OnTheBench.key by Jon Hancock, on Flickr
This came to my attention because of a flyer from Audio Advisor offering this unit for just $999.99 on April 1. (no fooling).
While the performance is not quite up to the standards of say, an AURALiC Vega, it is VERY close, according to JA's measurements- 19 bits of effective resolution, nice input filter options, and overall very good results in Stereophile's evaluation.
If an NAD M51 or AURALiC Vega are out of your price class for now, this bears serious investigation and consideration. It uses Analog Devices AD1955 in dual differential mode; this is the DAC used in the Berkeley Alpha DACs version 1 and 2. That price is up on Audio Advisor's web site as I write this.
The 851D is listed in Stereophile's April 2016 recommended components, and Art Dudley did wax rather poetic about the 851:
Now, the interesting question from a marketing viewpoint is whether this is opportunism on Cambridge Audio's part or Audio Advisor or some combination of the two- perhaps this has been a slow moving product, (due to inept promotion?) and now they have some wind under the wings, so to speak, and are taking advantage. Or maybe there is even a newer version in the wings... who knows? But from everything I know about the market, I seriously doubt you'll find a better deal for this kind of money.
BTW, it includes balanced outputs and AES/EBU inputs, and according to JA even the TOSLINK worked at up to 192 kHz. (I don't do gear without balanced I/O these days)
Also, it appears that the 851D uses the same solid state volume control (with multiplying DAC as attenuator/gain control) as the 851A, NOT using a digital domain volume control, but that is not confirmed on the web site, but by presentation of some secondary details.
Since this is not the sort of thing I would want to speculate on and mis-represent, I just ordered a silver version to check out and evaluate. A full review will be forthcoming, including confirming the bench performance, and investigating the volume control behavior.
If this unit performs as expected, and reported by Stereophile, I will use it as my program source for the more budget system evaluations in the future. (CatZ and similar level projects).
Let's put this in perspective- the dynamic behavior and distortion appear to be very good, including power supply residual noise; the effective resolution is about 19 bits; the best measured digital sources right now are running about 21 bits, but it typically takes you $3K or more to get to that level.
My general recommendations right now are the AURALiC Vega at the $3.5K level and above for some distance; below that it's a tight race, with the NAD M51 being a long time favorite, but the Schiit Yggdrasil getting the nod these days at $2K (limited distribution; direct from Manufacturer only- in reality, it's a $3K class product).
I've looked now and then at items in the $1K class and haven't seen anything I could really get excited about. The $1599 851D at $999.00 changes that.
More later...
This came to my attention because of a flyer from Audio Advisor offering this unit for just $999.99 on April 1. (no fooling).
While the performance is not quite up to the standards of say, an AURALiC Vega, it is VERY close, according to JA's measurements- 19 bits of effective resolution, nice input filter options, and overall very good results in Stereophile's evaluation.
If an NAD M51 or AURALiC Vega are out of your price class for now, this bears serious investigation and consideration. It uses Analog Devices AD1955 in dual differential mode; this is the DAC used in the Berkeley Alpha DACs version 1 and 2. That price is up on Audio Advisor's web site as I write this.
The 851D is listed in Stereophile's April 2016 recommended components, and Art Dudley did wax rather poetic about the 851:
The Cambridge 851D was nothing short of shocking: It trounced the Halide and came close enough to the LP to scare if not actually bite it. The Cambridge allowed Heifetz's violin the same clear delicacy in its opening notes as the vinyl, and allowed the orchestra as great a sense of scale as heard from the LP. The sound through the Cambridge was open, yet with no lack of substance. Heifetz's tone, especially at the opening of the Finale: Allegro guerriero, was nothing short of exquisite. And the Cambridge made me realize that Sargent had, in this piece, a much more flexible sense of time than I'd ever before appreciated: More than once, a very subtle accelerando made itself apparent, especially in the plucked double basses during the introduction. Only in its conveyance of physicality—in the plucked strings of the harp, the breath behind the horn, the strike of the cymbal—and in its conveyance of the last iota of timbral saturation, did the LP win out.
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/c...0f2GjvScDSd.99
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/c...0f2GjvScDSd.99
BTW, it includes balanced outputs and AES/EBU inputs, and according to JA even the TOSLINK worked at up to 192 kHz. (I don't do gear without balanced I/O these days)
Also, it appears that the 851D uses the same solid state volume control (with multiplying DAC as attenuator/gain control) as the 851A, NOT using a digital domain volume control, but that is not confirmed on the web site, but by presentation of some secondary details.
Since this is not the sort of thing I would want to speculate on and mis-represent, I just ordered a silver version to check out and evaluate. A full review will be forthcoming, including confirming the bench performance, and investigating the volume control behavior.
If this unit performs as expected, and reported by Stereophile, I will use it as my program source for the more budget system evaluations in the future. (CatZ and similar level projects).
Let's put this in perspective- the dynamic behavior and distortion appear to be very good, including power supply residual noise; the effective resolution is about 19 bits; the best measured digital sources right now are running about 21 bits, but it typically takes you $3K or more to get to that level.
My general recommendations right now are the AURALiC Vega at the $3.5K level and above for some distance; below that it's a tight race, with the NAD M51 being a long time favorite, but the Schiit Yggdrasil getting the nod these days at $2K (limited distribution; direct from Manufacturer only- in reality, it's a $3K class product).
I've looked now and then at items in the $1K class and haven't seen anything I could really get excited about. The $1599 851D at $999.00 changes that.
More later...
Comment