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Anyone have experience with the new ELAC DDP-2?

I've been seeing tiny bits of news about the ELAC DDP-2 streaming DAC since early last year and only recently has it become available online at a few retailers.  However, there isn't a single review of it that I can find anywhere.  With previous Audio Alchemy products getting great reviews, I can assume a certain level of quality nearly enough to go out on a limb and buy it for a 30-day trial, but I wanted to see if anyone has already taken that leap of faith.

From what I've read it combines the external DC power supply of the DDP-1 internally and uses AKM DACs in a balanced setup with onboard DSD and MQA decoding, upsampling, Spotify Connect and Roon and a headphone amp.

Anyone?
rickallen81
mahler123
3,402 posts
 
Read this thread with great interest.  I currently use a Bryston DAC3 which also uses an AKM chip, I am wondering if it’s the same one.  Parenthetically I note that AKM chips seem to remain available, as I thought that a fire had destroyed the company.  I love this DAC.
   I had also bought the Bryston BDP3 streamer, which sounded great but I ultimately found unusable due to a plethora of networking issues.  Bryston is now combing these 2 components and I would warn people off their streamer in any guise.
   Companies that excel in Audio stumble frequently when getting into streaming, which is basically IT, and now it seems that ELAC has joined that club.  Why did they release this without DLNA functionality?  For those of you that like the sound but have returned it for streaming issues, I would buy the Bryston DAC and get a separate streamer from a company that knows how to network
sathtom
8 posts
 
@mahler123, "Elac Alchemy DDP-2" supports DLNA but its resolution is limited to 16Bits/44.1Khz only. 

You are right about companies like Elac Alchemy & Bryston making almost everything right in DAC part but fails to be competitive in the streamer part. May be it is better for them to realise that streaming is also important and they need to develop their own streaming app like BluOS.
signaforce's avatar
signaforce
244 posts
 

Same question on the Amped AAP-1 preamp. I can’t find any reviews, but it ticks all the boxes I am looking for in a two channel preamp… HT pass through, good analog & digital, analog bypass, remote, small form factor, attractive. 
 

Any experience with it or Amped?

wturkey's avatar
wturkey
808 posts
 

Regarding the Elac Alchemy DDP-2, I recently acquired one on the used market. I can only speak to its dac capabilities as that is its purpose in this system. The sound via the audio alchemy i2s standard via a Stello CDT100 was underwhelming. Not sure if it’s a transport issue or the dac. However, via the same transport with an aes/ebu the sound is phenomenal. To echo what a previous poster, personally I cannot distinguish much difference via the filters. Overall it is a good deal as a standalone dac.

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