Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Hey all. I have a pending review on Enjoy The Music for the new Lampizator Golden Gate 2. I’ll post when it’s ready to be published. 

I have also added a VPI HW40 turntable with Lyra Atlas cartridge to my system with a set of Crystal Cable CrystalConnect Reference Diamond phono cables and ground. I’m still deciding on a phono stage. My friend Merrill of Merrill Audio’s Jens phono stage is world class, but I’m waiting for his next generation Element Line phono stage next year. I like the Chord Symphonic a lot (more then the Pass 15) but I’m considering a few others (Allnic H5000DHT, Manley Steelhead RC and ModWright ph150). I went LP shopping the other day. I was mesmerized by how fun and satisfying actually buying and holding solid medium was. I haven’t bought a CD in over a decade and even then it was primarily to rip it right into my computer. While alphabetizing my LP’s, I was giddy like a school girl and couldn’t wait to listen. There is unquestionably something special about physically flipping through your music and putting an LP on the table
and that moment of anticipation as you drop the needle. 

I’m knee deep in reviews for Enjoy The Music and Absolute Sound. But enjoying the process. I’m blown away by the quality of affordable equipment these days. 

I still need to write up my visit to VPI. And I am WAY behind on doing a new video for my YouTube channel. 

Also, does anyone know a reliable service that I could bring/send my CD’s to so they can rip them for me into WAV files? I don’t have the time to rip 600 CD’s. 

Hello Doc, long time no talkie.

A couple of points we now have a Innous Statement on display and it is magical sounding.

We are also waiting on a T+A HV 3100 SDV which may be the first digital front end to exceed the Light Harmonic.

https://www.ta-hifi.de/en/audiosystems/hv-series/sd-3100-reference-streaming-dac-2/


The SDV 3100 is a technlogical tour de force in terms of digital engineering and uses all proprietary engineering including the world’s first native USB input board that can handle DSD 1024 or double rate DSD 512 which is the highest sampling freqency ever offered in a dac that can handle this frequency without using an internal upsampler.

You can choose if you want to listen to PCM or DSD files rather than having the Dac convert one to another.

What makes this dac special is a number of features:

1: NO XMOS USB board, the XMOS USB boards can not natively handle the highest rate USB signal for DSD 1024, so T+A built their own.

2: In house DSD decoding engine which can hadle DSD 1024

3: In house PCM decoding engine which can decode PCM 768k

4: Complete galvanic isolation of the digital input stage to the output stage, as well as complete isolation of the digtial and analog stages of the dac, including dual power cords separating the two stages from cross contamination.

5: Native streaming client

6: Apt X Blu tooth

7: Optional Analog preamplifier stage based on the $18k T+A P 3000 HV preamplifier a $2,500.00 option

8: Pure Class A headphone stage.

9: HDMI input and outputs for connection to a video system or video sources.

10: All aluminum chassis construction

Pretty cool eh?

With the Memory Player or The Baetis Reference running HQ player you can take a native digital stream and upconvert to DSD 1024 which should be very special.

Would you be interested in testing one if we do indeed get one?

Other cool new toys the Critical Mass Centerstage footers which are mind bogglingly effective.

Love to catch up it has been awhile.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Light Harmonic Davinci, T+A and Critical Mass dealers

mattnshilp and ctsooner -
Regarding ripping to WAV:
Seems you both have Laufer Teknik Memory Players. Do you guys plan on ripping to WAVE64, or just regular WAV?

I have a Memory Player installed with JRiver and I ripped some cd's to WAVE 64, as Sam included some WAVE64 files on my unit and I really liked how they sounded, compared to the same albums I have on cd and WAV.

However, album tracks that were ripped from cd's ended up being alphabetized instead of being put in track order. And then when I transferred my library - over 1000 cd's on a portable hard drive - all those albums ended up being alphabetized too. Sam has not been helpful on this issue - crickets chirping, no response to my requests for help.

I am wondering if you guys have experienced the same problem with ripping to WAVE64 and JRiver?

I switched to Roon and problem solved, but had to spend the bucks for a subscription, as well as dealing with the frustration of trying to get Sam to respond. Anyways, looking for additional insight into the problem.

Love how my Memory Player sounds in my system and I plan on keeping it. It's been a huge upgrade over my modified Mac Mini. It's a great sounding product which unfortunately is in need of better customer service support.

Thank you Matt for this thread!

By the way, Tidal sounds really good when played through the Memory Player and Roon. You might want to consider saving the headache of ripping your cd collection and just add the albums into your collection using Tidal and Roon. Just a thought to consider.

Thanks for sharing.  I think mine is WAV64.  It was downloaded by Sam, so I'm not sure.  I also don't use Roon yet, but want to down the line. I know he's be swamped with a lot of business stuff as well as some personal stuff.  Not an excuse, but his business is at the point where he may need to grow and add help.  I can't adn won't speak for him, but I know he's dealing with a lot.  

I agree that it's the best server I've ever heard and I've heard a ton of them in the upper price ranges.  I know that the DAC he built into mine is insanely good.  I don't think he's going to be doing many of these DAC's if any going forward, but it competes with anything I've heard under 25k (recently auditioned the brand new Rossini and matching clock.  He's installing some new components, including StealthCaps, so I'm excited to get it back and burned in.