Running DCS Vivladi DIRECT?

@folkfreak Thanks for taking the time and effort to do the comparison. Your findings are helpful and add to the discussion. A great read also!

I was wondering how your comparison was going (this very morning) while reading Positive Feedback’s ’revisit’ of the Prism Sound Callia DAC. Highlighting some takeaways here, by the author Larry Cox, who compares the Callia Direct vs via a Pass Labs XP-12.

[Note: my focus is around the ’notional’ and not the DAC itself]

"Connecting the Callia to Pass Labs XP-12 transformed the sound....The Callia Pass Labs XP-12 combination added a measure of warmth with an increased humanity being presented....with a fuller bodied preamp, like Pass Labs’ XP-12, the Callia transforms into a richer, fuller bodied DAC that is delightful."

Article here: https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/prism-sound-callia-2/

My own experience finds that adding an active preamp injects body and richness and a ’completeness’ to the music that brings it closer to what I experience with music in person. Larry sums this up as "warmth not added but ’realized’."

"Warmth not added but realized"
Terrific cursory summation David, spot on. I heard 2 hours of live unamplified piano 1 Week ago at a Steinway piano gallery recital. Wow, full bodied, rich, dense tone and harmonics, just beautiful! Much warmth and emotion. If active preamplifiers get one "closer" to this realism they’re doing something right regardless of what the measurements say. Sometimes you just have to get out and hear the real thing. I experience the same when I visit local jazz clubs.Warmth, body, dynamics and rich tones dominate these live settings.
Charles

Just to add to this discussion on space and warmth. I cited the example of the Nancy Harms track and the reverb. Via the direct connection it was clearly artificial reverb in a halo around the voice. The striking double bass was clear and direct but with no sense of body or presence in space.

However via the preamp the bass was palpably in its own space and had scale and heft, almost three dimensional, and the reverb on the vocal dropped back behind in space.

So ok maybe this was all studio trickery but via the preamp it sounded more like a group playing together in one space while direct it was just like a bunch of tracks on a mixer

Of course for recordings that were more honest like the jazz trio Bach the spatial cues and scale were all present via the preamp but much less distinct and appreciable in the direct connection

@folkfreak

Thank you so much for such a well written and understandable post on your listening experience. The Ref40 is one heck of a preamp for sure. My past experience with this sort of comparison yielded the exact same results although I never summarized it as wonderfully as you have here.

Also, thanks for the music references! Listening to Stacey Kent right now and love it.

Also like Nancy Harms.  I am really getting into Americana music since  moving to the Nashville area. Part of this includes folk.  Love for you to list some folk artists I should listen to.