Hello,
Currently I have a Vivaldi Dac connected to a dCS Bridge (Dual AES)…Now, suppose I can add only one Vivaldi box…it means never 3 of them (I don’t listen to CD anymore, so this one is excluded from day one).
Should I replace the Bridge with a Vivaldi Upsampler (I have a large cd collection on my NAS, but more and more I use Tidal all the way) OR keeping the Bridge and adding a Vivaldi Clock ?
What would be your advice in that context ? and Why ?
Best regards.
Ch.
It’s a tough call as both options have definite benefits. If you’re certain that you’ll only ever add one more component then I’d likely recommend the Upsampler both for the audio performance improvements as well as the tighter integration with the Vivaldi DAC. The Bridge is an excellent product, but the Vivaldi Upsampler is on another level. I’ve worked with a few customers who have followed this path (Bridge -> Upsampler) and the feedback has been extremely positive.
Having said that, don’t underestimate the performance improvement of adding the clock. Clocking is one of the key factors to getting digital right and the addition of the master clock tends to provide improvements in terms of microdynamics and timbre. The clock circuit in the Vivaldi DAC is excellent, but it really shines when slaved to the external master clock.
It is good you mention the potential benefit of each product, but I do appreciate you enventually deliver an advice taking account of the given context. I shall follow your advice then…may be not next week, I still need money to go on holiday 