DCS Verdi Elgar Purcell VS. Audio Aero Capitole

Please take everything I write with a grain of salt, since I am the importer of the new Lindemann CD/SACD player.
I would not add to this thread if not many of my customers were former DCS and Audio Aero Captiole customers, who confirmed that the Lindemann is up to par with DCS, only for a fraction of the price and performed superior to any other CD player. One customer especially had been through all big names, the DCS, Audio Aero, Linn, Wadia, you name it and he literarily said that he will go back to vinyl if the Lindemann is not better than all the other players he had auditioned. Well, he is not back to vinyl and enjoying his cd and SACD collection in a new light.

Although i have heard the DCS gear in Norm Luttbeg's systems on repeated occasions, I have not heard it in my system. i do know that Norm has since been through the Audio Note 4 SE and the Zanden as well as the Sony and Marantz SACD players, finally settling on the Lindemann. As a result of hearing these various combinations at Norm's, i also purchased the Lindemann and can only say that after a few false starts, I am very happy with it. Several lessons learned with respect to the Lindemann, (1) the outboard power supply must be carefully isolated, preferably on Aurios and a Mana stand, (2) the main unit does not work well on an air base preferring a Mana type stand and (3) it is sensitive to the power cord used. Properly sited and powered, it is a state of the art product.

I can only second thant Fred. The Mana stands do incredibly well with the Lindemann (I would even say they deserve to be tested in every audiophile sytem). I am using Mana in combination with a Neuance shelf and it was amazing what a difference the Neuance can make to an already great stand. My brother bought a Mana-Neuance combination immediatly for his own audiophile system, after hearing my system.

I recently sent my DCS gear in for the upgrade. My experience with DCS and Audiophile Systems is the opposite of Jonathan's....they offer terrific customer service. I know that the DCS gear was quite a bit better than the Accuphase DP75V I had before I got the Elgar and Purcell. That was before the upgrade. I sold the DP75V to a friend who had the latest Audio Aero Capitole Mk 2. He likes the Accuphase better. I'm sure, depending on the strengths and weaknesses of your system, that the DCS stuff may not be right for you. But there has to be a reason why everyone wants to compare the performance of their digital gear to DCS. DCS sets the standard in digital performance.

DCS never was top 16-bit digital. It has better publicity, more BS-presents in the audio propaganda but performance wise it sit somewhere at the very mediocre Wadia-Levinson level. As usually, it has that glitzy but dry impressiveness meant to electrify a typical audiophile with it’s taste of pterodactyl. In particularly DCS DACs works miserably when they do upsampling… If you looking at the top 16-bit performance (and I am taking about the out of box commercially available units without going into a world of the custom built DACs) then you might find interesting some older DB technology DAC (I think it is 924). Also, the new Waiss Media sounds pretty promising…