Accustic Arts Drive I Mk 2 and DAC I Mk IV

March 18th, 2008 -- by Alan Sircom
Source: HiFi+

In particular, there’s an absence of ‘ringing’ to the sound that only manifests itself when you go back to regular CD playing. Suddenly, after hearing it through the Accustic duo, CD sounds shiny and as if it’s played through a ring modulator (the thing that gave the daleks their voice, albeit not to anything like that extent). This pairing strips back the brightness of digital without sounding dull in the process. There are a few players that do this, but often at the expense of some bottom end energy. This one manages to keep the integrity of the sound intact right across the frequency range, delivering a potent mix.

Of course, this description makes the AA duo sound a bit sterile. Not a bit of it. These two play with fire and energy when the disc demands it, grace and subtlety when it needs those elements and a lot of balls when spanking through Led Zep.

Truth is, we put a range of discs down the Accustic chain – everything from old ‘leccy noodling from early Kraftwerk to the most mellow slice of Wes Montgomery guitar its possible to hear without falling into a coma and everything in between. Nothing foxed this pair, every piece of music fell into place beautifully, and kept coming back for more.

As suggested in the review of the Bryston CD player in the last issue, most high-end CD players seem to fall into either the accurate-but-dull or the entertainingbut- wrong camps. This is one of the very few exceptions. Accuracy and entertainment can be bed-fellows, but not very often it seems. The Accustic duo manages to combine the precision and exactness of the most accurate players with the sheer sense of musical fun of some of the more beat oriented designs. No, it will not out-resolve a Resolution Audio or out-pace a Naim, and neither will it provide that seemingly endless musicality of a Wadia or Zanden. But it gets close to all these things.

Slightly garish looks aside, there’s not much to find fault in the Accustic duo. It does what all good players try to do… get out of the way of the music. Which makes it perform remarkably well in a wide variety of systems and with all kinds of music. You could easily plonk the Accustic Arts Drive and DAC down at the head of a soft, comfortable valve system or a tight, upbeat, smallspeaker, solid-state system and the result would be the same… you get to bypass any encroachment on the sound by the digital stages. In fact, arguably the only real downside to the duo is their integrity. It’s not the sort of performance that lends itself to two-minute snap decisions. Instead, it’s the slow build, as it dawns on you that this combo is playing the long game and those more immediate-sounding players begin to sound peaky and wrong. Of the two, the DAC is always going to appear the more exciting product, because of that superhigh sample rate and word length.

It shouldn’t; the two both offer improvements over the norm and in combination, they are an unstoppable force, requiring a large cash injection to better the sound. It’ll take a few days to burn into your psyche, but the Accustic Arts Drive I Mk 2 and DAC I Mk IV turn in a memorable performance.

Comments

carlofromitaly (not verified) -- Mon, 04/26/2010 - 17:44

I have just carried out a listening test of the Accustic Arts DAC1 Mk4

Test conditions

The AA DAC1 Mk4 was extensively tested against an Audio Research DAC3 MkII equipped with Philips Miniwatt tubes; digital sources were a CD Transport TEAC P-30 and several FLAC files 16bit/44KHz stored in the hard disk of an HP Compaq nc8430 notebook equipped with Foobar2000 software and connected to the DAC via M2Tech-Hiface device and RCA/SPDIF Van Den Hul M.C. DigiCoupler 75 Ohm cable. A few tests were conducted comparing digital sound to vinyl.

Test Rig

Acoustic Signature Analog One MkII turntable
SME V tonearm + Van Den Hul Grasshopper III CHA MC pickup
Audio Research PH-7 pre phono
Audio Tekne TFM 8904 PCS integrated amplifier
Modified Klipschorn speakers equipped with ALK Trachorn 400 on K55 transducer + Beyma CP-25 horn tweeter and ALK Engineering AP12-AK3 + ES5800 crossover
Audio Tekne signal and power wiring

Software

Clayton Brothers – Back in the swing of things (CD and files FLAC 16/44)
Carol Kidd – Debut (CD and files FLAC 16/44)
Patricia Barber – Modern Cool (CD and files FLAC 16/44)
Patricia Barber – A forthnight in France (CD and vinyl LP)
Hugh Masekela – Hope (CD and vinyl LP)
Norah Jones – Come away with me (CD and vinyl LP)
Bill Evans Trio – I will say goodbye (CD and vinyl LP)
Yamamoto Tsuyoshi trio - Midnight Sugar (CD and vinyl LP)
Chet Baker – Chet (CD and vinyl LP)
Eric Clapton – Unplugged (CD and vinyl LP)

How it sounds

The AA DAC sounds much better than the ARC DAC3 as expected; it provides a transparent and rich sound while it maintanis the same sort of timber as the ARC. The soundstage is clearly more focused, wider and deeper, the holografic image is more realistic and there is more information in the background (echoes, ambience, instrument sound tail..). Notwithstanding its ability to read the smallest nuances, the AA DAC provides a pleasant sound without any sense of harshness or granulosity.

Nevertheless, you can still feel that sort of CD feeling as the music comes out a little bit flattened and somehow missing some bits, just to confirm the limitations of such support. Switching to the FLAC files there is an obvious difference in quality especially when using the AA DAC thanks to its stronger resolving power.

As the ARC DAC3 only accepts redbook sampling rates I only used 16/44 files however could clearly notice some improvements on the high frequency spectrum, on the amount of information and generally speaking, on the overall musical reproduction now closer to the real thing. This improvement is much more evident for the AA DAC. No doubts that the future of hi-end is in the PC music.

At this point I would like to mention the listening test I did comparing CD to vinyl. Two different worlds I’m afraid. The rithm, the musicality and the realism of a soundstage produced by a good vinyl record are still out of rich. However I mus say that when I threw some high resolution files (24/96 and 24/192 FLAC files) into the AA DAC, the results were extraordinary. Unfortunately I didn’t have CD or vinyl copies of such files to compare with, but I am safe to assess that these results come very close to best vinyl printed from digital masters altough I’m still reluctanto to assess the same in case of vinyl printed from analog masters.

Conclusion

To my opinion the AA is a very good DAC with top class performance and solid build but with a couple of small bugs, at least in my rig: the level of output signal is slightly low for my amplifier, the soudstage is laid back although deep and wide and finally, the music misses just a bit of ‘verve’ at least for my taste