similar to the PSA DS.
6. Anyway, I have no illusion that my demo was scientific at all. But we tried to at least make it interesting. The staff and I switched the Clock in and out a number of times. Each time you do that, there is a brief audible interruption of playback until the DAC re-locks on whichever clock has been made active. So, you always know a change has happened. And in this case—even with my back to the equipment rack and the Clock switched in and out repeatedly so I lost track of which state it was in—I always could hear correctly which state it was.
7. I was concerned before the demo that the SR1a/JotR combo would not be sufficiently revealing for comparing DACs of this quality. That was a baseless fear. Once I finished demoing the Bartok+Clock with the Susvara, we connected the SR1a/JotR next. The SR1a and the Susvara are very different TOTL cans. So it was important to get a baseline with the Bartok and the SR1a. Same tracks. Similar conclusions, but as filtered through the speed of the ribbons and their slightly less weighty bass. I don’t much care for the finickiness of getting the SR1a properly fitted, but once it’s in place, it’s lightweight and exerts little pressure. It can be worn for hours. And its experience is very different from the Susvara. First, there is no sense of “enclosure.” The MySphere has some of this, too, but the SR1a is unsurpassed at its presentation of sound in a venue as opposed to “on your ears.” The soundstage width is just so flipping believable. Accuracy and resolution are amazing. And though some complain that the ribbon speed detracts from certain “lush” sounds like female vocals, I do not find that to be the case at all. But then, I am a bit of a detail freak. The Bartok+Clock/JotR/SR1a rig is a knockout. On some music, it’s better than everything I have heard but, to be clear, that’s largely because of the SR1a. At home, it is also better on some music than the T2/009S. That’s not a low bar.
8. Running the SR1a means no longer using the headphone amp in the Bartok. Now, it’s just a network DAC. Price-wise, the JotR is a big step down, but it’s a purpose-built box. You can only use it with the SR1a. And it serves the SR1a well. When one considers that the SR1a/JotR costs less together than several other TOTL cans, it becomes a very intriguing kit to add to the Bartok. Because the Bartok has a very good amp built in, you can still drive all your other non-electrostats, and have a wonderful system with a DAC that is upgradeable with the Clock and future firmware.
9. Once I felt comfortable with the sound of the Bartok+Clock on the SR1a/JotR combo, we moved on to the Rossini. This presented a surprisingly significant difference in SQ, much like skipping a firmware upgrade for the PSA DS. Same tracks, just bigger and better. Deeper, increasingly tangible. I realize that sounds very simplistic, but it should surprise no one that the Rossini sounds like the Bartok but better, with or without the Clock. I’m not knowledgeable on what differences—if any are known—there are between the deployments of dCS’s RingDAC technology in their respective model lines, especially between different firmware updates, but it makes sense that there are differences in everything from power supplies to d-a isolation to network isolation, etc. All of these things could contribute to improved SQ, even if the RingDAC topology itself is identical across all the model lines. (I was told both units were running current firmware, but I believe that means Bartok is at least one cycle behind Rossini.)
10. Rossini+Clock is—surprise!—even better. My wallet was hoping that perhaps I would not hear the difference. But I did. Simply superb. I spent a lot of hours before this demo listening to the MSB. But it’s a two hour drive to the shop, and you can’t do an A/B or A/B/X comparison that way. Still, it’s possible to know and feel how a recording sounds in a given setup. And I can say with confidence that the Rossini+Clock resolves more like the MSB than any other DAC I have heard while still maintains that smoothness and tonalityv
11. There is probably a lot of confirmation bias at work here. Of course the most expensive combination sounds the best—it’s the most expensive! Yes, well . . .. The most startling thing about this demo was how readily discernible the differences were between excellent components. I was struck by how each move up the chain (to borrow a photo metaphor) seemed to remove some amount of haze that I wasn’t aware was there before, and add clarity and depth that I was not aware were absent. This was especially true with the removal of the Clock. While the addition of the Clock noticeably improved the sound, its removal even more noticeably degraded it. (These are strong words to be using on components that are in fact musically superb. It’s a weird sensation to think: “for $23k, it ought to sound heavenly,” and it does; and then to add a $7k piece which “ought to make a difference for that price,” and it does.)
12. For anyone without a TOTL DAC, and with a keen interest in non-electrostatic/ribbon cans, the Bartok is a superb end-game, and you can still discernibly improve it with the addition of the Clock. The Clock doesn’t quite make Bartok a Rossini, but it’s damn close. And with dCS rolling out firmware upgrades, neither unit is a dead end (a not inconsequential factor at this price level).
13. I did not play with any of the filtering or upsampling options. When the Rossini comes home, I guess I will have to do so. The MSB Select has no such options. It presents its case for the conversion with a “you either like this or you don’t, and if you don’t, it’s not because of anything we added or subtracted; we just showed you what’s there” ruthless clarity. There’s nothing to fiddle with on the MSB, nothing to tune filters or upsampling parameters. Personally, that’s my preference when listening on headphones. On my speaker system, I’m not averse to a few euphonics. I’ll roll tubes in my amps and preamps, and I use room correction software. The PSA DS is very musical in my speaker system. The fact that its firmware/FGPA updates change its SQ tells me the designer (Ted Smith) is still seeking to extract “more there, there.” I think the dCS team is on a similar path, but I think their version is better. Rossini has all the musicality and sense of organic life, and much of the resolution and detail of the MSB. So the Rossini+Clock are coming home to take the place of the PSA DS. I will most likely put the DS in the headphone rack to take the place of the Lumin A1. The Lumin is an excellent, musical DAC, but the DS is to my ears more resolving than the Lumin. So it makes a decent comparison point/backup to the MSB.
Whoever it was beat me to it by about 1 hour. Going to audition one more time but as of now it's this vs the Dave.