Review on Linear Tube Audio Aero DAC

@soix 

I wonder if you or anyone else has had the opportunity to compare the Acoustic Zen MC2 with the Absolute Copper Foil 75 Ohm digital RCA cable?

Is there difference in sound characteristics between using 110 Ohm vs the 75 Ohm RCA cables?

Does anyone like the sound of any other RCA digital cables better than the AZ for similar prices?

Thank you!

Don

@sense63 

Thank you for your comments!  It certainly sounds like the Aero is certainly worthy of it's $4K asking price. I appreciate you sharing the comparisons.

Best wishes,

Don

@teajay and others,

This LTA Aero sounds interesting to me, but I have a couple of questions...

I'm a dye in the wool vinyl guy and have a very nice turntable/arm/cartridge/phonostage, etc. that provides very enjoyable listening sessions.

1)  I'm curious for those of you who also enjoy quality vinyl playback, how does this LTA Aero compare sound wise?

2) Currently, I would have to use an old Rotel 955AX CD Player as a transport into the LTA Aero via coax output.  How well would this work with the Aero?  Is the Rotel a good enough transport to get the sonic goods out of the Aero or would I have to spend big dollars on a better transport?

I appreciate hearing anyone's thoughts on this.

Thank you and best wishes to you all!

Don

@teajay

Thank you for your quick reply! That makes me very happy to hear that you and your friends feel it is a very analog sounding type dac. I was hoping to be able to find something that I could enjoy listening too without breaking the bank.

Vinyl will still be my primary listening source as I have 1000’s of truly mint records that I have collected over the last few decades that simply sound sublime. However, there I am discovering that there is a lot of great music being produced by modern musicians that I cannot get on vinyl and so I want to have digital source that will produce the beautiful tone and harmonic structure of real live music without sounding hard or strident or 2-dimensional.

I’m also happy that you feel that my old vintage Rotel 955ax will work well for a transport.

I will need to buy a coax cable to go from the transport to the Aero’s input. Any recommendations for a great sounding cable for a few hundred to a $1000 whether new or used.

For context, my current cables are Acoustic Zen Absolute Coppers for all interconnects and AZ Satori Shotguns for my speaker cables.

Oh, also... do you happen to know how tall the unit is with the tubes installed?

Thank you for your help and guidance!

Don

@lpretiring 

I appreciate your comment. It nice to get different perspectives and opinions!

Which transports would you recommend?

Best wishes,

Don

I'm sorry if I had missed reading this in any earlier posts, etc.  But how does the LTA Aero sound when using the Coax input vs the other types?

I ask as my Rotel only offers a Coax output.  So, if the Aero sounds better using other inputs I would wait on buying an expensive coax cable until I got a better transport and then get the appropriate cable at that time.

Any thoughts???

Best wishes,

Don

I truly appreciate everyone sharing there thoughts, experiences and guidance with me!

I think I will just start out with using my Rotel as a transport for the Aero and see how that sounds.  Hopefully it will work well, if not, I will just continue saving until I can afford a dedicated one. 
 

Thanks again,

Don

@teajay

@soix

@sense63

I just wanted to take a quick moment to say "THANK YOU" to everyone for all of your help by sharing your thoughts, experiences, and guidance with me as I tried to decipher which direction to go and which steps to take in the effort of improving the digital side of my music system.

I had a busy day today! I was able to purchase an Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper 75 Ohm RCA 1.5 meter digital cable. I then went on to purchased a new LTA Aero Dac from Nicholas at LTA! I will start out utilizing my vintage Rotel 955AX CD Player as the transport - Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper via the Coax output into the Aero Dac.

It is my hope that I will hear a tremendous improvement of sound via the Aero Dac over that of the Rotel’s internal multibit dac. If the Rotel proves to be sufficient, then over time, I will continue to save more money to put towards a high end streamer. If the Rotel isn’t allowing the Aero to shine, then I will investigate a better dedicated transport to replace the Rotel; and then do the streamer down the road further.

I would also like to take a quick moment to say that Nicholas from LTA is a true gentleman! I had a very nice email string with him. He replied to each of my emails within minutes! He was very nice and answered all of my questions and was extremely helpful to me. It was a true pleasure corresponding with him and he really made me feel appreciated and valued. A company may have a great product, but if it is without having people who truly care about their customers... then it kinda falls flat with me. I can honestly say that Nicholas at LTA, truly cares and has a passion for what they are doing. That right there pushed me over the top to want to buy the LTA Aero! I can’t wait to receive it and install it into my system to hear what it can do!

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed to this forum thread. This is a great community to be associated with

Best wishes to you all,

Don

I'm curious to hear from owners of this LTA Aero Dac, if any of you....

1.  Are using CD Transports?

2.  Which transports are you using and have you compared various transport with the Aero Dac?

3.  Which input connection have you been using with the Aero?  Have you noticed any difference in sound between the various input connections?

Thank you and best wishes to you,

Don

@wig 

Awesome!  I hear Charles1Dad rave about the RS2T CD Transport quite often and from what I've read from reviewers, it is quite a nice transport.

From what I understand, it currently is quite difficult to get one at this time though. So, right now I'm looking at one of the Jay's Audio transports or maybe the CEC TL-2N dual belt drive transport. I'm just in the very beginning stages right now, so I am remaining very open to ideas 

Best wishes,

Don

@mitch2 Congrats on the new LTA Aero!  I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and comments about how it sounds compared to the other dacs you have experience with!

I have one on order, probable about 3 weeks out before receiving though.

When talking to the very fine folks at LTA, they gave me the impression that they didn't expect the Aero to sound any different no matter which input you use on their dac.  Although, I wonder if some transports or digital sources themselves may be better optimized via their certain output connections?

I'm very happy to hear that it was packed very well and shipped very safely! Also glad to hear it's sounding good right out of the box.  I can only imagine that their "pre"-burn in process prior to shipment only helps in that matter!

Best wishes,

Don

@wig Can you remind which transport you are using?  

Also, is it common for various cd transport to have one digital output to be more optimized than the other outputs on their machine?

I apologize if the above sounds like a stupid question... I've been a vinyl guy for roughly 50 years and am just now trying to optimize my digital system, so I guess I've been living under a rock for a while, lol.

Thank you and best wishes to you all,

Don

@soix 

Hello and thank you for your post!

Can you or maybe others from this fine community help me understand something, as like I had mentioned, I am still trying to learn and understand the digital side of things?

I'm still trying to understand what the Aero Dac can and cannot accept as far as digital signals and what that actually means to me when searching for a possible new and upgraded transport to use.

So a thought was to find a CD/SACD all in one unit to use as the transport into the Aero via coax connections.  I wasn't sure if the Aero would be able to maximize the SACD sound quality though, so I wrote LTA about my question and they responded saying... "The Aero can accept PCM signals from a transport up to 24/192k but cannot decode SACD or DSD. I'm not sure most transports will output SACD anyway."

So, I'm thinking if I bought an all in one box CD/SACD player I could utilize its internal SACD dac via the analog outputs directly into my line stage and then just output the redbook signal via coax into the Aero. Hopefully thinking the all in one CD/SACD player would be a better transport than just using my vintage Rotel 955AX and also gaining SACD capability, albeit having to use it's internal dac for that medium.

The other thing that I noticed is that with both the Jay's Audio CDT3 MK3 and also with the CEC TL-2N is that on their back panel they have a switch at can upsample redbook cd to 176.4khz  (and via remote on the Jay's Audio CDT2 MK3).

So, I am wondering if because the Aero Dac can accept up to 24/192khz would that make my normal redbook cd's sound better than just having a transport that only output 44khz?  And if so, would I be better off getting either one of the Jay's or CEC truly dedicated transports and forgetting all about SACD as I would have to start that collection from scratch?

Any thoughts?

Thank you for sharing!

Best wishes,

Don

@lancelock 

Congrats on the new Aero Dac!  I'm excited to hear that you are loving it!

I'd love to know what you are using for a transport?

Best wishes,

Don

@oddiofyl 

Thank you for sharing the link to the Teac review.  It was great reading about this transport especially seeing that it was used into the LTA Aero Dac!

Best wishes,

Don

@soix  Thank you for your post!  As always, I truly appreciate your help