It’s not that simple.
There is a special tool dCS provides to get the jacks out of the old backplate that is tricky to use.
It’s not brain surgery but it does take longer and is more complex than my dealer’s tech anticipated it would be.
Now that he’s done several it’s kind of old hat, but it’s not a simple “unscrew this, replace that board” swap.
@Phil Thanks for the clarification on the health check that is performed by dCS. Do you know if the US dealers that do Apex upgrades are trained and equipped to perform the same health check?
dCS US handle all aspects of the USA and Canada and determine which dealers are able to do their own updates.
I gotta ask… What are you testing on the scope?
That’s quite fair, I can imagine you might need this. Given people stress about cables so much - I for one know the importance of cables - having high quality connectors from a DAC input & output is important.
Myself, I don’t test anything relating to the updates on an oscilloscope as I don’t perform the updates (and I’m not safe to be let loose with a soldering iron) but one of the things that does get checked both pre and post update is channel balance as was specifically discussed here…
Best regards
Phil
Just to confirm Phil’s specific comment. Other in/out checks, aside. Herewith…
And 6 days in (almost 150 hours) and the system is transformed. Glad Chris took the time to investigate the analog side of things.
What’s interesting is that what I’d heard with it’s replacement in the lineup, the Schitt Yggdrasil, which I thought somewhat missing from the pre-APEX, was quite well taken care of with APEX. That being more dynamics and pacing. Mike Moffat of Theta fame and now leading Schitt learned quite a bit from his years on both the digital and analog front, it seems. But now I can say I’m totally ecstatic with what I’m hearing.
The problem I heard with the Yggdrasil was the same as what I heard with Theta’s DAC, namely bright and hyper-detailed so it sounds good initially but induces listener fatigue within minutes.
Not at all in my system. Guess every system is quite different.
Oh cmon… Really???
All I know is when I demoed one my thoughts were “sounds like a Theta Digital DAC to me.”
Not as fatigue-inducing as their older DACs, but still with the Theta house sound.
Which of the 3 Yggdrasil DAC flavors did you happen to audition?
So My Rossini Apex has been back in the system for 3 days and playing the whole time.
It had been a bit lacking in bass punch and a bit thin however. I chalked it up to some post Covid congestion. I then realized that the device came back to me with output set to 2V (and the preamp volume was running at 40% instead of the usual 30%). I reset it to 6V and the sound has opened up. Everything is bigger, fuller and richer. I don’t know why my preamp sings better receiving higher Apex output - but it is what it is. 2v at 40% is thin compared to 30% at 6v. It’s a McIntosh C12000.
Anyhoo - All the things said about Apex detail and soundstage are real. This was a nice upgrade.
Odd that this setting had been altered. But maybe whoever worked on your system did a reset, causing the output to drop to 2v. I know that my dealer recommended I raise the DAC output from 2 to 6v since I am using a preamp more than capable of handling the higher output. The manual warns that setting it at 6v can overload and distort. Also, verify the volume level setting for the DAC hasn’t been changed.
Altered settings to default are to be expected. Your Ring DAC board has been swapped for the APEX version. This board contains the FPGAs that run the system, including its settings. So all previous settings are lost.
Also, the bass thinness is also a side-effect of the swap.
I mentioned that after mine was done the bass was all but missing for about the first ten hours of burn-in, and it gradually worked its way back to its normal levels within about 24 hours of use.
For what it’s worth, I lost none of my settings - they were all where they were when I took it in, including output voltage, custom input names and network configuration.
After the first contact with your Mosaic software the original settings will return. But only from Mosaic, so if you start using your new APEX board without first connecting with the Mosaic app, it will have the default settings.
That isn’t accurate, or at least wasn’t for me.
I connected my Rossini Player APEX back up and started using it right away; I didn’t connect Mosaic to it for weeks after I got it back as I simply never use Mosaic for anything, actually, except firmware upgrades.
I almost never use anything but the front panel buttons or the remote as all I ever do is switch between two inputs or the CD transport; I only very, very rarely stream.
Then you are probably right, and means that your original settings were not stored on the Ring DAC board, but on the internal SSD (nand: Toshiba NAND 512MiB, SLC, 3,3V 8-bit), that I believe is part of the network board.
I got confused, because my dealer informed me that I needed to restore all my settings, after my entire Rossini DAC was replaced due to a malfunctioning. Meaning also the network board.
At least for the Vivaldi: All of my settings were exactly the same as before. The only thing I might guess is that those of us who had performed a save of our settings, which would seemingly be kept elsewhere in the DAC, might have been restored in the process of the upgrade, as part of the Fuller Sound procedures. On the other hand, the architecture of the Rossini is quite different, given the Vivaldi has separate DAC and Upsampler.
