dCS Puccini Clock

Blackstonejd,

I have to agree with you. I have wrongly thought, that the new "upsampling from digital inputs feature" requires additional hardware updates.

Since it is only a case of software update, I think this is unfair.

Well I only know about from this thread. My reading of it above was that it is enabled through firmware. "License" means software, in my mind. Unit specific license means software.

When I first heard about Puccinni/Paganini, the very first thing that came to mind was "but does it upsample external sources?" I actually commented in another thread, quite a while ago, that the whole Paganini/Puccinni line was decidedly music server unfriendly because of the way the upsampler is built into the transport. This was, in my mind, an obvious and (probably an intentional) omission on the part of dCS. Are you telling me that the hardware exists for upsampling of external sources but they have only recently developed the firmware for that? I think not. Most likely they saw/see servers as a threat to their high-end cd transport business and intentionally omitted this functionality. It gives their transports a built in performance advantage. It also allows them to sell a redundant (but possibly improved) upsampler in their Scarlatti line.

I do not agree with your theory.

If dCS was "affraid" of their CD bussines, why would they offer the optional upsampling from external digital inputs feature at the first place ?

The Scarlatti upsampler on the other hand, looks to me to be an afterthought. Remember, that the Scarlatti range was first introduced back in 2005, long before PC-Audio took off, so introducing the external upsampler was the only way to offer the benefits of upsampling to the PC-Audio users.

This is the first I have heard about this. I am not sure, but I believe the DSD license may have a part to play in the price.

There have been many people trying to block the ability to send hi rez digital outputs to external boxes in domestic equipment due to pirating. I am not saying that DCS are correct to charge for the upgrade, but may have a part to play and could be down to Sony and copyright law.

DCS are a great little company and I have both old and new DCS stacks. The Scarlatti is one of the finest digital playback systems I have ever heard. The Elgar plus/verona/ la scarla is no slouch either.

It is expensive, and there is no getting away from that, but I think it is more to do with the way the Hi fi distribution works with huge mark ups and not so much down to the cost of their manufacturing overheads.

It maybe worth a call to them. I have only ever had 1st class service from them.

for europeans the dCS Puccini plays more or less in the same price category than Nagra, M.Levinson or Audio Research.

is it better to go with an Audio Research like the Ref 7 which has already been replaced by the Ref 8 after only a few years or with the Puccini which should (we hope) have a longer cyclus of life thank to the possibility of being updated by a new software?

... and by the way, sounding better than the Ref7 ...