AUDIO CONSULTING DAC

​

There are a lot of opinions that suggest that analogue sound is better than digital sound.
 

At Audio Consulting It took us decades to achieve analogue front ends that really show what can be revealed from LP’s. Our Silver Rock Toroidal Phono Amplifier attracted noteworthy attention from Positive Feedback as well as from The Absolute Sound ... as did our very special turntables and tone arms.
 

We and our customers were, and still are, really surprised by what can be heard on Vinyl, despite the obvious mechanical limitations.
 

But, notwithstanding these limitations, and provided the recording is of good quality, there are lots of musical emotions to be had.
 

As for the aforementioned "caveat" -- "Provided the recording is of good quality"-- and why this can be a problem, this is marvelously described and discussed in Greg Milner’s book - Perfecting Sound Forever: The Story of Recorded Music
 

• There must be a reason why we always end up listening to LP’s from the late 1950's or early 1960's, some even "mono"

• What has happened to the sound in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's f?

• Well, you have to read Greg Milner’s book

Starting in the 1970's with the first digitally recorded masters and the LP’s that were produced from these masters, we were told that digital was “perfection”.
 

That proclamation was further reinforced when CD became available in the early 1980's.

Unfortunately, and as many of us by now know, this "perfection" was not the case ... and digital sound became famous for many unflattering attributes including “harshness, lack of harmonics, lack of decay etc.”. Even today we tend to say that one or another “particular digital” front end is so good that it almost sounds “analogue” -- meaning that analogue still is the reference.

It took us over 30 years of research here at Audio Consulting in order to understand why CD players, flash card readers and DAC’s may sound so boring. And, incidentally, it is definitely not enough just to add a tube output stage in order to compensate for this shortcoming.

As a result, the DAC that we have developed is a very special one …

In keeping with Audio Consulting's core expertise it, of course, is fully battery powered -- 4 batteries in fact, and of course it uses Silver Rock output and amplifying transformers, and of course it uses non-oversampling technology.

What is the result?  Well what do you expect us to say?
 

Try to listen to a system using it … visit Constantin at Atelier 13 Audio in Nashville
 

And for those who believe in technical specs, here are a few :

​

• NOS DAC

• 16bit / 44.1 KHz

• Proprietary S/PDIF Input circuit ... the absolutely essential key to unlocking much of the "magic"

• Four batteries powering the circuits

• A non feed-back buffer stage drives the gain and output Silver Rock transformer

• Internal wiring is our own silver wire with cotton tubing

• Assembled using our own 10% silver solder, custom-manufactured for use in our component

• XLR output connectors available instead of RCA at no extra cost

• The Power supply caps are made by Audio Consulting

​

​

​

​

$46,000

depending on currency fluctuation