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Review: Accustic Arts DAC1-MK4 DA converter

Category: Digital

I had auditioned many very good sounding DACS, this history can be reviewed on my thread, Reference DACS: An overall perspective, before finally settling on the Accustic Arts DAC1-MK3 for the last year in my system.

I then became aware recently that the designers of Accustic Arts had been working on for the last year a totally new DAC that would be the first to use an upsampling rate of 66/1536! Accustic Arts is a German company and you can see the craftsmanship in the build quality of the MK4. My MK3 was very much a reference piece for me, it's performance was terrific across the board, as I shared when I posted a review here on the GON last year. However, I was quite curious/excited to find out what this totally new design would offer in comparsion to its older sibling in the Accustic Arts stable.

I prefer not to spend alot of time sharing details regarding the technical aspects of the piece I'm reviewing because you can go to the manufacturer's
website and gather those aspects on your own. As I stated above, the quality of the German engineering can easily be seen in the visual beauty of the MK4.

On to the most important part of any review, what was the sonic performance of the piece being auditioned. So here it is.

1) The MK4 developed the largest soundstage I have ever heard in my system. It also offered wonderful natural layering on this "stage" with air around each individual player. Not a "HIFI" perspective, but a very three dimensional portrayal of the players in real space.

2) Timbres are very important to me because I mostly listen to acoustic Jazz. The MK4 offered more lifelike timbres then the MK3, which was pretty damn good at this in its own right.

3) The top end offered more "air" and even greater details that allowed my MG-20's ribbon tweeter's to really sing.

4) Microdynamics and decay trails were more easily heard because of the total transparency/clarity that the MK4 has to offer.

5) The MK4 has a much improved sense of slam/macrodynamics over the MK3.

In my system this extraordinary DAC offered many of the virtues of details/clarity/dynamics that I have heard in other great digital front ends, like Meitner,Ensemble,Esoteric, with the musicality/organic/natural "flavor" of the non-upsampling references such as Audio Note and Zanden. It's the best synthesis I have heard with my own ear's so far. I'm not saying this is the best DAC in the entire world of reference digital front ends, but deserves to be put on that praiseworthy list now. It's a great piece and I hope that other Gon members will have a chance to audition it as more become available in the near future here in the states.

Associated gear
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teajay
pyro2005i
4 posts
 
Teajay

Friend and I auditioned the AA combo today (Mk2 transport, Mk4 DAC in a all AA system, Elac speakers). It's really the best balance combo I've heard in the last 2 months : Esoteric X-01,X03SE, Metronome CD4, CEC TL0x, Audio Aero, Audionet G2

The balance between vocal performance, resolution + texture of instruments, air between notes, musical cohesion and sound stage is fantastic; maybe slightly less on the punch / dynamics side (compare to Esoteric)

However, my friend is a diehard Esoteric fan and so a question we argued about is whether using Estoeric as transport with AA MK 4 DAC will give even more details without breaking the balance ... what would be your view ?
teajay OP
1,691 posts
 
Pyro2005i, it appears you have been busy auditioning some great digital gear recently! It's quite a complement to the Accustic Art combo that you think it was the best sounding compared to the other pieces.

To answer your question regarding what would happen sonicly if you used the Esoteric transport instead of the Accustic Arts transport with the DAC1-MK4, my hunch would be that you would lose some of the synergy, what you called "balanced" what I call a "musicality" in the overall performance of the DAC1-MK4.

Accustic Arts built the DAC1-MK2 to get the very best performance out of their new DAC, and I believe that synergy would be lost with the Esoteric matchup.

When I have auditioned Esoteric pieces I have found them to be great with macrodynamics/slam/details, but not as "organic/musical" as the Accustic Arts combo. I never found them, as some people do, ruthless or to forward or bright, just not as natural sounding as other digital gear.
pyro2005i
4 posts
 
Teajay

Thanks very much for your comments ! Hong Kong is really audiophile heaven because you can audition any product from most parts of the world (Europe/US/Japan) and most locations are only 20-30 minutes away, no need to even drive (take subway) ! Problem is there is no return policy like US (but no sales tax)

For AA, I am holding out until I also test Burmester 052 / 061 as some friends have these units, was told AA is in the same character sound group by dealer. Maybe the SIM Supernova... also. Otherwise AA is destiny ($$$$$$$$) and no, I won't have money left for a car !

A little more of what I learnt from the above excercise:

SoundStage/Instrument Resolution
I found the French machines (e.g. Metronome) has good resolution but typically has a more backwards presentation, perhaps due to this and the tube tuning, the imaging / soundstage is not as sensitive to the original recordings. The sound stage between my test pieces varies much less for Metronome CD4, Audio Aero Prestige(probably misconfig & not burn in), CEC T51 or the TLOx when compare with the Audionet G2, AA or Esoteric X03SE

Vocal Performance
My problem is I must have decent voice & want to hear the original musical intentions (classical guitar player; tube amp fan). It doesn't have to be tubey but I am not interested in rubber ducky, unrealistc voice either.

While Esoteric put out the very textured bass, most life-like violin performance I ever heard (on SACD), with fantastic clear soundstage and details, I cannot suffer its vocal performance (even with the G0 clock etc), and the sheer details make me lose sight of the PRAT / flow more often than I like. Some recordings are annoyingly plastic (electric guitar) and unpleasant (clapping hands), perhaps to mating issues with the JM Lab speakers. There is some un-naturalness in the overall presentation to me that I cannot decipher... so I start to hear more European/US makes

For voice the Metronome, followed by the AA clearly wins. CEC has something to offer for voice but the other aspects is below pass marks in our listening sessions (maybe it is the setup). The Audionet G2 is a bit dry and distant for vocals

For test pieces, we used a few locally produced hifi vocals / SACD discs, reference recording Mephisto (usually use Saint Saens's Danza Macabre), Chesky jazz sampler test discs (Vol. 1, Sara K)

Happy Listening !
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