I currently have a very early Delius, still running first version of firmware and no firewire interface hardware. I also have a Purcell which is the latest hardware and firmware version, with firewire.
I’m connected via dual-AES and am completely happy upsampling to 48/176 for CD playback from a vintage Mephisto 1 transport. But the upgrade bug bites slowly
Will I notice a sound quality difference if my Delius had firewire interfaces and I use a DSD cable instead of dual-AES? Anyone compared this from back in the day?
Although I did not have Delius, I did have Elgar/Purcell both without and later with the IEEE1394 interface for DSD.
All I can say is that DSD upsampling sounds a little different to PCM upsampling. However whether you prefer it or not will be a matter for your personal tastes. For mine I always preferred the PCM modes.
As upgrades have not been available for decades presumably the only way this can be done in by selling your Delius and finding a replacement. My personal view is that the money would be better spent on finding Paganini DAC and upsampler. There was a major improvement in sound between the two generations. Otherwise I expect you may find the DSD upsampling difference is just that and not necessarily an improvement.
I agree with Pete. Although my father had a Delius/Purcell it was 1st gen and lacked the firewire interface. However I had the Elgar Plus/Purcell Plus combo and compared AES/PCM and Firewire/DSD and came to a similar conclusion as Pete.
One of the other factors you should definitely take into account is sourcing suitable cables. Firewire is completely obsolete now and even at its height audiophile use cases were marginal and there were very few quality cables available. I seem to remember that the ones I ended up using were from Monster Cable(!) So unless you are able to find a 2nd gen Delius for sale with decent Firewire cables you might find them difficult to source. Worse case scenario would be a lot of time invested for a very small difference you may actually end up not liking.
Pete’s suggestion of a used Paganini would undoubtedly be a much bigger step up.
@struts001 is absolutely correct about the difficulty with FireWire cables. Not only is there an issue with the resulting sonic aspects but many were made that are physically incompatible with dCS equipment of this vintage. The length of the metallic conductive area of the FireWire plug can be too short before the insulation is reached so that no electrical connection can be made due to the thickness of the casework.
Few audiophile cable manufacturers went there either. I ended up after years of searching with some from Audioquest. However even these were not catalogue product but were special items imported from the USA to UK ( very nice of AQ). NLA I am afraid.
Thanks Both - valuable input, and exactly my concern, is it worthwhile to replace my Delius with a newer one - all I’d gain is the FireWire interface and (I think) the ability to slave it to the Purcell clock…but not sure it is worth it, completely happy with sound now. Maybe saving my pennies to go with a newer model makes sense.
I think that both myself and @struts001 have already answered you question.
Unfortunately I cannot know exactly what tastes you have and what is important to you. We all differ. However, sticking to my experiences, the answer is that it is unlikely to be worth the considerable effort that you may expend.
NB , if you are going to slave clocks it is more correct to slave Purcell to Delius and not vice versa if you so not have Verona ( the dCS system clock of that era). Outside of using a master clock to synchronise all of the units, the master timing should be closest to the point of digital to analogue conversion.
…and to get any real benefit from clock synchronization you would need to slave the transport clock to the DAC (or an external word clock) and IIRC the Mephisto has no word clock input.
Found the Firewire cables in my Amazon order history (order placed 22 years ago almost to the day). They were called Monster Cable FireLink 300 FL300 6/6-1M if that helps. Like Pete’s they were ordered from the US so I it seems absolutely nothing suitable was available in the UK even back in the day. I remember telling the UK dCS distributor at the time about my find. I had asked him for pointers and at the time even he had no source for cables that would improve on the liquorice cords supplied with the unit.
Btw I trust you saw this article about hot-rodding the Mephisto 1. If you are handy with a soldering iron it looks like there are a number of sub-par parts in there that can be upgraded pretty easily to good effect and a number of consumables (e.g. foam balls in the transport suspension) that will definitely need to be replaced at some point.
@struts001 - Sorry, thought I had replied already! Regarding the Mephisto - it’s my second, but the first is faulty and I need a working one and a scope to fix it
It very recently replaced a Micromega Duo.CD transport, which had pride of place into Purcell/Delius until now (& beating my lovingly modified Naim CDI for CD replay once Purcell added to Delius). Was surprised I preferred the Mephisto, but I do. The Mephisto uses Philips industrial PCBs, I already have a Sugden CDP that uses same that I intended to modify with dedicated 5v rails and have ALWSRs ready to go in…they’ll likely go into the Mephisto now.
I’ll also open the Duo at some point, I never have and have no idea of its design quality, nor state of electrolytics given the age…but best looking transport in entire universe
I think you’ll like what you find, these were really nicely built pieces of kit with quality components. Which model is yours? Does it have the CDM-9 or the CDM-9 Pro? Has it been re-greased? If not I would suggest that as the top priority, but you probably already know that. The electrolytics were mostly Philips iirc, you’ll probably want to replace all of those with something like Nichicons.
