Stuck happily in Vicente's bolero groove (what an album!), the i2digital X-60 now connected both Shigaraki and Bel Canto converters to the Shigaraki transport. Perfect world = unattainable utopia? Perhaps not. The box from Minneapolis took the previous resolution gap between Cairn and Shigaraki and added it to the far side of the Frenchman. It cleary resolved considerably more ambient data than the ceramic cube from Tokyo. Its comparative hooding or reduction of air placed the same performers into a drier but also smaller hall, decay trails shortened, soundstage narrowed. The American's bass was stronger, too - not lower but more pronounced and substantial, revealing an extra degree of rhythmic subtext. However, this apparent increase of raw data did not raise the dreaded specter of sensory overload whose arrival you usually notice as a reflexive recoil in your psyche, a sense of restlessnes that eventually turns attention deficit.

In other words, the easy-to-make-fun-of American more-is-better morale was balanced wonderfully against suave smoothness, a sign perhaps that designer John Stronczer has spent an undue amount of time in France of late? Kidding aside, of the three combos chronicled thus far (Shigaraki/Shigaraki, Cairn, Shigaraki/Bel Canto), this was clearly my favorite - resolution (audiophile in-sight) coupled to musical pleasure (relaxation and elegance) serving a larger aural portion than either my reference player or the two Japanese had put on my musical calorie plate thus far.


Transports are just propeller heads spinning in place? Alternately hitching the Jolida JD-100 and Shigaraki transport to the Shigaraki DAC put a lie to this by now terribly antiquated presumption. But the specific results were suprising nonetheless. The Jolida-as-transport clearly lacked definition or focus. The non-oversampling DAC's innate -- but well-calibrated -- soft focus now went from fetching to muted and thus a bit lifeless. Too much muscle tone had gone, spunk had vanished. The music just sat there rather listlessly. Boring! Inserting the Shigaraki transport rectified this scary descent into old geezerhood to make me feel strappingly young again while, thankfully, a bit mellower than in my reckless heydays.


To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from transport swapping. Not being an outboard DACman yet -- though the DAC-2 seems mightily compelled to change that -- I hadn't dabbled in such experiments in the past. Clearly not frequency domain specific, the changes I heard now had to do with how precisely the transports focused the images, and how well they put the bits and pieces of data into a cogently timed whole that upheld rhythmic tension and integrity. Considering my lack of experience in this arena, asking me to speculate how good a transport the Shigaraki makes is squeezing a stone for blood. Its superiority to the JD-100 was blatant. What generalized conclusions could I possibly extrapolate from that? After all, the Jolida wasn't optimized for stand-alone transport duty. I could perform one more --slightly handicapped -- experiment to add to this question. Don't expect an etched-in-granite answer though. For that I would have needed at least one more dedicated CD transport - not this time, baby.


In a prior report on coaxial versus glass-fiber optical digital interfaces, I had proclaimed the X-60 and "green meany" WIreWorld SuperNova III+ Toslink virtually indistinguishable - on the very DAC-2 unit still in-house in fact. I now connected the Cairn and Shigaraki to it. As the photo shows, simply toggling between either input via the DAC's front-facing push button while remotely changing inputs on the PRe1 allowed me to pair up the Shigaraki and Cairn-as-transport against each other.


The handicap obviously stuck with the fact that unlike on the Jolida, I now used different digital cables. As I said, using my Marantz CDR630 CD recorder with Toslink and coaxial outputs had left me scratching my head to hear differences between either cable but a more resolving source (or down-stream components) might well have shown them to exist.


So? Much closer. Still, a difference remained. The Shigaraki transport sounded -- don't shoot me -- more natural. Shuttling back and forth, this first subconscious registration remained consistent. Trying to determine why was harder. I eventually concluded that the Cairn slightly overshot in the opposite direction where the JD-100 had so gravely erred before - its focus or grip on the images seemed nearly too cramped by comparison, nearly sharper or more effortful than necessary. Once this recognition had taken hold, I could relatively easily spot it in subsequent sessions.

Verdict? Both Shigarakis share responsibility for the slightly dark, slightly warm, distinctly relaxed yet rhythmically completely compelling character already noted, the DAC more so than the transport. If we established a bad-to-great sequence of the four combinations explored, it'd go from Jolida/Shigaraki to Shigaraki/Shigaraki = Cairn/Bel Canto to Shigaraki/Bel Canto. The two configurations bracketed by my least and most favorite weren't the same but equally enjoyable hence the "=" mark. Which one comes first or second - don't you hate arbitrary value systems? That's more a matter of mood than quality. I'd call the Cairn/Bel Canto rig a day system when the sharper mental faculties want stimulation. The Shigaraki ² is an after-sundown system when critical concerns evaporate, the frontal brain deactivates and more intuivite/emotional/absorptive faculties awaken.


Personally, what took my lunar crown was the particular combination of DAC-2 (its enhanced detail resolution coupled to marvelous smoothness) and the precise-yet-natural drive of the Shigaraki transport. Before the final period of today's review ends these musings, a few physical specs on both Shigarakis.


The 4716 transport is twice the length of a CD case, its depth 1.5 times a case's narrower side. The DAC is half as shallow as the power supplies which themselves are half a CD's width and just a bit longer. The transport's rear panel features the captive umbilical and two coaxial digital outputs numbered 1 and 2. 1 is DC-coupled and thus lacks a DC filter at its output to sing with the Shigaraki DAC that is outfitted with a DC input filter. 2 is AC coupled, hence has a DC filter on the output. Basic controls for play, pause, stop, bi-directional skip and scan as well as TOC are on top of the transport. The full-function while generic remote adds direct-track access, time and repeat functions, program, A-B, intro check and shuffle while of course also duplicating the main chassis commands.

The transport will display an error message when attempting to cue up a CD sans magnetic puck. Don't misplace it. Keep it on the spindle to protect the laser pickup from dust when not in use. In fact, leave a CD underneath to cover the part of the open tracking slot which the puck doesn't by itself. The 4715 DAC auto-detects and locks to 32, 44.1 and 48kHz sources, outputs 2.1V RMS and sports one S/PDIF coaxial input and one pair of single-ended RCA outputs. It carries a 5-year warranty while the transports comes with 2 years.


The transport's orange display lighting, in day light and 15' removed, is so dim as to appear black. At 5/8" x 2.6" inches, the readout window's also too small to be legible at any but close-up range. It seems added more to appease standard consumer expectations than be completely useful to music lovers who run through a CD cover-to-cover and close their eyes while they're at it anyway. I wager a bet. For sonic purist and redundancy reasons, Kimura-San would have preferred to eliminate the display entirely. Priced at $1,750 (ditto for the amp while the DAC is $1,250), this transport is clearly poised at the middle of the market. Prospective owners still demand all the ubiquitous features. Hence, whatever you could want functionality-wise is here - don't call it hairshirt audio. I have no snafus, hiccups or complaints to report in daily use. These cute digital Shigaraki twins worked flawlessly. Especially the transport may be quite the overachiever. Whatever preconceptions regarding funkified user interfaces previous reviews on the 47Lab Flatfish spinner may have instigated proved unwarranted. Shigaraki is functionally completely down-to-earth. Visually it is somewhat funky but call it the James Brown, not dweeb kinda power funk.


Now - I'm curious. Is the laid-back, harmonious, organic quality of Shigaraki's sonic signature (more Taoist saint than Samurai warrior) primarily a function of this non-oversampling, no-digital-filter approach to D/A conversion? If so, how would the pricier Progression DAC by Junji develop this theme further? If one could get some of the added resolution of the Bel Canto DAC-2 while stepping even deeper into this milieu of essentialness, things could get pretty darn addictive. Now stay tuned as I report next on the Shigaraki integrated amplifier in Part 2 of this 4-part review series.


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A reader/Shigaraki owner comments: Srajan - I was delighted to read your complete and careful Shigaraki transport/dac review - you went about it exactly as I would have hoped and I'm really looking forward to the following segments. I suppose my interest is more than casual since I recently added the Essence to a full Shigaraki system but I found that your characterization of the transport/dac sound was extremely accurate - especially the way in which the combo presented background microdetails and bite. I do occasionally miss the ferocity (never inappropriate) of my old and now departed EMC-1 on some guitar blues and Bartok quartets but found that the dynamics and punch of the Shig. amp reduced those concerns after a while. Great review, great site, I can't wait to read more!

Best,
Eavon


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