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dCS Puccini Clock

I had yesterday the oportunity to hear for first time the Puccini clock.

I must admit that I was a little sceptical. The system consisted of:

Howland preamp HP-200 SE
Howland amp RADIA SE
Avalon Indra
Transparent power cleaner / station ?
I can't tell which cables

Well the effect is quite amazing and you can easily recognize it in a blind hearing. If I have to describe it I would say, you become aware of the hall / the space in which the recording has been done. The difference is very noticeable when you switch the clock off, suddenly the music sounds dryer, shorter and the space all around the whole music desapears.

I heard:
Luiz Bonfa plays and sing Bossa Nova (Verve)
Bruckner 4th by Jaap van Zweden (bad SACD & interpretation)
Bruckner 4th by Günter Wand (the last recording)
Ports of Call by Eiji Oue (Ref. Rec. bravo Prof. Johnson you are a great sound engeneer!)

One of these days I will take it home and have a test on my system ... and will make some blind hearing with my wife ;-)

I will report then about the experience.
clavil
elberoth2's avatar
elberoth2
1,223 posts
 
Elgar,

Upgrading is a tricky route - pls remember that the final outcome is always unknown, and it is always very difficoult (if possible at all) to recover the money spent on upgrades.
elgar
12 posts
 
Hello Elberoth2,
all my experiance till today, are very positive. The two Vintage Sony Esprits which are modified, have nothing to do with the basic items and are sounding outstanding good now. But there have been hundreds of parts changed to better ones, cause they are older and therefore still build in a traditional way with no ICs at all. I would never sell the Sonys, cause they are my Hifi dreams when i was young. The same is with Wadia and DCS gear. Looking for their digital equipement from the beginning i never heard any bad sounding product of them.
From my point of view, one never can fail buying any Wadia or DCS stuff.
There may be strong competitors, but all of them only copy the lot of ideas coming from Wadia in the past, or in younger times also from DCS.
They are going the own way and don´t look at the others.
For that reason, they are at least obove all others for me, even their might be products out in the world that sound better, but till now i don´t know one !

Kind regards

Joe
blackstonejd
153 posts
 
Elgar, if you have the stack without firewire, that means that you aren't upsampling all the way to DSD? I would think Pagannini would be a considerable upgrade just by adding the DSD functionality.
chadeffect
586 posts
 
Elgar,

BlackstonedeJd is right, If you are not using the firewire output from the transport you are only getting a small part of the DCS sound. The upsampling to DSD is far better than without. The digital output when compared with the firewire sounds less refined and not as sweet or extended in the highs.

The Scarlatti is a beast and a very fine player. In comparison with the Elgar/veron/La scarla it has more depth and width, with a warmer and sweeter presentation. It is not an CD8 which adds its own nice flavour to the prceedings. It steps very slightly into that direction when compared with the elgar dac etc, but is still on the neutral/cool side of warm. Its very heard to beat the Scarlatti although I have heard complaints from some people about it. It just has no sugar coating. Its real. I prefer this in a source myself. Let the music do the talking not the hifi. I have always found that I get bored of a systems color after a while, even if its nice to begin with.
elgar
12 posts
 
Hello

and thanks. I will ask DCS directly, what are the costs of Firewire-upgrade for Purcell and Elgar Plus.
Till now i didn´t think that this is a big improvement.A german review from "Image Hifi (6/2001)" testing the Delius/Purcell says, that there where only small differences regarding brightess/speed and less dynamic and rythm. "The last kick is missing when the system is playing in 24/176,4 instead DSD."
Okay seems to be a little bit more.

Kind regards

Joe
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