Pro audio generally is much more affordable, and they put stuff in the smallest possible enclosure with plastic knobs. OK by me. Problem is by pro Dutch & Dutch dealer is 3.4 miles from home and te consumer dealer 3.8 miles from home. Where do I go?
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The Opera
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Think you were responding to Buho, Elk. Iâm the BDA3 owner and think it is worth every penny I spent. Buho took exception to the price tag.
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Sorry!
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No prob bud.
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some cd players play so great, that no external dac is need it.
ps. you can also buy a lp player to upgrade the cds, and you would be perfect 
I read with interest about the Marantz SA-10, a company I consider did more for improving CD replay than anyone else.
This is marketed as a disc player, but is a hugely capable DAC and digital player.
Loose change at $7,000.
http://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/marantz-sa-10-pm-10-cd-playerdac-integrated-amplifier
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magnific
A detailed explanation of the signal processing. Iâm even more impressed.
Very Good stuff!! 
How is the headphone output?
I picked up a NuWave DAC (pre-DSD version) this week (who knows, maybe even from someone here in the forum?) Iâm using it with my also newly-acquired Audiolab 6000CDT and predominantly with 16 bit 44, Native mode.
Sound is very good, the combo gives me about 90 percent of the quality sound I had with my PWT/PWD Mk II combo of the past. Using it with a tubed headphone output (Decware CSP2+ with anniversary mods) and Oppo PM-1 headphones. Great bedroom system.
This DAC was I think a bargain when new and is even more so at used prices. For someone who loves Redbook cd as I do this was a great DAC (and still is). The discreet Class A output stage does the trick.
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Reads like a half-arsed version of Tedâs approach.
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Well you could say Tedâs DSD DAC is a half-arsed version of the DcS ring DAC, as dCS were upsampling and DSD processing 20+ years before the PS Audio DSD arrived, and dCS were providing a DSD stream from SACD about 15 years before PS Audio came out with the DMP. *
Both PS Audio and dCS ran into trouble with SACD transports, dCS brought out a single unit player without SACD (their first non-SACD player ever), but they have now upgraded its to SACD (no idea where the drive came from). PS Audio have advised that the DMP is about to get a new Japanese drive, I suggested a while back it was the one Marantz developed for this unit, as Marantz have said they will be selling it as an OEM unit and it has already appeared in other manufacturerâs units. No confirmation as yet.
So you have the DCS Rossini Player, SACD and DAC, plus you can add the Rossini Clock, pretty expensive. Slightly cheaper, depending where you live, is the PS Audio DSD DAC and DMP transport when it arrives, fairly soon apparently. There are other DAC options and over here in the UK the option at this level would be the Chord Hugo TT2 and M-Scaler, slightly more expensive than the DSD DAC, but apparently knockout sound.
So the Marantz SA-10 for $7,000, about half the price of the PSA and Chord options and a third of dCS, and itâs their transport that others are using, seems a great deal for people who havenât got $15,000 to $25,000 to spend on a system to play SACD in DSD.
- dCS issued its first DSD DAC in 1999 (the dCS Purcell), which upsampled. It then issued its first SACD transport in 2000, the dCS Verdi. So over here we knew about these things long before Ted designed his DSD DAC and PSA manufactured it, itâs just not many people could afford it.
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Took me a while but I got around to researching the DCS ring DAC technology. Interesting, and yes some similarities to the DS DAC. A pretty good description in the latter section of this review: https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2019/10/13/dcs-bartok-dac-part-one-review/
I had a Panasonic portable CD player in the early 90âs that used â1-bit Multi stAge Noise Shapingâ. So yes â various parts of this have been done before. Maybe I was a bit short on the Marantz.
Still, I think Ted deserves some innovation credit on at least three fronts.
- Using high level output switches into a simple transformer-based passive low-pass filter.
- The clocking and oversampling architecture, with its single low-phase-noise crystal, integer upsampling of everything, and input rate tracking while remaining decoupled from external clock jitter
- Developing an algorithm to upsample, low-pass filter and attenuate both PCM and DSD data streams completely losslessly
These are all part of the strength of the DS DAC. Have they been done elsewhere?
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The RingDAC was developed in the late 1980s and has been continuously developed ever since. You need to be a bit of genius to understand what they do and how theyâve done it over the years, together with the approach of other manufacturers.
Here is the relevant technical paper from dCS, from over 20 years ago (October 1998).
This was a precursor from the Purcell upsampling DAC (not oversampling).
There is a discussion here, from 2000.
Stereophile reviewed the dCS Purcell in 2001, a machine released 20 years ago. The reviewer preferred a much more expensive SACD player, but a few years later dCS was able extract the DSD data from SACDâs.
https://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/454/index.html (see page 4)
Frankly, I have no idea what Ted does. He is clearly a very skilled engineer working in Western USA and dCS are based near Cambridge, UK, a fairly large team that started doing digital conversion for avionics in the early 1980s and have focused on audio digital conversion for over 30 years. dCS have published quite a lot over the years, see above, I donât know about Ted.
They are not really comparable because dCS are hugely more expensive than the DSD DAC and much more complex. Even their cheapest single box player is about 3 times the price of the DSD DAC.
Nevertheless, the DSD DAC has remained a favourite amongst the industry and consumers for some years, and even I could afford one if I needed one.
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