Trying a vivaldi apex against my rossini

The power supply looks a bit more complicated in the vivaldi and the boards are different, but as for the clocking then obviously i dont know if the same or different

The biggest problem for me has always been the 3 large boxes you will eventually end up with going vivaldi.
Like i will start with the vivaldi dac and maybe my rossini clock, but i just know that i will want to change that to the vivaldi clock and then there is still the streaming side and upsampler to go.
Obviously this then is a staggering amount of money involved even secondhand and i feel the gains once both are apexā€™ed is slight and more a different taste rather than a much better sound.
But even saying all that i still like what thos vivaldi dac is doing

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We must not be very convincing :slight_smile:

One day youā€™ll do it and laugh out loud at the difference. Or try it, and suddenly be $20k poorer.

I wud like to keep Vivaldi always something to aspire for, to keep me get going.

Otherwise I reach the dead end for this hobby. Nothing more to look forward for.

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I use my Rossini with a Vivaldi clock, and I had before a Scarlatti clock. Difference is huge. Will never come back.

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both the Rossini and Vivaldi clocks state the same specifications for accuracy (below), so you may need to ask dCS how they quantify the performance difference (since the price difference is known):

ā€œBetter than +/-1ppm when shipped. Typically +/-0.1ppm when shipped and stabilisedā€

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Well a little update.
I decided yesterday that i was going to sell my rossini and just go for the vivaldi dac and run it without a clock and use my melco to stream, then i noticed a network bridge for sale very local to me and at a fair price and so i though this must be fate and a better way for me to go rather than use my melco.
But then i get a message from a nice guy and we have a chat for about an hour. He was in the same position as me and gave me some great advice on it all.
The out come is i am going to demo a rossini apex and clock against the vivaldi apex dac before i jump and this is happening today, so i will for sure know which way i am going.
The extra box count and expense of the vivaldi is still a concern, especially when i will have to wait till i can add them, plus find the room, but decided i need to see first what the difference is as going to the vivaldi dac against my rossini pair plus the 6k apex upgrade is only 2k

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Your initial intuition was the good oneā€¦the difference between whatever Rossini and a Vivaldi is so big that there is little doubt on what is the outcome after your listening session.

Before I bought the Vivaldi Upsampler I had a network Bridge, it was a great setup. Now it is a little better, but the combination of a NB and a Vivaldi Dac is already fantastic.

Well that didnā€™t take long, 10 seconds was all it took and i am not joking, the difference is easily heard.
Will be swapping the dac, but keeping my clock until such a time i can upgrade that, also not bothering with the network bridge for a few reasons and will just use the melco to stream qobuz when needed

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U just confirmed that I still have something to look forward for in future if I can afford. Thanks.

Regards,
Sourav

10 secondsā€¦you are very fast or is the Rossini so bad ? :laughing:

You skip the NBā€¦ok, but check whether it is a good idea not to use the dual AES for high filesā€¦Not sure, but you may ā€œunder useā€ your Vivaldi Dacā€¦

Of course if you plan getting the Upsampler in the future, your strategy seems to be ok, anyway you will end up with a great source, enjoy !

To understand it right: the Rossini was an Apex and the old Vivaldi still sounds better?

Today i heard a vivaldi dac that was apex against a rossini player that was also apexā€™ed. Both of these set to the same map 1 and same filter, no clock fitted to either. The vivaldi was using USB input, the rossini we tried with both USB and ethernet, this was from the top of the range melco ssd player using stored music.

Played a few tracks but the one i will talk about is probably one most will know, the Eagles live album hell freezes over and hotel california.
The difference was i am sorry to say unbelievable, i was hoping the difference between these dacs would be much closer and i would be happy just getting mine apexā€™ed but no. It was so different that it was like we had played a different version of the song. The bass on the vivaldi had more slam to it, it wasnā€™t more or deaper, it just hit you more and was just nicer. The guitar at the start sounded like a different guitar was being used and the rest was just more alive and dynamic, all three of us just couldnā€™t believe the difference as they hadnā€™t actually done this comparison before.
Obviously the rossini is a fantastic dac and is very capable but i was just gob smacked by the difference.
I was looking at selling my rossini clock to help fund it all and looking at maybe getting a network bridge, but was talked into keeping the clock and not bother with the network bridge and use them funds to help keep the clock.
So there we are, its been a strange few weeks with many U turns etc, but once i heard the pair today it was obvious which way to go. Vivaldi dac and rossini clock it is for now, will use my melco N10 to stream qobuz all going through the USB and once i have recovered from this then i guess the clock will be swapped to the vivaldi one, but thats for another year lol.

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Thanks Dunc! So you should go next for Innuos Pulsar to get the network duties done:-)

U should have listened to Rossini Dac Apex (instead of player) for a better perspective. Player in the same closer is bound to create additional noise in my understanding.

Regards,
Sourav

Its never going to make up the difference, its too large a gap for that. I am sorry to bring this news as i was hoping for the gap to be much closer but its not.
Player was the only option and i very much doubt it made any difference to the quality

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Most probably u r right, the difference is (and should be) much big.

In my audition, I found Rossini Player to be inferior.

Interestingly, when I play the same Hotel California from Hell Freezes Over cd played by Rossini Transport to Rossini Dac Apex, it is typically jaw dropping (much superior compared to playing same download in 192/24 from USB ).

But surely I never played them in Vivaldi. So I dont know what I dont know.

Regards,
Sourav

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They are both jaw dropping, just one more so when you compare them like for like.
Obviously we could have used the vivaldi transport they had to feed both dacs, but i know the difference will be the same.
But the main point of me going today was to compare them and compare them in a high quality system so i could hear the difference. Also to have both dacs running the same set up and both nicely run in.
Obviously the rossini was upsampling and the vivaldi not. But as i have already said the guy that was looking after me also couldnā€™t get over the difference, so much so we ended up all listening to the difference and all agreed.
The rossini is and always will be a fantastic dac, its just the vivaldi is better again, its also strange that its only really the software thatā€™s different and the way its voiced.

The difference you hear could just be the USB over the other. dCS themselves say USB is not there preferred input.
We used a very high quality USB that the guys said sounded much better than any other USB cable they had tried, plus i also tried the rossini plugged in by ethernet from the melco to see if it was much better over the USB, but as said i wanted to keep it all the same for both and so mainly used the USB as thats all we could use with the vivaldi

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What you could still do is listening to Hotel California via the NB with dual aes compared to Melco via usbā€¦ I never red that usb is preferred to dual aesā€¦but it is possible that nobody performed that test with the top Melco server and the usb cable you used for this listening session.

Donā€™t have a network bridge to use, nor did the dealer. They just advised i would be better keeping the rossini clock rather than sell it and put Ā£3k of it into a network bridge when i already have a very good streamer in the melco.
The way the network bridge connects to the dcs dac may work better and therefore sound better but it also brings with it a problem as i only will have one clock cable to connect to it from my rossini clock, not sure what all that means really? But the clock will certainly be a better way to go as it benefits everything the dac does