Fezz Equinox

D/A PROCESSOR

- HERB REICHERT

It wasn't long ago that bottom-shelf DACs had this dry, gray, punchy, grainy sound, emerging from a weird mechanical clarity. Their sound reminded me of cheap whisky. The ones that didn't sound like $1 shots replaced the dry grain with some blurry gel. No vitality. No subtle contrasts. No nuance. No air. No atmospherics, no reverberance, and nothing I would call transparency.

Digital's rapidly evolving technology made the next wave of DACs sound strikingly clear and quiet, with some touchy-feely hints of wetness to suggest a more natural transparency. Unfortunately, most of these newfangled wet DACs sounded like distilled water tastes.

For me, digital transparency didn't become truly wet, colorful, or naturalistic until I discovered NOS R-2R converters, which made midlevel four-figure DACs, like my Denafrips and HoloAudio, sound like bits bathed in luminosity. Very relaxed. Grainless. Ektachrome.

The dCS Bartók and Lina DACs showed me a completely different form of digital sound, a type I never imagined. The DAC was delivering a musical vision that with all its mapping, filtering, and oversampling options made me feel I was participating in some form of ritual remastering.

I did not see this coming: The reality of Marianne's bleakness was never more tangible.

Using those dCS converters convinced me that, in contrast to analog masters, where someone can just play back the tape, no one really knows, or can show me, what's actually in a digital file. But that doesn't stop me from wondering, what should this CD sound like? What did the producers hear? Followed by, how can I know when a DAC is telling the truth?