dCS Vivaldi
 

Just pulled the trigger on an upgrade for my dCS Paganini / Puccini upsampler and clock. When delivered I'll have a full Vivaldi stack minus the transport. Impressions to follow in a few weeks. I had a few technical reasons for making the switch. The Paganini did not auto sense file sampling rates. You also had to manually switch clock frequencies if you switched sampling rates. The Vivaldi The clock has multiple outputs so you can send the to the U/S and DAC - 44.1 and 48kHz and multiples thereof. The units lock to the one they needs for whatever file is being converted. If anyone has any unique experiences or lessons learned in the setup of the DAC / Upsampler, please post. Mine will be here in about three weeks.

Cincy

Great purchase. Looking forward to your impressions when you get them into your system.

Congrats Cincy!
Please post your impressions upon the differences between the Paganini/Puccini and the Vivaldi then!

congrats ! Very curious to read about your impressions on the clock. I recently ordered my dCS Vivaldi DAC to replace my Scarlatti DAC. Vivaldi should be here in about week...I'll keep using my Scarlatti Clock and Trans for the time being...

Speakers: Rockport Altair 2
Preamp: Robert Koda K10 Amp: Ayre MX-R
Cables: Transparent Opus MM2 Spkr, Opus MM2 & Trans Ref MM MM2 Intcnct.
Power Shunyata Triton/Typhon, Anaconda Zitron cords (x9)
Digital dCS Scarlatti Clock/Trans/Dac with Transparent Reference XL Digital cables (clock and dual aes)
Phono: Grand Prix Monaco TT, Schroder LT arm, Jan Allaerts MC2 Finish & Lyra Atlas, Nagra VPS/VFS
Racks: Grand Prix Audio Silverstone F1 (x2)

Jfrech

Boy are you in for a treat. I sold my dCS and my Preamp to buy the Vivaldi DAC. I'm running my Mark Levinson monoblocks direct from the DAC. This change was without question the biggest single upgrade I ever made in terms of improvement in perceived sound. Mind you I was coming from an all dCS system! There is just nothing like that Vivaldi DAC that I have ever heard. I'm expecting minor refinement with the clock and upsampler. Our systems are very similar so once again, prepare to be amazed.

Cincy

Awesome; remember how much we love photos. :)

My Vivaldi dac should be here mid week :-)

Comments on break in? A few days or a few weeks? I know my dCS Scarlatti takes 2-3 days to sound right from a full power off/cold start

Speakers: Rockport Altair 2
Preamp: Robert Koda K10 Amp: Ayre MX-R
Cables: Transparent Opus MM2 Spkr, Opus MM2 & Trans Ref MM MM2 Intcnct.
Power Shunyata Triton/Typhon, Anaconda Zitron cords (x9)
Digital dCS Scarlatti Clock/Trans/Dac with Transparent Reference XL Digital cables (clock and dual aes)
Phono: Grand Prix Monaco TT, Schroder LT arm, Jan Allaerts MC2 Finish & Lyra Atlas, Nagra VPS/VFS
Racks: Grand Prix Audio Silverstone F1 (x2)

watch out for those sampel rates
 

Hello , this is my first post here.

The benefit if the dCS system clock is only realised when all boxes in the stack in operation are slaved to the clock. The file data rate is not the essential consideration.

In practice this means that the device rendering the music file has to have a wordclock input so that it can be slaved to the dCS clock.

I'll try to explain by example. Let us take a 48/96kHz file media streamer. The steamer does not have wordclock input. The 48 Khz pulse on the streamer's internal clock will not be in synchronisation with the 48kHz pulse used in the dCS DAC ( even if derived from the system clock) even though both are running at the same rate and are stable.

So if the DAC is set to Synch to the wordclock then the incoming data stream from the steamer will be out of synchronisation with the timing of the pulses in the DAC. Eventually you will hear a glitch as the two drift further and further out of synchronisation with each other.

If the DAC is accepting data from a source that is not slaved to the SAME clock as the DAC you should set the DAC to synch Audio.

I too thought that if I had any e.g. 48kHz or multiple thereof file then I should set the clock to 48kHz. It took me a while and a long conversation with dCS before the light bulb lit.

Anyway have a great time with you new purchase.

When your dCS Vivaldi is new, I found you need to give it at least a good 4 days before it stabilize. In terms of break-in, I would say at least 300-500 hours minimum, but I must say I noticed a big jump in performance once I got to 1,000 hours.

I leave mine ON all the time so getting to 1,000 hours should take you 5-6 weeks or so. I am well beyond 10,000 hours on mine and it sounds nothing like when it was new. Don't get me wrong it sound great out of the box, but something magical happen passed 1,000.

I would be curious to know what others have to say...

PAR... Welcome to AA! :wave: