So, I am weak . . . [Vivaldi Order]

Andrew
Thank you for the reply and nice to know that dCS, for the moment, is continuing to operate.

Can you put in a good word for me - black Bartok w/headphone amp destined for Lyric HiFi NY - with this quarantine going on my ears and Utopia headphones could use some good music :rofl:

Of course the Naim/Linn big system in the other room continues to play the tunes.

Sorry (or happy) to hear the news. If the dealer allows, you can take advantage of them to burn in the gear. It will be super sweet from April :sunglasses:

That’s great to hear Andrew. Stay safe and healthy.

I appreciate that suggestion, and I know some might find that advantageous, but not me. I much prefer to run my equipment in for myself. Whether it’s mechanical burn-in or “brain training” (I’m probably more in the latter camp, but leaning in the direction that it might be a bit of both), I like to listen through that process to assess for myself whether the equipment begins to sound different to me over the course of running it in. Cheers!

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After a 24-hour decontamination period, I unboxed the DAC and Upsampler. From unboxing to playing music via Roon took just under 2.5 hours, perhaps 30-45 minutes longer than I expected. The two manuals are sort of disjointed, and it takes a while to correctly discern the configuration for a DAC/Upsampler/Network Audio combination. And until you get it right, and in the correct order, you get an awful lot of quiet! And Mosaic didn’t see the equipment until I got it right.

Further, my Roon Nucleus+ would not “let go” of the PS Audio DirectStream (even though it was not plugged and not on the network), and simultaneously would not recognize/enable the Vivaldi until I did a complete reboot of the Nucleus+. Merely restarting the server software did not do the trick. I would recommend to other Roon users they make sure their Roon core is updated and rebooted.

But, once I got it right, wow. Just wow. I wondered if I would be able to discern the difference between the PSA and the Vivaldi because of time between hearing each. But, even to these old ears, the difference between a fine DAC that punches above its weight and a stellar DAC that is rivaled by few, was immediately apparent. This was particularly true in mid-bass definition and upper register soundstage.

I wish the Clock were in the budget right now. But the stock market has been unkind.

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Greg , wait to you hear it on, say, Monday :grinning:

Yeh, don’t I know :grimacing:

BTW, As far as I am concerned the difference isn’t so much in just timbral accuracy but that the music itself is suddenly revealed, e.g: I didn’t appreciate that they played that phrase before.

Pete, no doubt! It is simply extraordinary. You know, I have never heard my MSB Select 2 in my speaker system; it has always been the heart of my headphone rack. And it is superb. But now the speaker system has that same revelatory quality. I suspect I will be listening to it even more now.

For better or worse, my forbearance did not last long. As it turns out, there was one brand spanking new silver Clock already in North America. And, well, yes.

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

The Vivaldi Clock should be here next week. One tiny upside of this mess we’re all in is that it will be drop-shipped directly to me and skip the stopover at y dealer. And it will soon be joined by a reference clock from Cybershaft the OP21A [best viewed in Google Chrome with translation]. Does the VC need this? Hardly, it seems to me. But I’ve already heard what a difference the Clock makes, so the attraction of even more short and long-term stability is irresistible.

As I wrote earlier i have heard what is probably the best 10MHz clock out there ( as used by Abbey Road) and the marginal improvement into a Vivaldi clock was not proportional to the substantial cost involved ( multiples of the cost of the Vivaldi clock itself). Still you will be able to enjoy yourself making the comparison with and without the Cybershaft and make up your own mind.

My anticipation ( and it is no more than that) is that the choice between different wordclock cables may be more significant. I have “heard” some great wordclock cables with dCS stacks but I have also heard some that killed the sound dead. My rule of thumb? Good sounding digital cables for music data do not necessarily make good wordclock cables (and vice versa).

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Pete, I remember that post well, and one reason why I decided that a .5x multiple was a better starting point than a 5x multiple. :wink:l. I did briefly fantasize about the Stute, but concluded that I was probably getting way ahead of myself. I also looked at the Antelope 10MX, which is in wide studio use—“good enough for them, good enough for me?”—but the number of Vivaldi Clock users reporting satisfaction with Cybershaft was helpful. And I agree with your last sentence here, based on dealer and user feedback. For now, I have Geistnote BNC cables to tide me over during shelter-in-place. And, again courtesy of another of your posts, I have ordered a set of Van Dammes as well. At some point, as my dealer and I discussed yesterday, I will either travel there when they reopen, or they will send me some demos, most likely Shunyata Sigma/Alpha to start. In the meantime as I said, I have the Geistnote and Van Damme to start as a reference point. I’ll probably have the Clock alone for 7-10 days to set a baseline, and then add the Cybershaft in when it arrives.

In my experience, turning on Dither on the dCS Clock makes a bigger positive difference than adding the 10MHz reference. I’ve had quite a few 10MHz reference clock platforms rotate through my systems over the years, but ultimately settled on a milspec unit that I managed to get my hands on.

Ultimately, it’s all just relative :wink:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That’s relativity.”
—Albert Einstein :wink:

We’re probably at that point with the Vivaldi stack where these incremental changes produce incremental results. I read a review earlier of the CH Precision T1 Clock that suggested it produced an orders of magnitude improvement in an all-CHP system. Maybe. And maybe the surprise of any improvement is itself the source of the magnitude. No way to know without trying. So, that’s what I will do. I will say this for CHP: they make a Clock for that 10mHz input. I wish dCS would be a little less coy about what they think can actually provide a real improvement for the Vivaldi. Maybe, as you implicitly suggest, the VC is already so good that there is little else to be done. I could accept that based on what I have heard (so far). But then there’s that little BNC input…

I looked at several military and telco clocks. Most had impressive long-term reliability and stability specs. But few had the information I wanted regarding intra-sample constancy. I have an inquiry into Brandywine along those lines.

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With all the extra time I have for listening due to the Covid crisis I am going to revisit the impact of the clock in my Vivaldi stack (DAC< Clock, Upsampler). Before upgrading to the Vivaldi I had the Rossini Player and Clock. I tried a couple of quick comparisons with both Rossini and Vivaldi and could not hear much if any difference with the clocks powered off or on. Certainly not a night and day or even a noticeable improvement…

I will give it another go.

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Looking forward to hearing your impressions Jim.

Yes. All I would say is that don’t listen to it in typical audiophile mode : Is there more bass? Is clarity improved? Is there more detail? etc. It doesn’t effect those domains much. Just relax into the music and gradually find out how more involved you become and how much more emotion can be there. How more like analogue it is ( without the noise etc) :slight_smile: Then, of course, remove it and see if you find something missing. Back in the day of the very first dCS external clock (the Verona) it took a while and a second attempt for the penny to drop for me. I would now place its importance for me above, say, having an upsampler. So I bought the clock as a priority before the upsampler ( Vivaldi in my case).

Of course if your main listening genre is death metal then the chances of it doing anything for you may be lessened :wink:

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If it weren’t for needing the Upsampler for network playback, I would have bought the Clock first as well. I also agree that it is not something you hear in “audiophile mode.” I believe it was Teddy Roosevelt who said that “comparison is the thief of joy.” And as I read audiophile forums, that advisory comes to mind often. I don’t know how some folks ever enjoy the music. Let your joy inform your assessment!

Ditto. I ( or you and I) must be of the few that own an upsampler but don’t upsample :crazy_face:

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Ditto indeed. Although a rainy day spent testing upsampling is definitely on the horizon. :wink: