Running DCS Vivladi DIRECT?
Hey Folks,
Anybody out there who cares to comment on running the Vivaldi DAC direct to the Power amp.
Please compare with running through your favorite preamp and elucidate the differences.
Thanks & keep enjoying our hobby!
And wherein perhaps lies Solomon’s answer ... for if the dCS output is truly native SE then my experience that SE sounds better than balanced via a preamp (same cable, same length) then it could be the case that dCS->VTL balanced sounds worse than dCS->ARC (SE)->VTL (BAL) especially as the VTL itself is a balanced design ... so lets see ps the Vivaldi has seperate output stages balanced and SE, and both can be driven at the same time, question is which is closer to the Ring DAC output ... which is ostensibly a balanced design but not clear what they have implemented in analog circuitry after the DAC -- clearly there’s quite a bit there at least to switch output levels and so on (btw interesting side note is that the BAL and SE output levels cannot be set independently ...) |
Use a half dozen different DACs to drive an amplifier and you'll have 6 different sonic characters, they are not straight wire with gain. Correct, why pile one on top of the other, just get the right one to start with.. I need to take in the DAC volume control and more importantly avoid the danger of over driving the speakersAnd also just as important is not too start "bit stripping" if the volume is too low. Also it would be interesting to find out if the ring dac chip in the Vivaldi is single ended output or balanced, if single ended then to make a xlr output they would need an extra opamp in the signal path, which would mean the se output should sound better. But if the ring dac chip is balanced then the the opostie will be true.. Cheers George |
Driving the DAC direct to amp has coloration as well. Use a half dozen different DACs to drive an amplifier and you’ll have 6 different sonic characters, they are not straight wire with gain. Common sense approach is what folkfreak is going to do, listen to both in his system and make a choice. ARC REF 40 coloration/signature or Vivaldi coloration/signature . You have to hear something before you can choose a preference. Charles |
The input sensitivity of the VTL MB 450-iii is a function of damping factor but at the setting I use (minimum damping) is a low 775mV hence one needs to be very careful in setting the level on the Vivaldi. Luckily dCS provide a 0.6V (and a 0.2V) setting as well as 2V and 6V. I currently use 0.6V with my active pre-amp and find that this works well with the volumes I like to listen at (i.e. operating the amp at close to unity gain in effect) so my presumption is this would be the best place to start with a direct connection so as to minimize the amount of cut I need to take in the DAC volume control and more importantly avoid the danger of over driving the speakers with catastrophic effect (this has happened to me in the past when I had a cable short and it blew the woofers in a set of Magico V3s) |
The Vivaldi driving a 600 ohm load is commendable, no denying that fact. The VTL MB 450 has an input impedance of 42K. So the question is which option provides the best sound quality This is where things fall apart, the "best" to me is like a piece of wire, the most transparent/dynamic/least coloured/distortion. So how can a preamp provide the best sound "quality" if it colours the sound? What it's doing is providing a colouration (which is distortion) that the listener prefers, but! all preamps sounds different, so which one with which colouration/distortion do you pick? Wouldn't it be better not to do a band-aid fix and to get the source sound "right" and forget about trying to change it with a preamp.? Cheers George |
It could simply be that a tube preamp sounds sweeter and more polished and smooth and therefore is preferred by folkfreak to the Vivaldi directly. In this case, both George and folkfreak are right for different reasons. The Vivaldi output has nothing limiting about it (as measurements suggest) but the sweeter tube sound is preferred for system synergy and listener preference.... |
It’s surprising how definitive people can be based on measurements of components they do not own, and may never have actually heard?Only when things are dismissed, and the opposite said, too much of this goes on, and many have been shown the wrong way because of it. Without measurements your left with hear-say and voodoo, good luck to you going that way. " I run my Vivaldi into an ARC Ref 40 and this is a great combination, the RF then drives 10M of balanced cable to my amps - something the Vivaldi would not be comfortable with at all"and then this confusing statement for the same poster? " VTL MB450III, but not sure why that’s relevant as I’ve never tried driving them direct from the DCS ... " Anyway I’m happy to connect my Vivaldi directly and report back. As I prefaced in my original post this is not something I’ve ever tried given my setup and my past experience with direct connected digital components which always sounded worse but I’ll have an open mindAnd if it’s doesn’t then there is a problem elsewhere, and going direct is showing it up. I believe there are two options of 2v output or 6v output. If so I would try the 2v first to see if you can get enough level, close to full up will be fine for loud listening (and you will NOT loose any dynamic head room) If anything it should be more Dynamic than with the preamp in the path. The maximum level at 1kHz from both balanced and single-ended outputs was 2.035V with the level set to "2V," 6.013V with it set to "6V."The worst you can have is to back off the volume less that 3/4, as you could start to "bit strip" if too low and loose resolution.. Cheers George |
It's surprising how definitive people can be based on measurements of components they do not own, and may never have actually heard? Anyway I'm happy to connect my Vivaldi directly and report back. As I prefaced in my original post this is not something I've ever tried given my setup and my past experience with direct connected digital components which always sounded worse but I'll have an open mind 😏 But perhaps you have all forgotten about this long discussion ... https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/the-jadis-ja200mk2-review-or-slam |
The Vivaldi driving a 600 ohm load is commendable, no denying that fact. The VTL MB 450 has an input impedance of 42K. So the question is which option provides the best sound quality, DAC direct to the VTL or via the ARC REF 40? Well you have to listen to both and decide (As always subjective ). The VTL amplifier doesn’t present the unusually difficult 600 ohm load. Depending on the particular listener either approach could be preferred. Excellent specifications though admirable do not imply or dictact superior sound quality. Charles |
BTW this is from the Stereophile review and bench tests of the Vivaldi, from the reviewer Michael Fremer who owns the darTZeel NHB-18ns preamplifier. and darTZeel NHB 458 monoblocks. Looks like he had no issues going direct to the monoblock amps, instead of the $23k NHB-18ns pre. I ran the Vivaldi’s directly into my darTZeel amplifiers for the last week of the review auditioning, and though couldn’t play any vinyl that week, I didn’t miss it.Cheers George |
These Vivaldi tested figures don’t lie, can’t see the forest through the trees? It's not possible that a tube/capacitor output coupled preamp can drive 10mts of cables with an amp at the end, better than that tested output stage of the Vivaldi. " I run my Vivaldi into an ARC Ref 40 and this is a great combination, the RF then drives 10M of balanced cable to my amps - something the Vivaldi would not be comfortable with at all"and then this confusing statement for the same poster? " VTL MB450III, but not sure why that’s relevant as I’ve never tried driving them direct from the DCS ... " Cheers George |
I run my Vivaldi into an ARC Ref 40 and this is a great combination, the RF then drives 10M of balanced cable to my amps - something the Vivaldi would not be comfortable with at all This has to be a subjective colouration/distortion preference statement, or something was horribly wrong, one needs to look at from an electronic engineering viewpoint. The output stage of the Vivaldi (2.3ohms at 6v) will be far better at driving anything than what the AR Ref40 can possibly hope to. As this graph of the Vivaldi shows driving into an horrendously evil load of 600ohms!!! The AR Ref 40 has no chance in the world of doing these figures. https://www.stereophile.com/images/114dcsDvivFig16.jpg Fig.16 shows the output spectrum as the DAC drives a full-scale 50Hz tone at 6V into 600 ohms. The only distortion harmonics visible are the third, at –130dB (0.00003%) in both channels, and the second, at –126dB (0.00005%) in the left channel (blue trace). Intermodulation distortion was also vanishingly low. |
Very interesting. I saw you mention Were the input impedance of the amps very low in your case? Regards & Thanks. |
While I have nothing to observe regarding the transparency of the digital volume control in then Vivaldi I can observe that the line driver circuit in the Vivaldi is not as good as it could be. Having compared single ended and balanced outputs using identical cabling I found the single ended to be substantially more transparent. I run my Vivaldi into an ARC Ref 40 and this is a great combination, the RF then drives 10M of balanced cable to my amps - something the Vivaldi would not be comfortable with at all I also found marked differences between the output level settings with .6V sounding much better than 2V, this may however be a function of interaction with the preferred range on my preamps volume control |
