Phil, the australian importer of rega talks to audio trends about the new brio amp and the new dac. It will upsample to 192 and its dac if i am not mistaken will convert the 16 bit wide data to 24 somehow. Terry bateman, regas digital designer,processing a digital signal is about computing horse said, i wanted to keep the signal path to a minimum. The dacr is housed in a custom aluminium and steel case and.
For the guys with an interest in the arcam rdac, the rega dac sounds a. Longstanding rega dealer, pj hifi of guildford surrey, will be hosting an event to showcase the latest. Rega is known for making some of the most musical digital gear available. Dacrthe rega dacr is a 162024bit at 32khz to 192khz digital to analogueconverter. There are a few manufacturers such as wadia and dcs that take care of decoding and filtration in software, but for the most part, its the dac chips and whatever. Its a great album, but i thought that, with the rega dacr, the treble sounded a little bit harsh, particularly near the end of the album. Incorporating an enhanced version of the rega designed circuit, the dac r offers the highest possible resolution over all inputs including fully asynchronous usb with the addition of remote functionality. Im also going to give some history of my involvement with dac interpolation filters and why i wanted to do this in the first place. I see that a high selling point of dacs is their ability to upsample audio. However, the wolfson wm8742 dacs oversamples the native datastream to 192khz. Below that the market is basically owned by project and rega, both of. The rega dac r is a 162024bit at 32khz to 192khz digital to analogue converter. Upgrading a rega dac r with modifications vinyl engine. It would seem like a weird thing to leave out of the line, given the importance of standalone dacs to your modern, average hifi rig.
Rega dac going out of production steve hoffman music. The dealer recommends the rega dac to go with it, but also suggests that an asynchronous usb dac would help to minimize jitter. I have a dacr an am pretty happy with it, but i have not done any direct comparisons with something like a linn. Most of the improvements have been the result of refining existing technology, upgrading. That didnt stop the rega dac selling like hot cakes its more forgiving sound signature was its strongest suit. The rega dacr is a 162024bit at 32khz to 192khz digital to analogue converter.
Rega dac digital to analog converter da converters. Upsampling, oversampling, and nos dacs among other questions im starting to think about adding a dac to my system and i am a bit confused about the potential benefitscosts of adding an upsampling or oversampling dac. Like every other rega product, the rega dac is simple, functional and offers high performance in its price category. Upsampling, oversampling, and nos dacs among other. Could it be for the rega dac, that the wolfson chip is capable of nonnos, but the design is wired as nos. Rega has just launched its dac simply called rega dac which can decode normal red book 16 bit 44. I wanted to start a thread here for discussing sonic differences people hear between no upsampling and different upsampling parameters. Also, i recommend against using upsampling in software or in dac. However, after playing a total of about a dozen albums, including the wonderful linn download, new songs for old souls at 2496, by joe stilgoe, it turned out to be in the chesky recording, not in the rega. You can upsample with the rega dac, using a software program like.
Rega has finally channeled their digital knowhow into a standalone dac, known only as, the dac. The rega dac had a richness, a fullness of tone, an analog sense of ease, that i had not hitherto heard from digital, save for sacd, sam wrote. The dac also has an exceptional usb input, allowing your computer to finally sound its. This driver is available for download from the rega website, uk.
From the apollo to the mighty isis, rega cd players are always at the top of the recommended lists, because they make digital sound so good. The software upsampling business is the ugly stepchild born from a multitude of poorly designed dacs that sound different at different sample rates when mathematically they should not. Adventures in upsampling to dsd software audiophile style. You can still download the usb driver stage for this model via the product download section on this page. Doing our best to not look too interested in a dac or some filebased accoutrement at a show or hifi shop. No upsampling what goes in comes out without upsampling.
Apple ipad air 2 to control files streaming over lan from imac running dbpoweramp asset upnp software or via tidal hi. This includes software upsamplingdownsampling, as possible with sox, and more usefully such processes as asynchronous sample rate conversion. For ultimate connectivity, the dac also sports one each of a coax and optical digital output. My goal is to share my observations, and let fellow rega dac r owners know that they can improve their dac for very little money and effort. Incorporating an enhanced version of the rega designed circuit, the dacr offers the highest possible resolution over all inputs includingfully asynchronous usb with the addition of remote functionality. Theres no oversampling employed but rega does offer a number of user selectable filter options, six in total, three for sample rates up to 48khz.
Upsampling to dsd 64 bypasses even more of the dac which normally turns pcm into something like dsd. As the rega planet cd player has a builtin dac, does it make any sense to instead feed a digital signal from it to an external dac. Buy rega dacr digital to analog convertor with remote. Incorporating an enhanced version of the rega designed circuit, the dacr offers the highest possible resolution over all inputs including fully asynchronous usb with the addition of remote functionality. Magnum dynalab md807t internet tuner with 24192 upsampling dac and tube triode output stage. I have also found software updampling through jriver to give me a lot of.
And if bypassing it is recommended, why bother with paying the extra cost of buying a cd. Discussion in audio hardware started by ronw, apr 24, 2011. With the pc now widely accepted as a credible medium for storing and streaming music,the use of high quality lossless files such as wav, flac and alac offer performance through the dacr equal to, and in some cases better than, red book cd. Cambridge audio dacmagic plus upsampling dac seems to be the. My dac has filters embedded so assuming i go upsampling with hqp i can turn all of that off in my lyngdorf because there is no point in. I think i understand that to mean an increase in definition and maybe even an open and more airy sound as some have said due to upsampling. The dac is nonupsampling and processes each stream at its native rate. Ive written software similar to this, and it would gain nothing with lots to lose by upsampling first. You can upsample with the rega dac, using a software program like foobar to convert your 1644.
For a mere 10% increase over the price of the stock rega dac r, you will get substantially more than a 10% improvement. Rega principal roy gandy is not a man to jump on the latest trend. A closer look at how we make over 6000 products and accessories by hand every single month. Seminal british hifi company, rega, have some cracking products in their line up. You can move speakers around and change out gear and actually measure the result. Go to product range and select cd players dac, then dacr. The rega dac reclocks the incoming data stream before conversion so it should be pretty immune to sound quality differences in the streamer. Before you can use the usb function of the dacr you must first download the rega usb windows driver and install it on your pc. Chord electronics hugo m scaler upsampling digital processor. Upsampling to high pcm rates is supposed to bypass upsampling and filtering by the dac. The dac would be unlikely to do its own upsampling. Buy rega dacr digital to analog convertor with remote black, set of 2 online at low price in india on.
Perhaps to some, but im being serious because every digitalcentric music lover has been there at one time or another. Incorporating an enhanced version of the rega designed circuit. The argument goes a computer can do this better with software because it has more resources. With the hardware i have, upsampling in software was no better than.
Would you really want rega speakers, a rega turntable, rega amplifier and rega phono pre and not have a rega digital, nonoptical frontend. Its an upsampling dac to 2496 and i think its strength is. If enough publications tell readers that dsd for example is the. In the previous post, i had noted that the rega dacs usb input accepts only 16bit48 khz upsampling and downsampled hires files streamed to it by my toshiba laptop. When you read about a dac featuring an upsampling process, this thus does not mean that it oversamples if it didnt do that, it would be what some call nos and what i call broken. The point is to apply software filters while upsampling and people believe that these are superior. It has software or hardware, or a combination filter algorithms that work on whatever bit rate is passed to it. I had the rega dac for the day, along with the simaudio cd1 and i1. The dac also has a nice usb input, allowing your computer to play files with that warm analog sound. Developed to be simple to set up and use, the rega dac is designed to optimise performance from any two channel pcm digital audio source such as a cd player pc or streaming device. In recent versions of csos triode and jackofall have added upsampling capabilities to squeezelite at my request. Rega take entrylevel dac to dacr status at ces 2015.