Which used dCS Upsampler?

Hi, I’m new to the forum and I have recently purchased:

Paganinin Transport;
Debussy DAC; and,
Scarlatti Clock.

As can be seen, I’ve not been faithful to any particular series so far! The clock was the most recent purchase and made a significant difference to my system. So I’m now looking to purchase an Upsampler and wondered if the forum members had any advice on which model, if any, was best given all other things (such as firmware update and condition) being equal. I am actively considering the Scarlatti and Paganini. I might consider a Purcell but feel that maybe this model is getting too old. A current generation Upsampler is not within my budget.

Any advice will be most appreciated.

Kind regards

Pat

As far as I am aware the Scarlatti and Paganini upsamplers are electrically identical the only difference being the case. No doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong.

I agree with your judgement on the Purcell. Aside from the question of age there was a significant uplift to sound quality with the generation of Scarlatti and Paganini that succeeded it. If you do go that route, however, be aware that there were two models in sequence, Purcell and Purcell+. The latter having provision for DSD64 from SACD and ( if I remember) upsampling to DSD from PCM all via IEEE1394 ( Firewire ). However that will not be of advantage to you as the Debussy has no 1394 input. That is a pity as your Paganini transport also caters for SACD.

Thank you Pete for the helpful reply. With the Scarlatti/Paganini Upsampler option I am planning on feeding DSD from the Upsampler to the Debussy via dual AES EBU. Am I correct in believing I can do this with the Scarlatti and Paganini Upsamplers, and, is it the case that its not possible with the Purcell+?

I can feed DSD to the Debussy from the Paganini Transport, so if I cannot feed DSD from the Upsampler would this then defeat the purpose purchasing the Upsampler; which is to improve the overall performance of the setup?

kind regards

Patrick

Yes, I forgot that software revision v1.20 added DoP to the Paganini and Scarlatti upsamplers. As Debussy accepts DoP this will, in fact, work. Sorry for the misleading information. I also overlooked the addition of Vivaldi mode to the final revision to the Paganini transport allowing DSD from SACD via dual AES.

Of course the old Purcell predates DoP.

Incidentally and just as a thought, I ultimately came to dislike upsampling due to some of the audible ( to me at least) artefacts also produced. The Paganini DAC in later software revisions and the subsequent DACs allow the asymmetric filter to apply to 44.1 kS/s programme ( previously it could only be used for PCM 176.4 and 192) . I find this selection preferable to upsampling but , unfortunately, I do not think that the Debussy has it. Anyway that is purely my personal take on upsampling. Oh, the nurse is coming with my special jacket with the long, long sleeves :crazy_face:

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Thanks again Peter. I find those jackets with the very long sleeves are particularly uncomfortable in the summer. However, sometimes it’s best that we do as we are told and put them on.

The possibilities for improving my system are great, but my budget isn’t up to the task. So I’ll have to think hard if the Upsampler is the best use of my funds. But it is very tempting to get one just to complete the dCS package!

Regards

Pat

May I suggest another way of spending your limited budget?

Think instead of looking for a used Network Bridge. They are in limited supply but do appear from time to time. For example my old ( old= 6 months) NB was on sale only 12 weeks ago ( I upgraded to a Vivaldi Upsampler - it contains the network connectivity for the Vivaldi range).

Why do I suggest this? If you get a used Paganini or Scarlatti you will enhance the sound of CDs that you own and any that you buy in the future. However that is the sole gain. But the Network Bridge can give you access to vast amounts of new music using streaming services. Or to versions of many of your existing CDs but in hi-res ( via Qobuz or Tidal) so that they don’t need to be upsampled. You can also rip your CDs to a NAS and then run all of your music needs (including radio) from dCS Mosaic running on your phone or tablet. I mention computer audio because CDs are now a minor and declining medium ( check the official recorded music statistics for 2019 recently published from e.g. IFPI or your local record industry trade body). I would guess from threads on this forum that now only a minority of contributors even run a disc transport. Sooner or later only a minority of releases will be available on silver disc. So my suggestion also has an eye to the medium or long term.

Well this idea may or may not appeal to you but I thought it worth mentioning if you have not considered it so far. After all the network Bridge was intended by dCS to bring accessibility to new features for users of legacy dCS equipment.

Buying a NB, instead of an Upsampler, is a very interesting thought as maybe it is time I got with the programme and joined the rest of the 21st century. Indeed, having come to understand the dCS product line as a result of my recent purchases, I might have been better served by getting a Bartok. However, that’s water under the bridge and I’m happy with what I’ve done so far.

As far as the little silver discs becoming an endangered species; as someone whose primary means of listening to music is on vinyl, and who went through the demise of vinyl in the 80’s and 90’s, this all has a very familiar feeling about it. To the extent that I used to rescues other peoples vinyl collections that were in danger of being unceremoniously being disposed of, the same is now happening with CD collections. So, will cd’s be viewed in 20 years in the same light as old vinyl is viewed by some today - who knows?
I will definitely be going down the streaming route, it’s just a matter of when (and maybe it should be now) not if.

With regards to purchasing a dCS Upsampler, having had your very useful input from Pete, the available options in a limited market have been clarified for me. These are a recently serviced gen 2 model; a no service gen 2 model; and, a no service gen 1 model with the DSD upgrade . Options 1 and 2 are similarly priced so that choice between these seems obvious, unless there is significant scope for negotiation on the price of the one without a service. The one of advantage to the Gen 1 model is that I am being offered it on loan without obligation and it would probably be considerably cheaper than the Gen 2 models.

I guess this leaves me with a couple of questions. Given that the Upsamplers are basically computers I would assume that they should be very reliable - is this the case? And, if I purchased a Purcell, and something did go wrong, will dCS service/fix it?

Kind regards

Pat

Well Pat, irrespective of any other factors I would always go for a Gen 2 rather then Gen 1 model.

So far whenever dCS has released a new generation it has not been a superficial improvement or just an additional facility or facilities but a total rethink from the ground up including rewriting all of the code. Remember that dCS does not buy off the shelf pre-programmed chips.

This has a number of outcomes. Firstly each generation has a significantly improved sound quality over its predecessor ( I have owned all 3 generations in turn). Secondly each generation is more reliable than its predecessor ( I hope that answers your question on the subject at least in part). Thirdly and in relation to your final question, there are accordingly few if any common parts between the generations. The design and construction of these products is generally not as in past eras where a guy with a soldering iron can subsequently replace a faulty resistor etc. From my experience many repairs may well involve the complete replacement of one of the circuit boards. For example I did need to have a control board replaced for either ( or both!) my Elgar+ or Purcell+ back in the day. I cannot speak for dCS but I would anticipate that such boards would probably no longer be available for much legacy product. Of course other parts may still be repairable so the answer is subject to what needs to be done.

I have to be honest that the overall proposition is not like buying , say, a twenty year old tube amplifier where construction throughout could be done by hand and where all of the basic parts are available and replaceable either new or from NOS.

BTW, the 1st Gen upsampler is a bit of a beast to use as it is basically something straight out of a recording studio put in a fancy box for home use. So it has things like selectable dither waveforms etc . If you buy it make sure that you have the manual :wink:

Best Wishes

Pete

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Well, I shook the magic money tree, and, it produced the means to get a used NB and a factory refurbished Scarlatti Upsampler. Thank you money tree and thank you Pete for your great advice.

Congratulations. Next up for you is to choose a streaming service. I would suggest that if you want hi-res tracks then Qobuz will be your best bet. Hi-res on Tidal is by MQA which with a dCS system needs both an MQA equipped decoder ( which Network Bridge is) and an MQA renderer which Debussy isn’t. Qobuz provides hi-res FLACs instead which will be correctly delivered using Mosaic.

There is also the option of Amazon HD but there is no provision for that service with Mosaic and Amazon’s own downloadable player ( to your PC or mac) has a major technical deficiency for stress free bit perfect replay.

Best Wishes

Pete

Hi Pete,

NB arrived today just 23.5 hours after purchasing. It’s the latest version and on initial inspection everything looks as new including all the packaging. So I’m a happy camper so far.

Thanks for your comments about the streaming services as I had been wondering about this even before yesterday’s purchase. I will look at both services, but with your advice in mind, when making a decision.

The Debussy has two AES EBU inputs and the NB and Paganini transport have each two AES EBU outputs. The transport needs to use dual connection to get 24/192. I don’t know about the NB. However, as 4 generally doesn’t go into 2, would I be able to use SPDIF from one of the sources into the Debussy (assuming the Debussy has SPDIF in) and still get hi Rez from both sources? With the Scarlatti Upsampler due in the system too this will add to the options and perhaps my confusion!

Any advice will be continue to be gratefully received.

Regards

Pat

Basically, yes you can. You need to use S/Pdif on the RCA connectors as the BNC output on the NB is good to 24/96 only. However that is less of a problem that may be imagined as the majority of hi-res files , whilst 24 bit are <96 rather then the (nearly) unicorn formats of 176.4 or 192. This probably has much to do with 24/96 being a more common mastering format though 24/88.2 is not unusual .Much Rock is 24/44.1. Basically the streaming services ( certainly Qobuz) stream only from files supplied directly by the record labels so you are often virtually listening to the production master or close to it though I don’t want to overlook issues of provenance in some cases.

The same connectivity considerations apply to the upsampler so you can arrange it so, if wished, you can upsample the streams too.

Is Dual AES a preferable interface to S/Pdif? Some would hold it to be so though my experience is that the result is highly influenced by the 110 ohm (AES) or 75 ohm cable (RCA) employed for either. Cables are a perpetual issue and you will find various threads on this forum about what correspondents are using. The same issues are there for the 75 ohm wordclock cables. Generally I have found that audiophile brand cables meant to carry music data make the least effective wordclock cables even if asserted to be 75 ohm. I could speculate why that may be but will spare you.

As well as my , no doubt, inadequate responses you will find answers to many of your questions in the user manuals. Buying used gear runs the risk of the manual having gone missing so this link will take you to them all should you have a need:

https://www.dcsltd.co.uk/product-support/documents/

Best Wishes

Pete

Thanks Pete for the much more than adequate reply. Word clock cables: now there’s something I didn’t know existed a week ago. Yet I find myself to be the proud owner of a couple Designacable cables as upgrades for the standard dCS versions. I can’t even remember where I read about these, it could easily have been on one of the other threads on the dCS community pages. Regardless of where I read about them, they appear to have better connectors and, having ordered a yellow one and a green one, both with custom labelling for ease of determining where each cable belongs, they look nicer.

On replacing the original dCS cables I get instant confirmatory bias that these are in fact brilliant “upgrades”! The problem with this assessment, other than the aforementioned confirmatory bias, is the fact that there isn’t a silver disc in my collection that I am sufficiently familiar with in my dCS set up to make any such judgment. So I’ll follow the advice, which you may have given elsewhere on this site, that suggests changing the new cables back for the old cables in due course to see if I can still hear any improvement.

Getting back to the topic, the Upsampler arrived today. However, I haven’t got round to opening it’s box yet. Maybe I’m getting fatigued with all the dCS kit that’s arrived recently. I now have a slight shortage of cables (although I do have a AES EBU on order) so I will not be able to do any upsampling for the moment. So I will initially run a single AES EBU from the transport to the Upsampler and another single AES EBU from the Upsampler to the DAC. With this arrangement can I expect some sound improvement just by taking the sampling away from the transport to the Upsampler? I’m hoping that it will, as It was more than suggested in an old review that such an improvement existed.

Kind regards

Pat

That was me. I continue to use Van Damme Plasma wordclock cables from Designacable with my ( mainly) Vivaldi stack. If Van Damme Plasma is good enough for Abbey Road, the BBC and the majority of recording studios in Europe then it is good enough for me.

Using a single AES/EBU cable to the DAC ( make sure that you have the input settings correct) will have exactly the same sound quality as using two. All that Dual AES does is to split the data in half and distribute it between two cables. This was necessary when the old AES specification limited a single cable to 96kHz. So higher rates needed dual cables. dCS have maintained this connectivity for backwards compatibility although with the current range you do need dual connections for above 176.4kHz.

Incidentally, a brief bit of advice, keep upsampling only to integers of the original source format. So CD, for example, should be upsampled to a max of 176.4 in PCM. The frequencies of DSD are integers of 44.1 BTW.

I expect you to metaphorically fall over at the difference between upsampling from the transport and via the full upsampler. The difference is pretty unmissable!

best Wishes

Pete

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Not having an upsampler, I thought that this thread would be interesting to follow, but not immediately useful. Not so! I’d like to pick on PAR’s last comment about upsampling from the transport and via the upsampler. I have been looking for ways in which - at reasonable cost - to upgrade from the older generation of dCS products (Puccini, etc.). I recently had the opportunity to acquire a friend’s Paganini transport and Rossini dac and clock. I turned it down - although the chance to have them still exists - on the basis that the transport and dac would both be simply steps on the upgrade path and I might want to change them before too long.

How is this relevant to PAR’s comment? Because I thought that a better choice of upgrade would be the Paganini transport plus a Vivaldi dac. I don’t do network audio - I only play CDs and SACDs - so I don’t need an upsampler, thought I. Eventually I would change the transport, but would expect to keep the dac for a long time.

My question is this: is it a sensible idea to try to get a Vivaldi dac given what has been said about the benefits of the upsampler, rather than just accepting the Rossini? I’d welcome the opinion of anyone who has some listening experience of these or similar equipment combinations.

Simon C.

This is quite hard to answer.

If you are only interested in playing silver disc then the networking abilities of the Rossini DAC ( the player version seems unsuitable as you want to play SACDs) are currently of no interest. However is this aspect of no appeal to you simply because you haven’t currently got the facility and have yet to discover its real benefits? I have to say that most people that I am aware of who have come to use hi-res streaming find themselves moving away from their hard disc collection as a first choice for a listening session and towards the streaming service. After all, across all genres, they add thousands of new albums for you to hear monthly as well as often offering better than CD quality files of the CDs that you own!

OK , a Paganini transport into a Vivaldi DAC does sound pretty good. I used such a combination during 2019. However even when I had a full Paganini stack I found that the version of DSD upsampling from the transport was markedly inferior to that offered by the full upsampler. Plus, of course, the fact that the Paganini transport is a one trick pony when it comes to upsampling and only offers DSD64 upsampling with no PCM options. I suppose that here I also have to point out the obvious, that the (huge) Rossini Transport is from another world by comparison though it too has limited upsampling options. To be honest I have not directly compared the Rossini Transport upsampling with that available from my Vivaldi upsampler, but I can have a good guess :grinning:.

I said that it is a hard choice. In either case a basically very good transport which does not offer great upsampling with a DAC that also offers upsampling at higher rates, has PCM ( DXD) upsampling and network audio capabilities v. the good transport with a better DAC but which is only that.

What would I do in your situation? I would get the Paganini Transport with Rossini DAC and Clock. Unless you have a firm plan to buy the matching clock and upsampler in due course to accompany the Vivaldi DAC then I think that may be a step too far. You will also eventually probably want to upgrade the Paganini transport at least to the Rossini one in due course given either option if silver disc remains as your main replay medium. I have said before in another thread that buying a Vivaldi DAC is ultimately an expensive step to take. You will want some or all of the other Vivaldi boxes believe me.

So it is not just a sonic choice but one that depends on how you see your finances over the medium term.

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Hi Simon,

I thought long and hard before purchasing the Upsampler and even passed on the opportunity to get a matching Paganini Upsampler when I purchased my Paganini Transport. However, the nagging doubt that I could (and should) get more out of my DCS set up, together with Pete’s advice on this thread, convinced me that I should give it a go.

Well, I connected the Upsampler to my system last night so I’ve only got a limited amount of experience to go on; and, I currently cannot upsample to 24/192 (just 24/176 due to limited cable availability), but I believe there to be a clear improvement with the Upsampler in the system. Detail retrieval is much greater, and there is more depth to the soundstage. However, the best indication that I was enjoying the sound more was that my old air baton, which has been lying unused for a long time, was suddenly, and unexpectedly, being waved about in the air again.

Whilst this opinion doesn’t directly deal with your question, it clearly demonstrates to me that the quickest way to maximise your musical enjoyment with a dCS system is not necessarily to go along the straight upgrade path to the latest and greatest model, although obviously one can do that too - funds permitting.

Regards

Pat

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Hi Pete,

Well thanks for the cable recommendation too! I’ll be ordering 2 more clock cables from designacable so that I connect the NB and the Upsampler to my clock.

I connected the Upsampler before seeing your comments about what I could achieve upsampling wise with my 2 AES EBU. So I was pleasantly surprised to attain the higher resolution than I was expecting (24/176 instead of 24/96).

Please see my comments to Simon to see what I think of the Upsampler’s effect on the system. But to summarise: I am delighted with the Upsampler’s effect on my system. One thing I didn’t mention in my comment to Simon is that my system can be a bit bright for my tastes, particularly with recordings that are more compressed. The Upsampler seems to have taken this edginess off these recordings. Which justifies, in my mind, getting so much dCS equipment recently. If I buy anymore I will need to count them on two hands instead of just the one.

With the NB I’ve confirmed everything is okay and I’ve connected it to the Mosiac app using my IPad. My router is in another room from where my stereo is. So I will need to get a long network cable to run from the router to the NB. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the NB playing some music very soon.

Regards

Pat

Great Pat. Just to remind you that being a Gen 3 product the Network Bridge ideally requires the use of two clock inputs from the system clock , one for 44.1 kHz based frequencies and one for 48 kHz based frequencies. As the Scarlatti clock can only offer a single frequency at a time you will have to change it manually using the front panel frequency button to match it to the incoming data to the NB. There is an auto facility but this only functions with a USB input to the clock which would effectively be from a computer.

BTW that network cable can also affect the sound. There has been a recommendation recently on the forum for the Belden CatSnake ( 5E and 6) cables terminated, again, by Designacable. I haven’t tried but they look good and the price is not exorbitant. My own alternative choice would be Meicord from Germany. Obtainable from stock in the UK from MCRU.

Best Wishes

Pete

Very happy with my Meicord Ethernets too!

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