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)
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Awesome! I hear Charles1Dad rave about the RS2T CD Transport quite often and from what I've read from reviewers, it is quite a nice transport. From what I understand, it currently is quite difficult to get one at this time though. So, right now I'm looking at one of the Jay's Audio transports or maybe the CEC TL-2N dual belt drive transport. I'm just in the very beginning stages right now, so I am remaining very open to ideas Best wishes, Don |
@no_regrets There have been several here who’ve had problems with the Pro-Ject transport, and when there’s an excellent option from Jay’s I see no reason to deal with that. The new TEAC transport has gotten excellent reviews as well but no idea of its reliability. Personally I’d go with Jay’s no question. Hope this helps. |
Hello and thank you for your post! Can you or maybe others from this fine community help me understand something, as like I had mentioned, I am still trying to learn and understand the digital side of things? I'm still trying to understand what the Aero Dac can and cannot accept as far as digital signals and what that actually means to me when searching for a possible new and upgraded transport to use. So a thought was to find a CD/SACD all in one unit to use as the transport into the Aero via coax connections. I wasn't sure if the Aero would be able to maximize the SACD sound quality though, so I wrote LTA about my question and they responded saying... "The Aero can accept PCM signals from a transport up to 24/192k but cannot decode SACD or DSD. I'm not sure most transports will output SACD anyway." So, I'm thinking if I bought an all in one box CD/SACD player I could utilize its internal SACD dac via the analog outputs directly into my line stage and then just output the redbook signal via coax into the Aero. Hopefully thinking the all in one CD/SACD player would be a better transport than just using my vintage Rotel 955AX and also gaining SACD capability, albeit having to use it's internal dac for that medium. The other thing that I noticed is that with both the Jay's Audio CDT3 MK3 and also with the CEC TL-2N is that on their back panel they have a switch at can upsample redbook cd to 176.4khz (and via remote on the Jay's Audio CDT2 MK3). So, I am wondering if because the Aero Dac can accept up to 24/192khz would that make my normal redbook cd's sound better than just having a transport that only output 44khz? And if so, would I be better off getting either one of the Jay's or CEC truly dedicated transports and forgetting all about SACD as I would have to start that collection from scratch? Any thoughts? Thank you for sharing! Best wishes, Don |
I just bought the Teac VRDS 701t Transport and it is a great machine. I’m using it with a LAB 12 DAC 1 Reference and it is a great sounding combo. Herb Reichert used the LTA with the 701t and here’s the link https://www.stereophile.com/content/gramophone-dreams-88-teac-vrds-701t-cd-transport
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