Verity Audio Montsalvat DAC/PRE

D/A PROCESSOR

- JOHN ATKINSON

I was aware that Canadian company Verity Audio, founded in 1995, made loudspeakers, like the Sarastro II that Fred Kaplan reviewed in May 2009.1 But when Jason Victor Serinus and I attended the 2018 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, we were both impressed by the sound of an all-Verity system that featured Verity’s Monsalvat AMP-60 power amplifier. Jason Victor Serinus favorably reviewed the AMP-60 in May 2019;2 I didn’t have to be asked twice, therefore, if I wanted to review Verity’s Montsalvat DAC/PRE (see later).

The DAC/PRE

The DAC/PRE, priced at $25,000, is an example of an increasingly popular product genre: a D/A processor that incorporates a volume control to allow a system’s preamplifier to be dispensed with. Although Verity refers to the DAC/ PRE as a “DAC/Preamplifier,” it doesn’t have analog inputs. (The $36,000 Montsalvat PRE-2 does have analog inputs and a DAC.)