I picked this up last week and got to play around with it for a few days before it had to go back. It’s a very cool device and well built, however, it’s a bit pricey in my opinion. More on that later.
What is this thing you ask? It’s the new Assemblage D2D-1 (for digital-to-digital) 24/96 upsampler and its made by the folks at Sonic Frontiers. It is designed to do three different things: Up samples from as low as 32 kHz to 96 kHz and interpolates word lengths from 16-bit to 24-bit; Jitter attenuation; and format converter.
You can find more info at http://www.partsconnection.on.ca/pub...2dconvert.html and a white paper on the device at http://www.partsconnection.on.ca/pub...whitepaper.pdf
Hooking the D2D-1 up was a snap...or so I thought. The first thing I noticed on mine was that the “coool†blue light they talk about to indicate it is getting power, didn’t work! I thought I had a bad unit, but gave it a try anyway. Fortunately for me it was just a bad bulb or something as the unit did work.
The next problem I ran into was that I wasn’t getting any subwoofer output when I upsampled to 24/96. I called the folks at Parts Connection and got a technician who incorrectly told me the D2D-1 wouldn’t work with my Yamaha RX-V1. In fact, it did work just fine. The problem was with the RX-V1, but had nothing to do with the D2D-1’s upsampled data stream. Within 24 hours of contacting Yamaha’s tech support I got confirmation that it was a design flaw in the RX-V1. Well, they didn’t call it a design flaw, but I do.
The RX-V1 has 24/96 DACs all the way around, yet, it can only play back 2-channel 24/96 (that’s not a big problem) and they bypass the DSP to ensure a cleaner signal path. The problem is that THEY PUT ALL OF THE BASS MANAGEMENT IN THE DSP! So, you cannot use a subwoofer when playing back 24/96 on the Yamaha. Luckily, I had an external crossover and just set my speakers to full to continue my testing.
Once I got past these obstacles, I sat down for a couple of days of listening. I can honestly say that there were several 16/44.1 CDs that I could really hear a difference in the upsampling. There was more air to the music and the bass seemed tighter. However, on too many CDs there was no difference or I could hear what another reviewer call a “veiling effect†of the music. That link is http://soundstage.com/revequip/assemblage_d2d1.htm .
The other problem I had with the D2D-1 was that it was TOO good at jitter attenuation! If you read the links above you’ll notice that the D2D-1 uses a proprietary method of using two phase lock loops (PLLs) to reduce jitter to extremely low levels. However, if a source produces jitter in excess of 200ppm, the second PLL cannot lock onto the signal. I ran into two problems here. The first was the Panasonic TU-DST50 (no surprise here for those that own them) and the second was my new Dish 6000 HDTV sat receiver. Both apparently had jitter exceeding the 200ppm threshold, resulting in the D2D-1 being unable to work with these devices. The D2D-1 allows you to remove a jumper internally to disable the second PLL if you want. To me, the jitter reduction was shaping up to be the product’s greatest asset since upsampling was hit and miss at best.
The other problem I have is with the D2D-1’s inputs & outputs. In my setup, the only output I could use on the unit was coax. The others (except for XLR) were proprietary. One of them was an I2S connector used by Audio Alchemy before they tanked (so why put it on there)? And there was no optical output at all. I called them about this and they explained that toslink inherently is more “jittery†and that they would never use optical for output. Hmmm...me thinks I’m beginning to understand who built this product and for whom...engineers! Now that is generally a good thing, however, I’d say this may be the one time where maybe it wouldn’t have hurt to have had a marketing type in there saying, “but our target market would be 500% bigger if we could include an optical output and not just pander to audiophiles that still have Audio Alchemy stuff laying around!â€
All in all the D2D-1 is engineered extremely well and I was almost tempted to keep it for the few CDs it made actual sonic improvements on. But for $700 the cost-to-benefit ratio just wasn’t there. Incidentally, I’ve sent a request into MSB to see if they’ll add a coax digital output to their Link III DAC. Why? Because I’d have a great DAC for music playback; decent jitter attenuation; 24/192 upsampling; and a format converter. This way I could benefit from the jitter reduction/format conversion for multi-channel playback (or if I just want to use the Denon 5800’s DACs) in an un/upsampled pass-through mode OR use the Link III DAC and feed the Denon via analog. I can have my cake and eat it too.
One final word about my evaluation of the D2D-1 is that of jitter. Thanks to the D2D-1, I know how much jitter the DST50 and the 6000 output and now I MUST find a cost effective way to reduce the jitter. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif And for those that want to understand more about jitter, check out this link www.galstar.com/~ntracy/acg/AandE/npt.on.jitter2.htm . I’m literally lying awake at night thinking about jitter! Scary stuff !!! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Tom
What is this thing you ask? It’s the new Assemblage D2D-1 (for digital-to-digital) 24/96 upsampler and its made by the folks at Sonic Frontiers. It is designed to do three different things: Up samples from as low as 32 kHz to 96 kHz and interpolates word lengths from 16-bit to 24-bit; Jitter attenuation; and format converter.
You can find more info at http://www.partsconnection.on.ca/pub...2dconvert.html and a white paper on the device at http://www.partsconnection.on.ca/pub...whitepaper.pdf
Hooking the D2D-1 up was a snap...or so I thought. The first thing I noticed on mine was that the “coool†blue light they talk about to indicate it is getting power, didn’t work! I thought I had a bad unit, but gave it a try anyway. Fortunately for me it was just a bad bulb or something as the unit did work.
The next problem I ran into was that I wasn’t getting any subwoofer output when I upsampled to 24/96. I called the folks at Parts Connection and got a technician who incorrectly told me the D2D-1 wouldn’t work with my Yamaha RX-V1. In fact, it did work just fine. The problem was with the RX-V1, but had nothing to do with the D2D-1’s upsampled data stream. Within 24 hours of contacting Yamaha’s tech support I got confirmation that it was a design flaw in the RX-V1. Well, they didn’t call it a design flaw, but I do.
The RX-V1 has 24/96 DACs all the way around, yet, it can only play back 2-channel 24/96 (that’s not a big problem) and they bypass the DSP to ensure a cleaner signal path. The problem is that THEY PUT ALL OF THE BASS MANAGEMENT IN THE DSP! So, you cannot use a subwoofer when playing back 24/96 on the Yamaha. Luckily, I had an external crossover and just set my speakers to full to continue my testing.
Once I got past these obstacles, I sat down for a couple of days of listening. I can honestly say that there were several 16/44.1 CDs that I could really hear a difference in the upsampling. There was more air to the music and the bass seemed tighter. However, on too many CDs there was no difference or I could hear what another reviewer call a “veiling effect†of the music. That link is http://soundstage.com/revequip/assemblage_d2d1.htm .
The other problem I had with the D2D-1 was that it was TOO good at jitter attenuation! If you read the links above you’ll notice that the D2D-1 uses a proprietary method of using two phase lock loops (PLLs) to reduce jitter to extremely low levels. However, if a source produces jitter in excess of 200ppm, the second PLL cannot lock onto the signal. I ran into two problems here. The first was the Panasonic TU-DST50 (no surprise here for those that own them) and the second was my new Dish 6000 HDTV sat receiver. Both apparently had jitter exceeding the 200ppm threshold, resulting in the D2D-1 being unable to work with these devices. The D2D-1 allows you to remove a jumper internally to disable the second PLL if you want. To me, the jitter reduction was shaping up to be the product’s greatest asset since upsampling was hit and miss at best.
The other problem I have is with the D2D-1’s inputs & outputs. In my setup, the only output I could use on the unit was coax. The others (except for XLR) were proprietary. One of them was an I2S connector used by Audio Alchemy before they tanked (so why put it on there)? And there was no optical output at all. I called them about this and they explained that toslink inherently is more “jittery†and that they would never use optical for output. Hmmm...me thinks I’m beginning to understand who built this product and for whom...engineers! Now that is generally a good thing, however, I’d say this may be the one time where maybe it wouldn’t have hurt to have had a marketing type in there saying, “but our target market would be 500% bigger if we could include an optical output and not just pander to audiophiles that still have Audio Alchemy stuff laying around!â€
All in all the D2D-1 is engineered extremely well and I was almost tempted to keep it for the few CDs it made actual sonic improvements on. But for $700 the cost-to-benefit ratio just wasn’t there. Incidentally, I’ve sent a request into MSB to see if they’ll add a coax digital output to their Link III DAC. Why? Because I’d have a great DAC for music playback; decent jitter attenuation; 24/192 upsampling; and a format converter. This way I could benefit from the jitter reduction/format conversion for multi-channel playback (or if I just want to use the Denon 5800’s DACs) in an un/upsampled pass-through mode OR use the Link III DAC and feed the Denon via analog. I can have my cake and eat it too.
One final word about my evaluation of the D2D-1 is that of jitter. Thanks to the D2D-1, I know how much jitter the DST50 and the 6000 output and now I MUST find a cost effective way to reduce the jitter. http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif And for those that want to understand more about jitter, check out this link www.galstar.com/~ntracy/acg/AandE/npt.on.jitter2.htm . I’m literally lying awake at night thinking about jitter! Scary stuff !!! http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif
Tom
