DC-1

[TheMachinist]

The DC-1 preamp out performs the USP-1 preamp IMO! To my ears it is better sound stage and quieter, although rest of my system is modest; running them through UPA-1s powering Polk Audio RTiA7.

Would love to hear how it fairs with the XSP-1 as a preamp.

[svenake56]

Very nice to read the good reviews of the DC-1 it gives me hope I´m still waiting for mine it takes a while to send to Sweden, no it doesn´t really it has been in Sweden for a while now still at the customs to be declared and they are not in a hurry . My experience from the XDA-1 is very good i tested it against Wadia 121 ($2283) and Hegel HD25 ($2587). I borrowed them from a local shop just to compare for fun, i paid $339 for the XDA-1 and could not find any sounding differences that motivated the almost 7 times higher price for the other ones. You also had a lot more inputs/outputs on the XDA-1.So i really looking forward to the DC-1.

[Flunk]

Aug 20, 2013 3:22:23 GMT -5 svenake56 said:

Very nice to read the good reviews of the DC-1 it gives me hope I´m still waiting for mine it takes a while to send to Sweden, no it doesn´t really it has been in Sweden for a while now still at the customs to be declared and they are not in a hurry . My experience from the XDA-1 is very good i tested it against Wadia 121 ($2283) and Hegel HD25 ($2587). I borrowed them from a local shop just to compare for fun, i paid $339 for the XDA-1 and could not find any sounding differences that motivated the almost 7 times higher price for the other ones. You also had a lot more inputs/outputs on the XDA-1.So i really looking forward to the DC-1.

Just a suggestion.

I to live in Sweden and I called fedex up before my gear came to Sweden to clear taxes. I got an sms from them about that I needed to contact them. Perhaps they haven't got your cell-number and are waiting for you to call them. They took care of me directly when I called and got an receipt on my payment during my phone call with them. I got my gear in one week after leaving Emotiva.

If I could help you anymore please just pm me(på svenska om du vill).

Kindly

Oscar

Btw. I think the DC-1 is fantastic. Didn't own DAC before but have had some home for testing but wasn't satisfied, so I took a chance on this one, but no regrets here.

[svenake56]

Aug 20, 2013 6:28:40 GMT -5 Flunk said:

Aug 20, 2013 3:22:23 GMT -5 svenake56 said:

Very nice to read the good reviews of the DC-1 it gives me hope I´m still waiting for mine it takes a while to send to Sweden, no it doesn´t really it has been in Sweden for a while now still at the customs to be declared and they are not in a hurry . My experience from the XDA-1 is very good i tested it against Wadia 121 ($2283) and Hegel HD25 ($2587). I borrowed them from a local shop just to compare for fun, i paid $339 for the XDA-1 and could not find any sounding differences that motivated the almost 7 times higher price for the other ones. You also had a lot more inputs/outputs on the XDA-1.So i really looking forward to the DC-1.

Just a suggestion.

I to live in Sweden and I called fedex up before my gear came to Sweden to clear taxes. I got an sms from them about that I needed to contact them. Perhaps they haven't got your cell-number and are waiting for you to call them. They took care of me directly when I called and got an receipt on my payment during my phone call with them. I got my gear in one week after leaving Emotiva.

If I could help you anymore please just pm me(på svenska om du vill).

Kindly

Oscar

Btw. I think the DC-1 is fantastic. Didn't own DAC before but have had some home for testing but wasn't satisfied, so I took a chance on this one, but no regrets here.

Hi there
When i bought my XDA-1 i used fedex but they only deliver when you are at work so this time i asked Emotiva to use USPS ( less than half price in freight, you pay taxes for the shipping too ) and i will get a invoice from the Swedish post to get my DC-i at my local postoffice, and pay the tax then.
/ Sven-Åke

[vinylfreak]

FedEx says I should have one of these in my hot little hands by Wednesday!
Super excited!!
Quick noob question.
I am going to be connecting this to my HTPC , with all my media files on it.
Should I use the USB connection directly into the PC or should I use toslink coming off my Xonar Essance STX sound card??
Or does it even matter??
Is sound quality the same across all inputs??
This is all kind of new to me.
Thanks!

[roadrunner]

Aug 20, 2013 16:56:49 GMT -5 vinylfreak said:

FedEx says I should have one of these in my hot little hands by Wednesday!
Super excited!!
Quick noob question.
I am going to be connecting this to my HTPC , with all my media files on it.
Should I use the USB connection directly into the PC or should I use toslink coming off my Xonar Essance STX sound card??
Or does it even matter??
Is sound quality the same across all inputs??
This is all kind of new to me.
Thanks!

Try both connections and see which one you prefer. Both are potentially very good but is dependent on the quality of the gear in the PC. Let your ears be the judge.

[klinemj]

Agree to try both. I'm using my USB with JRiver in WASAPI mode...sounds fantastic. Computer is a new Dell 600s running W8...a tiny little box with 2 sole purposes...feeding tunes to the DC-1 and letting me surf the web as I listen to tunes if I should want to.

Mark

[milsap195]

Mark,
If you had to choose between the 105 or the dc1 for a DAC which would you pick?

[klinemj]

DC-1 for sure. My 105 and my ERC-2 were "neck and neck" in sound with maybe a very slight advantage (debatable) to the ERC-2. I think the DC-1 is noticeably better in my system than the ERC-2, so by default...it then beat the 105 even though I have not done direct comparisons (yet).

Of course...for playing BluRays...the 105 wins, but...of course...right?

Mark

[vinylfreak]

Try both connections and see which one you prefer. Both are potentially very good but is dependent on the quality of the gear in the PC. Let your ears be the judge.

Agree to try both. I'm using my USB with JRiver in WASAPI mode...sounds fantastic. Computer is a new Dell 600s running W8...a tiny little box with 2 sole purposes...feeding tunes to the DC-1 and letting me surf the web as I listen to tunes if I should want to.

Mark

Thanks guys!
I will do a little A / B comparison with the connections.
Wednesday cant come soon enough for me.

[markn]

A couple of months ago I bought a Musical Fidelity M1 DAC for a small bedroom system which uses an Airport Express as the source. It sounds fine for *most* of my music (16 bit 44.1 KHz AIFF). I wouldn't consider this a critical listening environment so I am ok with it. Of course I sure many people would tell me that most of my music doesn't lend itself to critical listening! ;-)

My "critical" listening environment is my living room which I am setting up a new system with the UMC-200 at its heart. I'm sure the DACs in the UMC-200 are going to be fine for movies but I think I want more for stereo music, where my source is an AppleTV.

I didn't know much about DACs when I purchased the M1 DAC, the reviews were all good so I thought it was a safe purchase. After doing a little more research I've found I've entered into a parallel universe where not a whole lot is making sense to me, at least right now. For every person who extols the virtues of up sampling, there is another person who calls it complete hogwash! People seem to be very passionate about this on both sides.

I am interested in the DC-1, although I wish it looked more like the rest of the Emotiva line. It looks like it's too new for there to be any reviews, but all of the other Emotiva reviews I've read have praised the components highly. I think I've discovered that the DC-1 is not an up-sampling DAC, at least not before it reaches the DAC chip. Is there anything I should be considering in a DAC, besides the war between ASRC and SSRC (Is there such a thing)?

[yessurf]

Could anyone who has integrated the DC-1 in his Hifi-System post some pictures. The measurements of the DC-1 let it appear so tiny.
I just dont't want to make any mistakes when I order it.

[Flunk]

Aug 23, 2013 12:52:34 GMT -5 yessurf said:

Could anyone who has integrated the DC-1 in his Hifi-System post some pictures. The measurements of the DC-1 let it appear so tiny.
I just dont't want to make any mistakes when I order it.

The only thing small about is the size.  In the pictures you can compare it to XPR-1 and Sonos connect.

Hope they are of some help.

/Oscar

[KeithL]

About upsampling and oversampling...

Upsampling in general refers to any process whereby a device (usually a DAC) converts a digital audio signal (or file) to a higher sample rate. There are, however, a lot of misunderstandings about why this is done and what it accomplishes... (and a good few DAC makers who seem to have odd and technically indefensible ideas about it... or who have their own reasons for being less than truthful).

First, you should understand that, under all but a very few unusual circumstances, YOU CANNOT MAKE NEW INFORMATION. The difference between, for example, a 16/44.1k file and a 24/96 file is that the latter HD file contains more information - more samples were taken, so more data points were stored, and the information contains more detail. (Save the discussion about whether that particular difference is audible for another day.) Once that fact sinks in it will be obvious that, in order to make a 24/96 file into a 16/44 file (or a CD) you have to throw information away. It should also be obvious that, in order to make a 16/44 file into a "real" 24/96 file, you would have to ADD information (but you don't have any information to add).

OK, so then how can you "upsample" a CD (16/44) into a 24/96 file?

I'm glad you asked that. The answer is that you MAKE UP information... The technical term is "interpolation". It means that you make up new information based on a sophisticated mathematical best guess about what it should be. The important thing to take away from this so far is that your new UPSAMPLED 24/96 file doesn't contain any more real information than the original 16/44 fie it was made from. It is not higher quality, and there's no obvious reason why it should sound any better; in fact, if the process was perfect, it should sound exactly the same. (When you buy a 24/96 file from HDTracks, it had better be a real 24/96 file, with extra information in it, and NOT one made up by upsampling a 16/44 original.)

OK, so why in the heck would you bother to do it?

There are actually several reasons...

For one, part of the process of converting digital audio into  analog involves filtering out some excess junk that sort of appears as a natural consequence of the process (again, I'm going to ignore the technical details of why here). This filter MUST be designed to cut off everything above about half of the sample frequency. (For a CD, with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, this cutoff must get rid of everything above about 21 kHz - which works out well since 20 kHz is the upper limit of "audibility".) The catch there is that filters cannot be absolutely sharp, so a filter that really cuts off everything above 21 kHz, but doesn't mess up things well below 20 kHz, isn't practically possible. So, since the filter is absolutely required, the end result is that the upper audible frequencies do suffer a bit of damage.

This is where upsampling or oversampling comes in. We can use upsampling to convert our 16/44 file into a 24/96 file. We won't get any better audio quality in the file itself by doing so, because we have no legitimate new information to add to it, but we have raised the sampling frequency. Now our filter, which has to start working at just below half of  the sample frequency,  can be designed to start working at about 40 kHz or so instead of at 21 kHz (half of our new 96k sampling frequency is 48k). It turns out that it's pretty easy to design a filter that can cut off everything below 48k, but still doesn't mess up the audio below 20 kHz. By doing the upsampling, we haven't improved the audio at all, but we have changed things around so we can use a much easier to design filter that ALSO won't mess up the audio. This is why most modern DAC chips include oversampling as part of what they do - to simplify the filtering process (and, in fact, to make it even possible to design a practical good filter).

Another reason involves the ARSC. Again, without going into too much detail, an ASRC is a cool little chip, originally designed for communications processing, that can convert one sample rate into another. As a sort of side effect of the process, some (not all) ASRC chips are also able to eliminate virtually all of the jitter in the incoming signal. That's the purpose of the ASRC in our XDA-2 and our DC-1. Now, it turns out that an ASRC expects to be given an input signal and a "target" output clock; it takes the input signal and converts it to match the output clock. The output clock is the "clean reference" which is used to generate the jitter-free output signal timing. This output clock, therefore, has to be very good quality. It is simply easier to use one super-clean output clock (at 96k) than it is to use multiple different ones. (In other words, the upsampling to 96k is really a "side effect" of removing jitter with the ASRC - and not intended to magically "make the audio better".  This change in sample rate will occasionally result in subtle changes in sound because the DAC chip handles the filtering differently.) Our DC-1 has an even more sophisticated system which allows it to generate multiple output clocks - each based on the original sample rate frequency. For studio folks, and really critical audiophiles, this means that the ASRC in the DC-1 can give you the same improvement in jitter performance WITHOUT the slight change in sound that might occur due to the change in sample rate. 

Some of you may have noticed that I've been "accidentally" mixing "upsampling" and "oversampling" here; well, it's not an accident. Oversampling is simply a certain type of upsampling; specifically, when you upsample to an even multiple of the original it is usually called oversampling, otherwise it's just upsampling. When DAC chips do it, it's usually oversampling (because it's mathematically easier to do); when ASRC's do it, it's usually upsampling (because, the way THEY work, THAT way is easier).

My point in this whole explanation has been to get around to the idea that a DAC chip oversamples for a specific reason, as does an ASRC; beyond that, there is no reason to upsample a signal, and no reason to expect a DAC device that upsamples the signal on its way to the DAC chip to gain anything from doing so - other than something to say in the marketing literature. It's also sort of redundant to upsample the signal, then send it to the DAC chip where it will get oversampled again anyway.(That's not to say that it may not be part of something else they do, which could conceivably be useful, but, in and of itself, there's no benefit to upsampling audio.) From what I can tell, at least some vendors seem to want you to think that they are somehow improving the audio quality by upsampling - which is not really true. They are not (and cannot) "magically" make your CDs into 24/96, or 24/384, or whatever.......

To answer your question, I've never seen the term "SSRC" used.... I think it's just assumed that SRC's are synchronous unless you specify otherwise.

Aug 22, 2013 14:44:52 GMT -5 markn said:

A couple of months ago I bought a Musical Fidelity M1 DAC for a small bedroom system which uses an Airport Express as the source. It sounds fine for *most* of my music (16 bit 44.1 KHz AIFF). I wouldn't consider this a critical listening environment so I am ok with it. Of course I sure many people would tell me that most of my music doesn't lend itself to critical listening! ;-)

My "critical" listening environment is my living room which I am setting up a new system with the UMC-200 at its heart. I'm sure the DACs in the UMC-200 are going to be fine for movies but I think I want more for stereo music, where my source is an AppleTV.

I didn't know much about DACs when I purchased the M1 DAC, the reviews were all good so I thought it was a safe purchase. After doing a little more research I've found I've entered into a parallel universe where not a whole lot is making sense to me, at least right now. For every person who extols the virtues of up sampling, there is another person who calls it complete hogwash! People seem to be very passionate about this on both sides.

I am interested in the DC-1, although I wish it looked more like the rest of the Emotiva line. It looks like it's too new for there to be any reviews, but all of the other Emotiva reviews I've read have praised the components highly. I think I've discovered that the DC-1 is not an up-sampling DAC, at least not before it reaches the DAC chip. Is there anything I should be considering in a DAC, besides the war between ASRC and SSRC (Is there such a thing)?

[KeithL]

The DC-1 does not decode DSD, but most Blu-Ray players that support SACD DO offer the option of outputting the result as PCM (Oppos do).

Aug 14, 2013 11:12:47 GMT -5 brubacca said:

"I want to connect my phono pre, my networkplayer and my BD-player for SACD and stereo bluray..."

The only concern here is that you only have one Analog Input on the DC-1. You will have to route your Networkplayer and BD-Player through the digital inputs. Unless I am mistaken SACD can not be passed through the digital connections. You can get either the CD layer or possibly a downsampled signal. You would not be getting the true SACD signal by doing this.

[svenake56]

Still waiting for my DC-1 sent from Emotiva Aug 2, been at the Swedish custom since Aug 15 today it´s Aug 30. They are not in a hurry the Swedish custom. Soon i will only have 4 years and 11 month warranty left, and still haven´t listen to it. I was interested in buying two XPA1-L gen2 but probably gen 3 will appear before i get them.

[GreenKiwi]

I spend a couple hours swapping between the DC-1 and the XDA-1 (connected to the DC-1's analog input).

First, let me just say that I am once again impressed with just how good a DAC the XDA-1 is... and assuming you don't need volume control, all those used XDA-1's popping up for $150-200 are a bargain. The differences were definitely not chalk and cheese, but more nuanced.

Some listening notes.

Jennifer Warnes - Joan of Arc
Improved vocal separation & fullness
Bass - more presense and control
Improved imaging - XDA-1 seemed weirdly wide and empty


Norah Jones - Come away with me
Voice sounded "filtered" on the XDA-1

Nigel Kennedy - 4 Seasons
Very hard to tell them apart

Nirvana - Unplugged - All Apologies
Voice was more focused
Voice had more timber/grit was richer
Fuller top to bottom - XDA-1 felt slightly lean

NIN - Closer
Better bass impact and definition - details popped out more

Queen - Innuendo
XDA-1 again seemed thinner
Voice floated in a more ethreal way

Sheryl Crowe - Maybe Angels
Bass impact was improved
Vocals seemed much more focused and cleaner

Shauna Antoniuc Trio - Skylark
The voice sounded much more lifelike

Eric Clapton - Unplugged - Layla
More presence and timber
There was a better depth

Some other general notes: I absolutely love the size of the DC-1. It sits perfectly on the bookshelf, while my nCore amps are behind the speakers. I get huge WAF from this. She likes the volume knob too. Though she'd just asume the record player was in another room. I might end up mounting it on the wall, above the sub, behind the speakers. I'm still loving the headphone output from the DC-1. I gets lots of enjoyment late an night with it.

I have spent a good bit of time spinning LPs too, and the DC-1 does not inhibit the sound at all. It's all limited by the Debut III at the moment.

The speakers in their "WAF" location. I pull them out when I really sit down to listen.




The new Aluminati record weight... absolutely gorgeous


The an orginal Aluminati record weight... super cool

Hopefully the images all come through.

[klinemj]

Sounds like we have similar reactions...noticeable if small differences. For me they are important ones.

Mark

[GreenKiwi]

Yup, I'm super happy with the DC-1. I'm no longer looking for any DACs.

And it did also make me reflect on what an awesome DAC the XDA-1 is...

[thorcorps]

.....and I'm no longer looking for preamps for my main 2-channel system.....the DC-1 is doing a super job!

I really need to get around to spinning some vinyl through the analog input. Probably need to schedule a vacation from work and put that on the priority list.