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THE PS AUDIO DLIII DIGITAL LINK DAC WITH CULLEN
CIRCUITS DL3 STAGE III MODIFICATIONS
(Part Two—Further Investigations)
Upsampling—96 kHz versus 192 kHz?
In Part One of this review, I compared the Cullen Dac to my reference
Perpetual Technology Dac pair, the P-1A and P-3A. I did my listening
using the 96 kHz upsampling rate on both dacs. This is the highest
upsampling rate supported by the PT equipment. The Cullen Dac,
however, offers the option of listening at 192 kHz. Was any further
audible improvement possible via the higher upsampling rate? I had to
know.
So I listened at both settings for differences using a variety of CDs.
Switching between the two settings on the Cullen Dac can be done on the
run—literally. There is a delay of about one and one-half seconds, during
which there is silence, before the dac makes the switch between the two
settings. I found that I could punch the button that toggles between the
upsampling rates and just about be back in my seat before the music
resumed.
No matter how quick I was, the final result was the same—no, the higher
upsampling rate does not sound any better.
The sound was exactly the same with either setting except for one very
slight difference that worked against the higher rate. I felt that female
voices sounded somewhat more “wispy” or less substantial at the 192 kHz
setting. This was a very subtle difference but I heard it with just about
every female singer to whom I listened. It was not a matter of there being
more “air” or atmosphere present; there was just a hair less substance to
their voices. I listened to the new KD Lang CD, Watershed (Nonesuch
110460-2), which is wonderful, and felt that even her voice lost some
richness at the higher setting. Higher voices, such as Feist’s or Alison
Krauss’ seemed to thin slightly more. I expected to hear a bigger
difference between the upsampling rates and assumed that it would be in
favor of the higher setting. In my system, at least, this was not the case.
So much for that question.
The Cullen Dac versus SACD?
In his review of the standard PS Audio DLIII Digital Link DAC in the March
2007 The Absolute Sound, Barry Willis compared the playback of the DLIII
with SACD playback. He wrote:
“With its discrete Class A analog output looped through a Margules Audio
Magenta ADE-24 harmonic sweetener…the Digital Link III made standard-
issue CDs essentially equivalent to their SACD counterparts, even when
SACDs are played back through the $5000 Linn Unidisk SC.”
I have never heard either the Margules equipment or the Linn Unidisk SC,
but I felt that it would be worthwhile to do a comparison between the
Cullen dac, at its 96 kHz upsampling rate, and SACD playback. Given the
sonic improvement made by the Cullen Dac over my Perpetual Technology
equipment, it seemed reasonable to assume that the gap between the two
formats had to have narrowed as well. The Cullen Dac also seemed to
offer much of the same sense of ease that I hear from SACD. Was this
really the case or just my imagination? My Sony SCD-C333ES was used
for SACD playback and as transport for the Cullen Dac.
I own exactly four titles for which I have both a CD and SACD. These are
the
O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; Bill Evans’ Portrait in Jazz; Willie
Nelson’s Stardust; and Alison Krauss’ Now That I have Found You. I
wanted to use separate discs to compare the Cullen Dac’s upsampling
playback to SACD playback. I did not want to use the CD layers of hybrid
discs. I am not sure that it makes any real difference but I was concerned
that the hybrid CD layer might not be identical to the separate CD.
Unlike the dac comparison, I do not have any sort of SACD test disc for
setting playback levels. All level setting was done by ear. I feel pretty
comfortable that I got the playback levels close enough. I have no idea
whether the CDs and SACDs used the same master tapes as sources but
assumed that they did. With these caveats in mind, I did my listening.
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?
The O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack presents a variety of artists
and sound qualities. I compared a stereo-only SACD to a regular CD.
I listened to “Down to the River to Pray” for Alison Krauss’ voice and for
the space and location of the choir that sings behind her. The choir comes
in humming softly on the SACD and it is an incredibly beautiful sound.
Alison is well separated from the choir. The overall sound is clean and very
smooth. Via the CD, I heard slightly less choir separation and the hum
may have been a touch less perfect, but that was all that I could hear.
Alison sounded the same and the depth was just as good via both
formats. Either version of the song, heard on its own, was beautiful.
On “I’ll Fly Away” all the plucked instruments—guitar, mandolin, banjo—
sound realistic and immediate in either format. Alison’s voice is either
slightly smoothed over via the SACD or very slightly edgy via the CD.
They both sound very good. Personally, I felt like the SACD was
smoothing over her voice and that the CD seemed more realistic. Others
may feel differently.
“Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby” features the voices of Emmy Lou
Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss. The CD presentation sounded a
little closer to the microphone but otherwise the two formats sounded the
same. The saw in the right channel sounds equally Theremin-like in either
format.
BILL EVANS TRIO - PORTRAIT IN JAZZ
My SACD is a hybrid disc and the CD has been remastered using the JVC
20Bit K2 Super Coding System. This was Bill Evan’s debut recording as
the leader of his own jazz trio. He is joined by Scott LaFaro on bass and
Paul Motian on drums. The original tape is noisy, unfortunately, as this is
an important recording. There is a high frequency tone/noise on track 5,
“When I Fall in Love” that is more evident on the CD version. It is more
muted on the SACD.
With the track “Blue in Green” (stereo version), I was also reduced to
listening for differences in the noise because I could hear nothing in the
music. The rest of the tracks provided no additional help. The two
formats sounded essentially identical. The JVC recording system may have
had something to do with this.
NOW THAT I HAVE FOUND YOU
This collection of Allison Krauss tracks has some nice songs on it. I used
the Lennon and McCartney song, “I Will” because I like it a lot, especially
this version, and “When You Say Nothing At All” because it is a beautiful
song. The SACD is a hybrid disc. The CD came from a garage sale.
When I was not getting distracted by the Dobro playing on “I Will”, I felt
that the higher frequencies were a shade cleaner and clearer on the
SACD. Otherwise, my notes regarding the differences I heard repeatedly
read “too close” and “too small to describe.” The differences between the
tracks themselves on this compilation utterly swamp any differences
between the formats.
STARDUST
By the time I started listening to Stardust, I had pretty much given up
listening for differences. It was just as well that I did. I heard even less of
them between the absolutely stock CD and the stereo-only SACD version
of this Willie Nelson classic. I was tired of straining to hear differences so
small that it was nothing but an additional strain to try to describe them.
I just wanted to hear Willie sing.
CONCLUSION
I completely agree with what Barry Willis wrote—and I was not using a
Margules sonic sweetener. While I only had a small number of titles from
which to draw my conclusions, the Cullen Dac narrowed the differences
between CD and SACD playback to a point where there were no
consistent, or readily apparent, differences. I am still going to purchase
SACDs, as I find them, of music that I do not have, but I am not going to
spend money duplicating anything that I already have on CD. Not now.
IN SUMMARY
I listened to various CDs at the Cullen Dac’s two different upsampling
rates and heard essentially no difference between them. Then I compared
upsampled CDS to their SACD counterparts and heard essentially no
difference between them either. Talk about excitement.
I am actually surprised by these results. I expected the 192 kHz
upsampling to further improve the sound but to my ears it sounded the
same on everything but female voices where it was not quite as good. I
expected SACDs to still sound clearly better than CDs but they simply did
not. Where there were some very small differences between the formats,
I was just as likely to prefer the sound of the upsampled CD as I was the
SACD. The sense of ease I had noted previously as being the exclusive
province of SACDs is now apparent on everything that I listen to.
If the Cullen Dac is not the last word in CD playback, it is awfully close to
the end of the book.
Kent Johnson
February 28, 2008
Associated Equipment
CIRCUITS DL3 STAGE III MODIFICATIONS
(Part Two—Further Investigations)
Upsampling—96 kHz versus 192 kHz?
In Part One of this review, I compared the Cullen Dac to my reference
Perpetual Technology Dac pair, the P-1A and P-3A. I did my listening
using the 96 kHz upsampling rate on both dacs. This is the highest
upsampling rate supported by the PT equipment. The Cullen Dac,
however, offers the option of listening at 192 kHz. Was any further
audible improvement possible via the higher upsampling rate? I had to
know.
So I listened at both settings for differences using a variety of CDs.
Switching between the two settings on the Cullen Dac can be done on the
run—literally. There is a delay of about one and one-half seconds, during
which there is silence, before the dac makes the switch between the two
settings. I found that I could punch the button that toggles between the
upsampling rates and just about be back in my seat before the music
resumed.
No matter how quick I was, the final result was the same—no, the higher
upsampling rate does not sound any better.
The sound was exactly the same with either setting except for one very
slight difference that worked against the higher rate. I felt that female
voices sounded somewhat more “wispy” or less substantial at the 192 kHz
setting. This was a very subtle difference but I heard it with just about
every female singer to whom I listened. It was not a matter of there being
more “air” or atmosphere present; there was just a hair less substance to
their voices. I listened to the new KD Lang CD, Watershed (Nonesuch
110460-2), which is wonderful, and felt that even her voice lost some
richness at the higher setting. Higher voices, such as Feist’s or Alison
Krauss’ seemed to thin slightly more. I expected to hear a bigger
difference between the upsampling rates and assumed that it would be in
favor of the higher setting. In my system, at least, this was not the case.
So much for that question.
The Cullen Dac versus SACD?
In his review of the standard PS Audio DLIII Digital Link DAC in the March
2007 The Absolute Sound, Barry Willis compared the playback of the DLIII
with SACD playback. He wrote:
“With its discrete Class A analog output looped through a Margules Audio
Magenta ADE-24 harmonic sweetener…the Digital Link III made standard-
issue CDs essentially equivalent to their SACD counterparts, even when
SACDs are played back through the $5000 Linn Unidisk SC.”
I have never heard either the Margules equipment or the Linn Unidisk SC,
but I felt that it would be worthwhile to do a comparison between the
Cullen dac, at its 96 kHz upsampling rate, and SACD playback. Given the
sonic improvement made by the Cullen Dac over my Perpetual Technology
equipment, it seemed reasonable to assume that the gap between the two
formats had to have narrowed as well. The Cullen Dac also seemed to
offer much of the same sense of ease that I hear from SACD. Was this
really the case or just my imagination? My Sony SCD-C333ES was used
for SACD playback and as transport for the Cullen Dac.
I own exactly four titles for which I have both a CD and SACD. These are
the
O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; Bill Evans’ Portrait in Jazz; Willie
Nelson’s Stardust; and Alison Krauss’ Now That I have Found You. I
wanted to use separate discs to compare the Cullen Dac’s upsampling
playback to SACD playback. I did not want to use the CD layers of hybrid
discs. I am not sure that it makes any real difference but I was concerned
that the hybrid CD layer might not be identical to the separate CD.
Unlike the dac comparison, I do not have any sort of SACD test disc for
setting playback levels. All level setting was done by ear. I feel pretty
comfortable that I got the playback levels close enough. I have no idea
whether the CDs and SACDs used the same master tapes as sources but
assumed that they did. With these caveats in mind, I did my listening.
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?
The O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack presents a variety of artists
and sound qualities. I compared a stereo-only SACD to a regular CD.
I listened to “Down to the River to Pray” for Alison Krauss’ voice and for
the space and location of the choir that sings behind her. The choir comes
in humming softly on the SACD and it is an incredibly beautiful sound.
Alison is well separated from the choir. The overall sound is clean and very
smooth. Via the CD, I heard slightly less choir separation and the hum
may have been a touch less perfect, but that was all that I could hear.
Alison sounded the same and the depth was just as good via both
formats. Either version of the song, heard on its own, was beautiful.
On “I’ll Fly Away” all the plucked instruments—guitar, mandolin, banjo—
sound realistic and immediate in either format. Alison’s voice is either
slightly smoothed over via the SACD or very slightly edgy via the CD.
They both sound very good. Personally, I felt like the SACD was
smoothing over her voice and that the CD seemed more realistic. Others
may feel differently.
“Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby” features the voices of Emmy Lou
Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss. The CD presentation sounded a
little closer to the microphone but otherwise the two formats sounded the
same. The saw in the right channel sounds equally Theremin-like in either
format.
BILL EVANS TRIO - PORTRAIT IN JAZZ
My SACD is a hybrid disc and the CD has been remastered using the JVC
20Bit K2 Super Coding System. This was Bill Evan’s debut recording as
the leader of his own jazz trio. He is joined by Scott LaFaro on bass and
Paul Motian on drums. The original tape is noisy, unfortunately, as this is
an important recording. There is a high frequency tone/noise on track 5,
“When I Fall in Love” that is more evident on the CD version. It is more
muted on the SACD.
With the track “Blue in Green” (stereo version), I was also reduced to
listening for differences in the noise because I could hear nothing in the
music. The rest of the tracks provided no additional help. The two
formats sounded essentially identical. The JVC recording system may have
had something to do with this.
NOW THAT I HAVE FOUND YOU
This collection of Allison Krauss tracks has some nice songs on it. I used
the Lennon and McCartney song, “I Will” because I like it a lot, especially
this version, and “When You Say Nothing At All” because it is a beautiful
song. The SACD is a hybrid disc. The CD came from a garage sale.
When I was not getting distracted by the Dobro playing on “I Will”, I felt
that the higher frequencies were a shade cleaner and clearer on the
SACD. Otherwise, my notes regarding the differences I heard repeatedly
read “too close” and “too small to describe.” The differences between the
tracks themselves on this compilation utterly swamp any differences
between the formats.
STARDUST
By the time I started listening to Stardust, I had pretty much given up
listening for differences. It was just as well that I did. I heard even less of
them between the absolutely stock CD and the stereo-only SACD version
of this Willie Nelson classic. I was tired of straining to hear differences so
small that it was nothing but an additional strain to try to describe them.
I just wanted to hear Willie sing.
CONCLUSION
I completely agree with what Barry Willis wrote—and I was not using a
Margules sonic sweetener. While I only had a small number of titles from
which to draw my conclusions, the Cullen Dac narrowed the differences
between CD and SACD playback to a point where there were no
consistent, or readily apparent, differences. I am still going to purchase
SACDs, as I find them, of music that I do not have, but I am not going to
spend money duplicating anything that I already have on CD. Not now.
IN SUMMARY
I listened to various CDs at the Cullen Dac’s two different upsampling
rates and heard essentially no difference between them. Then I compared
upsampled CDS to their SACD counterparts and heard essentially no
difference between them either. Talk about excitement.
I am actually surprised by these results. I expected the 192 kHz
upsampling to further improve the sound but to my ears it sounded the
same on everything but female voices where it was not quite as good. I
expected SACDs to still sound clearly better than CDs but they simply did
not. Where there were some very small differences between the formats,
I was just as likely to prefer the sound of the upsampled CD as I was the
SACD. The sense of ease I had noted previously as being the exclusive
province of SACDs is now apparent on everything that I listen to.
If the Cullen Dac is not the last word in CD playback, it is awfully close to
the end of the book.
Kent Johnson
February 28, 2008
Associated Equipment