RMAF 2015

Shhh, don't tell anyone: When you walk into a room at a hi-fi show and the person in charge asks if you have any music with you that you'd like to hear, you know they are confident in the sound of their system. On the other hand, if you walk into a room and they are only willing to play music that sounds as if it was made by fairies with feathers, you know something is terribly wrong. Luke Manley and Bea Lam of VTL always offer to play my music through their show system.

This year the new item of interest in the dCS, VTL, and Wilson room for us is the new dCS Rossini DAC ($23,999 or $28,499 for the CD Player version which is pictured up top) and the Rossini Master Clock ($7,499 pictured above). The Rossini DAC is also a network player and the company uses the Stream Unlimited Stream800 module for the UPnP/DLNA stuff. dCS have developed their own control app and in addition to playing from your network-attached storage you can also stream from Tidal, Spotify Connect, and Deezer.

The Rossini houses the same proprietary Ring DAC as found in the top-O-the-line Vivaldi DAC ($35,999 see Michael Fremer's review in Stereophile). Rossini upsamples all incoming data to DXD or DSD, your choice, and there are a number of DSP filters to tailor the sound to taste.

As fate would have it, by the time I got here to listen I had over-written all of the music on my USB stick with other stuff (no further comment forthcoming) so when Luke asked the question he always asks, I had to say, "No." Instead, I was treated to a number of lovely tracks including one from Cécile McLorin Salvant on vinyl, it's OK it's a digital recording, from here newest LP For One to Love. My notes read, "Sounds simply fantastic."