Aqua hifi La Voce s3.....anyone audition it yet?

The La Scala is a unique beast in the Aqua line up. It is the only one of their three dacs to use tubes in the output stage.

The La Scala does throw a bigger soundstage than the La Voice series and the midrange is a bit warmer and fuller. If someone is looking for a very analog like presentation the La Scala is the better dac.

With that being said the La Voice Mk III reperesents the newer more balanced Aqua sound. 

The La Voice hits a beautiful balance of having a touch of midrange warmth, a very big sound stage and a very organic flowing presentation.

THe newer MK III versions of the La Voice helps rebalance the presentation from being overaly warm and masking a bit of detail.

One of the strongest endorsements we can give is the fact that Aqua is a product you can purchase one time and be done. 

There are very few manufacturers that build a product like Aqua does, most dacs are built on one to three boards, usually a power supply, a main board and a streaming board or digital input board. to upgrade you usually have to replace the main board or trade in to the newer platform.

Open up an Aqua dac and you will usually see, 8-12 separate boards every part of the dac is compartmenanized into a discrete board, power supply, analog board, digital processing, filtering, digital input etc.

We know of very few companies which offer continuous and affordable upgrades to their platforms via both FPGA and hardware upgrades.

So if you prefer a very organic dac with good resolution, superb build qualityand an ever morphing upgradable design, look to Aqua to be a once for lifetime digital purchase.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Aqua Hifi dealers

Have an S2 here, as you know, and will compare to the $1100 MHDT Orchid. That will be interesting. If the S2 is warmer and more tolerant of poor recordings vs the S3, then it might be the better dac to some. I like resolution to a point. I think too much detail kills enjoyment and musicality in many pieces of high end gear today.

I also see the $2 caps on the output of the S2 and am confident replacing these with some Duelund or Miflex copper foil caps for $100-$400 will get you more of everything including resolution and inner detail.....without becoming too detailed. These caps pass the full signal to the outputs and play a huge role sonically.  This is NOT a place to skimp. No, this is a place to be extravagant! This may well be the best upgrade one could do for the money on this unit.

$1700 is a lot of money to upgrade to the S3. Yes it’s great you can do it, but it comes at a pretty high cost.

@grannyring

When will you be comparing the 2 DACs, and will you provide your impressions back on this thread, or create another?
Will you be doing the cap swap, and if so before or after you compare the 2 DACs?
Thanks

I will compare before cap upgrade and report back! 

Grannyring most people want increased resolution while still keeping a degree of musicality.

The fact that you are comparing the La Voice to the MDT is kind of silly these are two very different dacs.

The build quality of the MDT is comunsurate with its much lower price point. The Aqua S2 to S3 upgrade is hardly over priced as many of the boards are changed and you are essentially rebuilding the product to move from S2 to S3.

The very fact that you can take an older dac the S2 and convert it to the lastest from the company means that a prospective buyer can get off the dac merry go round which is necessasitated by companies making non upgradable platforms.

So yes the Aqua dac is not a cheapier Chinese made non upgradable dac and you are paying for the dac’s superior construction and modularity, there is a strong likelyhood that the Aqua Dac owner has kept the same dac for many years or will keep the dac fro many years, as the dac can always be made current, the MDT will be relegated to the dust bin of history as a newer dac of the month from China will continue to gain users looking for a good sounding product at a much lower price point.

As per swapping a $100 to $400 dollar cap nobody is using a $400 cost cap in a $4k dac, you won’t find that cost cap in a $7k dac either, the reason is simple economics a $4kish dac must cost close to $1,000.00 to manufacturer, with any supply chain each leg of the chain adds cost and increases the final price to the consumer.

Most companies today believe in having a dealer base to enable prospective customers to be able to demo and receive proper service, this is much harder for a non USA based company hence the tried and trued dealer to consumer model works well and costs of manufactuer have to be balanced, the other thing is just because you put in a really expensive cap doesn’t necessarily mean you will get the benefit of a radically much more expensive part in that circuit.

We would agree with you that changing that one cap may make a huge difference we are just saying that it isn’t guaranteed.

Christian Angnelli of Aqua is a very talented engineer if you look at their parts specified they are using some very trick parts allready.

Just food for thought.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Aqua Hifi dealers