Seems like the few Rossini Apex impressions we’ve read so far have been done before the Apex upgrade fully settled in as @BillK points out. I’m still trying to decide if my next Rossini upgrade will be a Clock or the Apex upgrade or none of the above as it seems the improvements either via Apex or a Clock are not ‘must have’ jaw dropping.
Surely the new board needs a couple hundred hours to break in. As with all of these changes the “amount” of improvement is in the ear of the beholder.
I personally think not everyone has the same ability to tell the difference from subtle changes. It requires practice and skill, just like wine tasting.
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Everyone has their own perspective.
I’ve mentioned many times before that I would not have purchased the Rossini for the sound quality it had without the Rossini Clock.
Only the combination made it worthwhile for me and made the sound quality finally exceed that of the Wadia S7i I owned at the time.
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I don’t think that’s what this discussion is about anyway. I was just agreeing with the need to listen for one’s own assessment. We each hear differently. Regardless of the technology employed, what matters is what we hear. Relying on other people’s impressions without a personal listening session, or ten, is a sure-fire path to second-guessing and disappointment. Your or my impressions about a piece of equipment without a common reference point to share with the other person are, IMHO, largely irrelevant. The fact that two people comparatively hear and characterize the dCS and MSB equipment in diametrically opposed ways illustrates that.
Understood and agreed. However, my points were:
1- Lots of things matter in this comparison. You might get better sound out of replacing the interconnects vs getting the clock or the Apex upgrade (mind you some cost more than the Apex upgrade itself, and they DO make a difference); and
2- We learn to discern as we listen. There is experience and knowledge built over the years that frankly make some listeners more able to opine than others. Why does this matter you say since the one discerning is also the one purchasing? It matters because we change, we become better listeners (well if you work for it) and our preferences become more sophisticated. I don’t think I could appreciate a benchmark red burgundy 20 years ago - in fact it tasted sort of worse - but I definitely do today.
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I have some friends in the audio industry who have an uncanny ability to discern small details. I learn from them all the time. I am not very skilled at this but I would say I have improved markedly over the last couple of years.
One of them told me this story about this well-known industry guy who asked him what he thought of a system before he entered the room. This industry guy told him “If you’re not able to tell whether it sounds good or not from out here you’re not equiped to be a reviewer!”
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(on both posts). Love it!
P.S. Miguel, I don’t know if you remember me posting over at AudiophileStyle (I still want to call it “Computer Audiophile”). I was dithering, so to speak, about dCS and considering EMM/Meitner, and it was primarily about higher resolution DSD and also a little about. Vivaldi getting long in the tooth. Your advice was excellent in recommending that I look at the bigger picture, pay attention to people who had lived with or listened to both, and make sure to spend time listening myself.
Glad I was helpful! Thank you for letting me know.
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100% agree with this point. More than a decade ago myself and several other Naim friends acted as “guinea pigs” for Chord Cable Company when they embarked upon their high end Sarum and eventually Music line of cables. These were aimed at the Naim Audio market and the improvement was nothing short of amazing. I have had the original Sarum, Super Sarum, and finally MUSIC versions of the Chord offerings. Each iteration brought a substantial improvement in performance from my Linn LP12, Linn Klimax DS, and now Rossini.
A few months ago I followed up on recommendations made by @anon30536008 and our dear @PAR and tested a new clock cable - (I was rather skeptical of cables which “only” sent clock signals). The change brought about by Black Cat Mini Tron cables was revelatory. A few weeks ago @all2ofme visited together with a friend who is well known in the headphone world and designs energizers for Stax headphones. To see Ben’s face during the demo was interesting however it was more amusing to see my headphone friend scratch his head (as he is not really a 2 channel listener). The improvement brought about by the Mini Tron’s was that obvious to all.
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Thanks for sharing. Not a small investment at all for clock cables, but it sounds like it paid off, both in sound quality and also the nice anecdote.
While I love good wine as much as the next person, I personally think that there are even more quacks in wine tasting than in high end audio.
I also believe, as has been extensively discussed, that almost no one is doing fully blind compares, which requires a second person swapping out the equipment and not revealing which is which.
Companies use marketing to convince people that new things are better/worth it, the audio press has a (large) incentive to echo this marketing, and the consumer wants the new purchase to sound better, and therefore the entire outcome is essentially predetermined.
Just sayin’… : )
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Well put. Audio. Wine. Photography. Sex. Love. It is what you want it to be.
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Yeah. Double blind sex! Does that get you a home free card?
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There are a lot of quacks in wine and audio. But I have the experience to have learned about wine and a little about audio and can tell you it is real.
If It makes no difference to you, you might as well buy a Topping DAC and spend the rest on something that you enjoy.
I’m not saying it’s not real. Quite the opposite. But we are creatures of our desires. And our brains have more to say about what we feel than we can possibly know. I’ve been in “serious audio” since 1975, wine almost but not quite as long. I know these things are real, and I also know the reality is inside us.
Very much so. Ultimately what matters is what something does toward ones enjoyment, be it any of the litany of items already mentioned. This is one fundamental aspect of being human that the measurement-obsessed crowd over at ASR will never get.
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@miguelito Always enjoy reading your posts. The point I was trying to make is that IMO as a critical listening source, digital has a long way to go compared to vinyl. Based on the convenience factor of digital, we’re all hopeful that digital will fill the gap and perhaps I’m expecting too much of the Apex upgrade. Time will tell.
I was an early purchaser of Gordon Rankin’s Wavelength DACs. I started with a Wavelength Brick USB DAC and quickly went through all the upgraded DACs Gordon developed. I choose not to get back on the digital merry go round unless some breakthrough product or technology surfaces.
Such a strange post, to direct a general comment (mine) into a personal one (yours). I will not reciprocate.
It obviously does make a difference to me, otherwise I wouldn’t buy dCS gear, or spend time learning from the many knowledgeable people on this forum.
I stand by my comments around quackery in both high end audio and wine, the former especially evidenced by the popularity of MQA.
There is a great post on this forum on the impact that replacing the stock fuse can have on your dCS gear. I understand the effect is “not subtle” and in fact “a piano doesn’t sound like a piano” without it. The replacement even, magically, changes the Rossini into a live orchestra!
Unfortunately, alas, I haven’t had the right training to appreciate it.
Sorry, I did not mean it personally AT ALL. I think we are in agreement actually, there’s a lot of quackery but that doesn’t mean there is not a lot of legit as well. That was the entirety of my point.
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I agree. Having purchased a turntable recently (SME 20/3, SME V arm, Dynavector XV1s cart, van den Hul “The Grail” pre) I was stunned by how real and impactful it sounds, even when I can hear the groove noise (low level but not digital silence).
I honestly don’t think Apex or anything else will close that gap right now. I don’t even know how to characterize what is missing in digital compared to vinyl. Best I can say is they are different.
But vinyl is not always better. I am a fan of Todd Garfinkle’s MA Recordings. He records in digital, with no post processing. In particular, I have Sera Una Noche’s “La Segunda” both in digital (176/24 the original master which you can buy from him) and a double-LP (very well pressed). For the double LP he first transcoded to DSD128, then cut the lacquer off of that. The LP sounds amazing. But I would give the nod to the digital actually.
Similarly, I have Nina Simone’s “Little Girl Blue” from Ryan Smith’s 2015 remaster, which was cut to lacquer AND encoded to DSD from the same exact analog source tape. In this case the LP sounds better.
Bottomline? I think that the best sound comes from the original recording method, if in all cases the recording is carefully produced.
There are many cases where the digital master is created with compression whereas the LP is done more carefully and with less compression. In such cases the LP will almost always sound better.
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