[mwilson]

Speaking of MQA, I had a very interesting experience with dCS Bartok a few weeks before I demoed a Chord Dave, which I ultimately ended up buying. On most streams from Tidal the Bartok was playing them as 24/44.1. It was a truly bizarre experience. Just to make sure it wasn’t a Tidal only problem I plugged in an SSD drive with about 30 albums in that format with different sample rates. Same thing. The highest it would go was 24/48. That’s besides the point that the Bartok is hugely boring. I was a bit astonished that some people give it glowing reviews and even end up buying it. I was glad to have had the chance to cure myself of the itch to buy it as an all in one end game kind of device.

While I don't own a Bartok, I've spent some time with one and boring is not something that would come to mind—quite the opposite, I found its performance engaging and immensely enjoyable. Also have listened to 24/192 material on it via Tidal so not sure whether you've had an issue with the unit you auditioned.

 

[VladYR]

While I don't own a Bartok, I've spent some time with one and boring is not something that would come to mind—quite the opposite, I found its performance engaging and immensely enjoyable. Also have listened to 24/192 material on it via Tidal so not sure whether you've had an issue with the unit you auditioned.

I’ve come across some people who thought it was fantastic. I suppose it’s a personal preference. A Chord Dave connected to a laptop using Audirvana sounds considerably better than a Bartok. Granted there’s around $6000 worth of power cords and power conditioning equipment involved but that Bartok wasn’t plugged straight into the wall either. Their choice of power cables was weird but that’s another story. Were you listening to it through headphones or speakers? I wasn’t really impressed with its performance when using its headphone amp. It’s plenty loud but not exciting for me. There could have been some issue with that demo unit. Playing one song from Slimane seemed to keep crashing the control app. The control app itself was bare bones and somewhat outdated.

 

[mwilson]

I listened both via speakers and headphones. I have no idea how one could call its performance boring. Mind you that I'm not adopting a position that it's better than your Chord; I've not listened to any of their dacs. Rather, I'm speaking to the merits of the sound of Bartok itself.

I also refuse to spend money on power cables; if the product sucks with its OEM cord then I put that down as a design and engineering defect. I drop this kind of money on a product I'll be damned if I accept anything less than stellar as is out of the box.

Edit: I had the dac-only version of the Bartok so I used my trusty gsx mkii as amp; I cannot comment on the Bartok HPA sound. I just now realize you had listened to its internal amp so pardon if I confused you.

 

[VladYR]

It was a learning experience. Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, but at that price range they ought to be high. As far as power cables are concerned, I see them as an upgrade on an already well made product rather than a fix for something that’s less than excellent in its own right. Besides, I got them 60% off when a dealer friend of mine was liquidating his Nordost inventory. I’m not crazy enough to spend that kind of money on power cords.

 

[trellus]

Funny, I thought we were talking about DACs, not ADC?

We get digital out of analog via ADC’s, obviously, and in fact the first post speaks to that quite a bit, so it’s totally relevant.

 

[manueljenkin]

I find that digital audio attracts a considerable number of "agnorants"....

"Samples are values at instantaneous points in time [...], a series of delta Diracs" - LOL, this one tops everything else in your post. You are confusing the Dirac delta "function" with Kronecker delta function, and the function with its distribution points.

For those who want to see more rectangles (I know, the horror!!!):
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/analog-to-digital-converters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog-to-digital_converter

Lovely! I would recommend @dCS James to ignore the detractors and understand that you do have a large group of people who are interested to learn your approach!

 

[sajunky]

We get digital out of analog via ADC’s, obviously, and in fact the first post speaks to that quite a bit, so it’s totally relevant.

They talk about, as technology is similar and they are more successful in ADC area where some filtering is important. /copy-pasted stuff/

 

[rde01]

It was a learning experience. Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, but at that price range they ought to be high. As far as power cables are concerned, I see them as an upgrade on an already well made product rather than a fix for something that’s less than excellent in its own right. Besides, I got them 60% off when a dealer friend of mine was liquidating his Nordost inventory. I’m not crazy enough to spend that kind of money on power cords.

What headphones did you use with the Bartok? I demoed one once with a HD800s, HD820, Sundara, Arya and DCAAeon2c. Only on the Sennheiser i could have described it as boring. On the planar headphones is was like it brought out there best properties. String instruments on the Arya where like really lifelike. Bass guitar on the DCA2 was special.
I can not compare to Chord stuff tho since i haven't heard any of there stuff. Sadly i just can't justify the cost are i would own a Bartok with headphone amp.

 

[rde01]

The interesting part for me is how the PCM is oversampled with their FPGA DSP (from what I see with JA's measurements, the filter responses in their DACs look like standard filters from off the shelf chips) with slow roll-off showing heavy aliasing while fast roll-off is not as steep as M-Scaler or Schiit's closed-loop filter

Yes, most people here would know the general samling stuff. The interesting info would be the ring dac fpga implementation (i guess it kind of like this: https://slideplayer.com/slide/11070516/) and filtering stuff in detail.

 

[VladYR]

What headphones did you use with the Bartok? I demoed one once with a HD800s, HD820, Sundara, Arya and DCAAeon2c. Only on the Sennheiser i could have described it as boring. On the planar headphones is was like it brought out there best properties. String instruments on the Arya where like really lifelike. Bass guitar on the DCA2 was special.
I can not compare to Chord stuff tho since i haven't heard any of there stuff. Sadly i just can't justify the cost are i would own a Bartok with headphone amp.

Believe it or not but I used Meze Empyrean. Sad but true. What bewildered me is that John Darko made a long review film on his website using both with seemingly stellar results. Either the unit that I was demoing was defective or it’s a matter of personal preference. With that performance I just couldn’t justify paying that kind of money. I likely wouldn’t have paid $5000 if they offered. Curiously, Chord Dave paired with a Linn Selekt DSM with an upgraded Katalyst dac sounds significantly better than Bartok but at a roughly similar price.

 

[rde01]

Believe it or not but I used Meze Empyrean. Sad but true. What bewildered me is that John Darko made a long review film on his website using both with seemingly stellar results. Either the unit that I was demoing was defective or it’s a matter of personal preference. With that performance I just couldn’t justify paying that kind of money. I likely wouldn’t have paid $5000 if they offered. Curiously, Chord Dave paired with a Linn Selekt DSM with an upgraded Katalyst dac sounds significantly better than Bartok but at a roughly similar price.

Have not heard the Empy on a Bartok but i guy i know decribed its sound as horny on a Bartok. (his words not mine but i guess that definetly does not qualify as boring)
That makes me believe there was somthing really wrong with the setup you auditioned. Then again every ones ears are different so maybe it's just not your thing.

 

[CreditingKarma]

Speaking of MQA, I had a very interesting experience with dCS Bartok a few weeks before I demoed a Chord Dave, which I ultimately ended up buying. On most streams from Tidal the Bartok was playing them as 24/44.1. It was a truly bizarre experience. Just to make sure it wasn’t a Tidal only problem I plugged in an SSD drive with about 30 albums in that format with different sample rates. Same thing. The highest it would go was 24/48. That’s besides the point that the Bartok is hugely boring. I was a bit astonished that some people give it glowing reviews and even end up buying it. I was glad to have had the chance to cure myself of the itch to buy it as an all in one end game kind of device.

MQA is a totally pointless tech given that our internet speed, for the most part, is fast enough to stream high resolution music. Curiously, one website selling high resolution tracks had an MQA section. Clicking on album info was really revealing. It said something to the effect of “encoded from a 24/96 recording”. In other words one gains nothing from this format. Size savings are negligible. It’s not like we are living in the 80s or 90s where one spent a fortune on a 1gb hard drive.

I had the opposite experience with the Dave and Bartok. I used to own the Abyss TC with the formula s and powerman and the bartok was better to my ears than the dave. It was with speakers that the difference was even bigger the Dave presented a smaller sound stage the Bartok presented bigger and with much more realistic imaging as well. I have since moved on to even better speakers and have sold my Abyss to fund the speaker and amp upgrades. Next might be the Rossini or an MSB Premire.

 

[Whitigir]

Yes, most people here would know the general samling stuff. The interesting info would be the ring dac fpga implementation (i guess it kind of like this: https://slideplayer.com/slide/11070516/) and filtering stuff in detail.

Yepe! FPGA is the real deal. Where would MSB and Rockna be rated in comparison?

 

[VladYR]

Have not heard the Empy on a Bartok but i guy i know decribed its sound as horny on a Bartok. (his words not mine but i guess that definetly does not qualify as boring)
That makes me believe there was somthing really wrong with the setup you auditioned. Then again every ones ears are different so maybe it's just not your thing.

The descriptions that some people give about sound signature are at times truly hilarious . Concerning the Bartok, I spent about an hour trying various albums. I tried its crossfeed, which I didn’t particularly like either. Either there was something wrong with it or I wasn’t into it’s presentation.

 

[VladYR]

I had the opposite experience with the Dave and Bartok. I used to own the Abyss TC with the formula s and powerman and the bartok was better to my ears than the dave. It was with speakers that the difference was even bigger the Dave presented a smaller sound stage the Bartok presented bigger and with much more realistic imaging as well. I have since moved on to even better speakers and have sold my Abyss to fund the speaker and amp upgrades. Next might be the Rossini or an MSB Premire.

It could be either a case of a defective/malfunctioning Bartok or personal preferences. I’m open to revisiting it again. At least to my ears, the soundstage on the Dave is quite large. I mainly use it as a headphone amp so its performance with speakers isn’t an issue. Even if it were, Linn Selekt DSM with the Katalyst dac performs quite well in that regard, especially when it’s space optimization function is activated. I went to several events where it was demoed with many high end speakers and the results were quite pleasing every time.