Good News For Those Who Care About Sound

People refer to the ‘70s as the golden age of audio because that's when the goal was to reproduce the original music event as truthfully as possible.

For true audiophiles (who were a lot easier to find back then), the only question was, does this cable, component, phono cartridge, or speaker arrangement make the system sound more real?

Components were on proudly on display, not hidden away; and if the speakers sounded best where interior decorators were most likely to tear their hair out, that's where they would end up (which helps explain why hats were more fashionable back then).

If a manual turntable sounded better than an auto-stacker, the latter would be swapped for a model that had you jumping at the end of every 25-minute LP side to save the $700 stylus on the moving coil cartridge unnecessary wear and tear.

We think of the golden age as being behind us not because today's best equipment is sonically inferior, but because today's listeners tend to make decisions based on matters of convenience and aesthetics over absolute sound quality.

The MP3 phenomenon exemplifies this trend. Digitizing and compressing music files affords capabilities undreamt of by audiophiles of yore, like being able to tote tens of thousands of hours of music on a player the size of a deck of cards.

The test system consisted of a Braun Regie 510 stereo receiver and a pair of L300 compact three-way speakers (both relics from the ‘70s), the ARCAM rDAC, and Logitech's Squeezebox Duet. Not visible, is the Paradigm SW-1200 subwoofer, the second L300; and the remotely located Mac mini streaming the digital music files.

The tradeoff, compromised sound quality, runs completely counter to the audiophile spirit. But technology is bringing us to full circle. With today's more capacious storage systems, there's no longer the need to compress audio; at least not as drastically as before.

More users are storing music on hard drives as opposed to CDs, and with little or no lossy compression, so bit-by-bit (literally) the raw materials needed for a return to true high fidelity are falling back into place.

Making the most out of these raw materials is the rationale behind the British high-end manufacturer ARCAM's new rDAC, a compact (about the size of a Mac mini, and similar in appearance) digital-to-analog converter.

Although rDAC's aluminum finery with rounded edges perfectly matches a Mac mini's outer shell, the Squeezebox Duet also looks at home, perching on its top surface.

It's a brave venture, in that many audiophiles shun computer-borne music. Those that don't invariably possess equipment loaded with high-end DACs already. And that's all the rDAC brings to the table.

If audiophiles in the know aren't the prime target for rDAC, that leaves only novices with a treasure trove of digital music files, and an awakening sense of missed opportunities on the reproduction end.

That group is swelling by the day, but make no mistake, rDAC does absolutely nothing that isn't already being done by the prospective purchaser's equipment. Its sole purpose is to intercept digital data from a source, like a computer housing audio files, or a streaming audio system, like those from SONOS or Logitech's Squeezebox, and perform the conversion to analog using its high-end components. The only purported gain is to realize higher fidelity while performing this conversion.

It has four inputs: a S-P/DIF (supporting 44.1-48kHz sampling rates) optical, a coaxial (44.1/48/88.2/96/176/192kHz), USB (32/44.1/48/88.2/96kHz); and wireless (44.1kHz) antenna input.

The antenna input awaits the release of a wireless USB dongle. The mechanical ON/OFF switch means you'll be running rDAC continuously, or have to flip the switch manually every time you use it, unless you plug its AC adapter into a switched outlet.

The antenna input (antenna not supplied) awaits a USB dongle scheduled to become available at some later date that would plug into a PC or Mac hosting digital audio files, and then wirelessly send them to rDAC. If you already have a Squeezebox or SONOS system, that capability is of limited interest.

The Wolfson 9741 24-bit multilevel Delta-Sigma DAC tends to be deployed in components costing many times the $499 asking price for the rDAC. It looks promising on paper, but the big question remains, is it worth the bother, and for whom?

The only way is to listen and judge. The auditioning test bed consisted of a stereo audio system being fed by a Logitech Squeezebox Duet that received its audio files via WiFi from a Mac mini running iTunes.

Coincidentally, the stereo receiver, a Braun Regie 510, and the compact monitor loudspeakers, a pair of Braun L300, were last manufactured at the tail end of the ‘70s. Their use here was not intended as homage to the golden age: it's simply that the L300s, which may rank as the world's smallest three-way design, are notoriously revealing and unforgiving of source imperfections. As for the Regie, a 2 x 50 watt design, its enormous heft betrays a huge power supply that copes with the difficult load the L300 imposes.

No mini monitor, three-way or otherwise, can adequately reproduce the bottom octave, certainly not in a large room such as the 29' x 31' x 11' space here. Accordingly, a Paradigm (true) subwoofer, the model PW-2100v2 was matched to the system.

Realtime A/B comparison wasn't practical in this case, but as swapping out the only variable, the rDAC, in and out of the circuit only took a couple of minutes, I'm confident of my listening impressions.

Setting up the rDAC was a simple process: it involved removing the stereo analog RCA pair from the analog output of the Squeezebox, and plugging them into the corresponding sockets on the rDAC. Then a coaxial RCA cable was plugged into the digital input of the rDAC, and the other end into the coaxial digital output of the Squeezebox.

Finally, it remained to switch the rDAC on (the switch at the back is mechanical, and will remain on until physically pressed, unless you plug the rDAC into a switchable outlet), and then press the single, user-operable button atop the unit that toggles among the four digital inputs.

An LED indicates which input is active, and that input remains active until you select another one (i.e. it doesn't default to input one after being turned on and off).

Having carefully compared Logitech's $2,500 Transporter with the Duet a few years ago, where the principal audible difference stems from the quality of DACs used, I was prepared for the sort of sonic differences to expect; and the improvement wrought by the rDAC was very similar in degree and kind.

In a nutshell, the rDAC's sound was much more refined, in the sense that timbres emerged stripped of an upper midrange sheen that some novices might initially mistake for detail.
Careful listening confirmed that it was the rDAC sound, that although smoother and less harsh, reproduced subtle hall reflections more accurately, and helped evoke a more three dimensional sonic illusion.

Female voices were rock solid and anchored to a believable sound stage, blissfully shorn of a false silvery edge that tends to introduce the wrong sort of tension to their singing.

All musical voices benefitted from the same sort of sonic relief, but the effect was most noticeable with those with a greater tendency to grate, like strings above the stave or loud brass.

The top surface reveals the only user operable button, that toggles among the four digital inputs.

One trait I can't recall from the Transporter versus the Duet comparison, but which is very apparent with the rDAC, is a pronounced spectral tilt towards the bass frequencies.

Not only does the rDAC seem to extend deeper into the low frequencies, the entire sound balance seems darker, with more energy in the mid-bass area. Whether this is due to an actual spectral tilt (unlikely with the rDCA's specified frequency response of 10Hz-20kHz, 0/-0.02dB) or an illusion wrought by the smoother upper midrange, I can't be certain.

In the context of the test audio system, this resulted in a much richer, full-blooded sound completely devoid of congested or bloated bass. But owners of audio systems that they regard as somewhat mid-bass heavy to begin with are more likely to consider the trade off as undesirable.

Is it worth the outlay? It all depends.

Any audiophile (including this one) would say so in a heartbeat. More likely, audiophiles would commence arguing about which separate DAC is best; although it should be noted that other choices cost much more than the $499 asking price for the rDAC.

For someone who doesn't consider himself an audiophile, the answer is less clear, but tilts towards a ‘yes' the more your habit is to really focus on and be absorbed by the music, as opposed to having it (and your musical sensibilities) running on autopilot while you perform other chores. It also helps if you have a revealing, high fidelity audio system to take this audio gold, and turn it into sonic jewelry.

Finally, the quality has to be preserved in your digital music files. No DAC is an alchemist. Once the sonic gold has been shorn away by lossy 128kb/sec. MP3 compression, there's no way of completely recovering it.

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