Higher End DACs

There are a number of reasons why and how DCS is separating itself from other companies in the high end of the business. Beside the build quality, the architecture of the latest generation (Bartok, Rossini and Vivaldi) enables the company to continuously update and improve the upsampling and signal processing. In essence you are buying world class hardware that is a future proof-ed through continuous upgrades.

i think the direction of the top level dacs is bit perfect, not up-sampling. bit perfect to my ears (with my MSB) seems to optimize the native recording format more and get closer to heart of the music and sound less processed (less digital). with lower noise dac chips the need to push the sample rate to higher rates to escape the noise is no longer a dominant design parameter. the more simple conversion allowed by bit perfect translates into higher musicality.

this is not to say that dCS dacs are not excellent performers. execution of design is still very significant.....and dCS excels at that. but at the end of the day the highest executed bit perfect dacs come out on top to my ears. and going forward advances will double down on that direction.

YMMV, just my 2 cents, and all that stuff.

Just recently I wanted to upgrade from my very nice sounding (for the price) Naim Nova to something better, i had a home demo of the DCS Bartok, whilst a decent improvement over the Nova and I was slightly tempted, however it was in my view not worth the two and a half times price difference over the Nova, couple of weeks later on a chance visit to my local dealer i saw the T+A SDV 3100 HV reference streamer dac and pre amp on display and it was also on sale ex demo at a fantastic price point, promptly took it home for a listen, straight away I knew I had something special, absolutely trounced the Bartok, but then it's twice the price new, very happy I made that trip to my local dealer that day.
Hope you find what you are looking for.

@rgmd11
SDV is a great DAC. But extremely expensive. Nothing against T+A, as I own PA 3100 HV Integrated amp.

I will stick with my MSB Discrete 

I’ve said this before but by the time the signal arrives at the DAC it’s too late. The damage to the audio signal is done as soon as the laser in the transport strikes the spiral data stream on the metal layer. And there’s almost nothing you can do about it. There’s no recovery. So, I don’t get the whole thing with super-expensive DACs at all. GIGO. 🤗

@mikelavigne 
You have an amazing system, and in principle, I agree with you.

The shift from upsampling to bit perfect has been enabled by the explosion in high res recordings.  Clearly, the need and benefits of upsampling decrease as recording resolution increases.

Thank you for your thoughtful insight.