I notice in the manual for Rossini Player and the manual for Mosaic that the lower output voltages (.6, .2) are available due to risk of Airplay sending volume setting at very high level which could damage amp and/or speakers. However this seems like it might not be ideal for sound quality and volume control when using other sources… especially when trying to match directly to a power amp and keep volume between -30 and -10. I don’t see any provision to just disable Airplay in order to avoid the risk and be able to use the higher output voltages without fear. Am I missing this or am I not understanding something else. Thank you.
Airplay is only enabled if you have set an Airplay password in the device settings.
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Fantastic! Thank you.
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Depends on gear. I have Rossini APEX dac with separate master clock. I set the voltage to 6 volts. I have a VAC master pre-amp. With my pre-amp the volume control is before any of the gain stages in the unit ( some gear that is not the case so you have to be careful and most set at 2 volts or below ). So with my VAC the pre-amp sound is identical regardless of voltage it’s more of what setting makes the Rossini DAC sound best. Recently I have turned off dither 1 and 2 on the separate master clock and I find the sound more clear and native. I think the dither can come into play with some Qbuz files that are more crappy in quality and need rendering more. Sometimes less is more if the file is already quality to begin with.
Hi Joel, welcome to the dCS community.
Actually, the function of “Dither” on dCS Master Clocks is to enable whatever dCS component the Master Clock is connected to to better lock onto the incoming Clock signal. It doesn’t have anything directly to do with Sources, streamed or otherwise.
You can read about it here.
Thanks. I am not an expert on dither. All I know is with it turned off it sounded cleaner and better recently. The master clock manual says try it on and off and see how you like it. I am still messing around with my system. What is your current set up? Just curious. I will give mine. VAC master pre-amp, 2- 452 IQ VAC Musicblock’s amps in mono, Rossini APEX Dac and separate master clock, all audio quest dragon cables (signal, power, and speakers), Audioquest NRG outlets with 10 gage copper romex to individual circuit breakers at the panel. APEX Rossini CD /SACD transport. The Dragon cables are just 55hrs in right now in play time. My speakers are monitor audio 500platinumII. I have an order for replacing them the Sonus Faber Aida 2 speakers. They are coming in next few weeks. They had 1 pair left in United States warehouse. If I waited then another pair would take about 4 to 5 months to build in Italy. I loved the Monitor Audio’s sound for the money just their even/order harmonic distortion makes the overall sound not as smooth as I would like.
Yeah, preference with the Clock Dither On or Off does seem to vary across the board.
The point I was trying to make, perhaps unsuccessfully though 
, is that the Dither function on the dCS Clocks is (unique to dCS) and not at all related to dither typically associated with improving low-resolution sources; the former improves the dCS Clock signal being retrieved by a dCS component’s word-Clock port, whereas the latter is noise added to sources to reduce quantisation distortion.
My main system is the 4-box Vivaldi stack connected directly to Tenor OTL hybrids and a pair of Kharma Exquisite Classique speakers.
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Thanks. I have thought of going to the Vivaldi APEX and separate master clock from my Rossini. My dealer mentioned when I asked about differences this: “To my ears the Vivaldi presents more fine detail, low level information, and it is more dynamic. The sound stage is more 3 dimensional. I can’t really hear any difference in tonal balance, just overall clarity.” Have you found similar results trading out of did you start out with the Vivaldi? I originally had Bartok and honestly did not like it. The upgrade download to the Bartok made it bearable. I moved up to the Rossini APEX and saw a massive difference which I liked a lot.
That’s not unusual; I have mentioned before I did not find the sound of the Bartok or of the Rossini without the Rossini Clock to be an improvement over the Wadia S7i I owned at the time.
Only the Rossini with the Rossini Clock exceeded the sound quality of the Wadia, and of course it took further huge leaps forward first with the shift from Cardas Clear clock cables to AudioQuest WEL Signature and with the APEX upgrade.
I’ve never had the Rosinni at home, just the Vivaldi stack since it’s launch in 2012 (and a full Scarlatti stack and other dCS components pior to that). I do however also have a Bartok+Rossini Clock setup in my home-office though; it’s a night & day difference against the Vivaldi by every metric, though I’d agree the recent Bartok 2.0 update does narrow the gap, ever so slightly 