People and Place: A review of SW1X DAC

Review of SW1X Level Two Signature DAC:

The best thing to do before reading this is to familiarize yourself with SW1X. Dr. Slawa Roschkow has provided what has to be the most comprehensive website on a DAC company ever. There are numerous articles on a host of topics that address his philosophy and give you a look into how he designs his products. This is the website: http://sw1xad.co.uk

At the heart of his DAC lineup is the approach of offering 11 levels of DACs in ascending performance grades and prices. The one being reviewed here is the level two, signature version. My DAC, then, falls sort of below mid-way through the range.

The core of his DAC technology is NOS (non-oversampling) and R2R (so-called ladder DACs). I won’t address any of that stuff since I don’t really understand it. I will add however that apparently combining R2R and NOS is a bit of a challenge since most R2R DACs oversample to make them work. It, obviously, is not impossible to pull off, since SW1X and others have done it, but there is a cost involved. I’d best refer you to the technology section on the website for clarification on that.

My SW1X DAC is something like my 10th DAC if you count CD players. I didn’t step into the big-leagues (for me) price-wise until my Yggdrasil DAC (which is R2R plus digital upsampling filtering). Aside from the Yggy, there are two other noteworthy DACs I’ve had. One is a Harmon Kardon CD player from the late 80s or early 90s that touted the new “Bit-Stream” technology, which pretty much took over the DAC world. The other is the Altmann Attraction battery operated DAC. Note that the Altmann is an R2R NOS DAC also. On that note, the DAC that succeeded the battery operated Altmann was the cheapest $99 Schiit Modi (before there was an upgrade option). I didn’t perceive any significant fall-off with that switch. That should tell you something.

I, like many, migrated from CD players to direct-out-to DAC from a computer via USB. The SW1X DACs don’t incorporate SPDIF to USB conversion hardware. This means you will need an outboard unit to perform that function if you lean toward USB. I am using the pedestrian Schiit Eitr for that job. It works fine. I have nothing to compare it with. I may at some point spring for SW1X’s own converter.

My overall impression of my new DAC is as follows: All my previous DACs sounded pretty much the same, although they all (mostly) continued to get better. Enter the SW1X. What happened was not “just better” - I am used to better. What happened was - this is different. I jumped off of the railroad tracks I have been on for 30 plus years and am now in a new world.

Words are pretty lame when it comes to talking about what I’m hearing. I scoured a handful of DAC reviews here and there and these are the sorts of descriptions you’ll get: organic; temporal coherence; drive; illumination; presence; tone density; air; space; extension; holo-graphic; accurate; relaxing; relaxed. These are endless, it seems. There are also numerous words or phrases that describe the negative side as well. Words like: glare; strident; compressed; fatigue;

Well, this SW1X DAC of mine has all those positives and none of the negatives. One negative descriptor I never actually ran into previously was the criticism that DACs can sound paper-thin. This criticism was even being levied against sound stages that had a decent 3D sound stage. That seemed contradictory or paradoxical to me. I had to admit that I hadn’t encountered that particular phenomenon before. Or at least wasn’t aware of it. All those other negatives? Sure. I’d never been able to escape the full list of negatives. But paper-thin? That was a new one.

It wasn’t until I heard my SW1X that I understood. Paper-thin in audio means that the 3D soundstage is just like a painting that does the third dimension, depth, really well. But it is still closer to an illusion than the real thing. This is an analogy. It’s probably more a matter of the degree to which the DAC is retaining the realism that was originally recorded. There is something going on in SW1X design and implementation that is just right.

My music background is primarily in symphonic performance. Consequently, that’s what I listen to a lot of the time. Opera especially. Operas have a lot going on. Lots of people. Upwards of 200. I’ve never had a DAC that could keep up. I knew it. I lived with it. I had to deal with fire-hose amounts of water pressure being delivered through a garden hose. What all my previous DACs did to that music was sad. You could tell it was supposed to be loud but what you got was closer to chaos than music. What I didn’t realize is what might be possible. I had no idea faithful big scale reproduction existed; or what it sounded like. No idea. With this DAC I now have, there has not been a single moment where the music has been lost; not a moment when it has become noise.

You can imagine, then, what this means for music that is not big like an opera or similarly large works. Take choral music for example. I can’t put into words how spectacular choral presentations are. All I can say is how much of a thrill it is to be able to hear not just Bach, for one, but to hear how much joy the singers have singing it. I seem to get an insight into the personalities of the singers. Pretty weird.

Finally, we have jazz - which is an even smaller group of people. Let’s just say here too things are very sweet. However, with this kind of honest exposure, you might find the artists aren’t as good as you once thought. That happened with Diana Krall. Her weaknesses as a singer got exposed with this DAC. On the flip side, Stacey Kent’s genius becomes even more obvious with the SW1X.

Where do I go from here? Can I go up? I could. After all, I’m slightly below the middle of the range. SW1X has a remarkable trade-in policy. I can get full value for my current DAC by trading it in for something higher up. Check it out.