Review on Linear Tube Audio Aero DAC
Hey Gon members,
I just submitted to Stereo Times my review on the new ,and the first, DAC that Linear Tube Audio has just released. For right now I would strongly suggest anyone in the market for a stand alone DAC, regardless of price, consider the Aero. Its build quality, R2R chip set, power supply, internal part selection and the tube based ZOTL analog conversion section leads to one of the most musical and analog type presentations I have heard in the last ten years. Not inexpensive at $3,950, but competes with my reference which sells for $10,000 more. You get a 14 day home . trial. So far no one has returned the Aero after hearing in their system. I go into many details about the Aero in my review, but wanted to give a heads-up for anyone considering a DAC purchase. I believe the Aero is a break through product based on price vs. performance. I'll let you know when the review goes up. Hopefully in the next ten days.
Terajay (Terry London)
The LTA Aero arrived today. Unfortunately, the Merason DAC 1 MkII has been held up in customs only two hours from me for a week now. The LTA Aero was extremely well-packaged and super easy to set up. It sounds good right out of the gate. Very musical and in no way irritating. I will give it some time before making more specific observations. |
Stereophile review by HR was very positive too however Atkinson tested it and had issues wherein
..."The Linear Tube Audio Aero's measured performance is paradoxical. As I pointed out in my Richard Heyser Memorial lecture at the 131st Audio Engineering Society Convention in 2011, people tend to like the sound of nonoversampling DACs that dispense with the usual reconstruction filter, perhaps due to their accurate time-domain behavior. But the price paid for this benefit is the presence of a large number of aliased products in the audioband with high-level, high-frequency audio data. And although the Aero's distortion signature is dominated by the subjectively benign second harmonic, this probably won't be of concern, at least from the balanced outputs. I was puzzled by the fact that this harmonic was so much higher from the unbalanced outputs, though this discrepancy is mentioned in the Aero's specifications.—John Atkinson |
Thanks for the heads up @wig The LTA Aero has been burning in for a couple of days and, after a frustrating week of dealing with customs, the Merason is scheduled to be delivered this afternoon. By running the USB output from my Sonore Signature Rendu SE Optical into a Singxer DDC, I have a variety of outputs I can simultaneously use from the DDC to feed the DACs I am comparing, so it will be easy to try the Merason with AES/EBU. |
