The moment I ran direct, I was struck by an epiphany - I hadn't at all gotten the full measure of the Odeon-Ag yet. This insight was instant the moment the very first track cued up. Yet for all its directness, the actual taste of this change was somewhat harder to quantify.


Sleepless poet it thinks itself, the right brain of course didn't hesitate. It indulged in its usual and exaggerated imagery right off the bat like a rabid End Times preacher: "It's entering a jungle at midnight. You're on foot and alone. The safety of the Range Rover's behind you. It's pitch black. Your senses are on full alert. Since eye sight is useless, your ears are like antennae. The cells in your exposed skin turn heat sensors.


Each aural event, each rustle, each creaking, slither and muted call, each subtle change in air pressure - each event no matter how small becomes acute like a sharp skin prick. The obviousness of daylight with its attendant lessening of sensory alertness; its softening of participation - all that's left behind in the vehicle. Damn does it feel alive. Oh shit... (a fed-up anaconda got even more fed up)".


Poetry tends towards the dramatic and broad brush strokes - I apologize for the beast. But it does capture the overall gestalt. It goes right for the jugular like the primitive animal it is.


The left brain's a bit slower. It's more careful to assess what's really happened. It's somewhat clumsy coming to terms, argumentative thrust and counterthrust preparing to subdue the beast. Appealing to logic and reason, it said: "The noise floor just dropped pretty significantly. And now this Solid-Tube thing is beginning to make sense. There is this SET-like transparency. It's a very tacit immediacy. It doesn't sound like tubes, really. it's just too eerily quiet for that. Yet it isn't flat or dry at all.


Something about freedom from texture and grit. That suchness - the thing that micro-power tubes do -- it's there in spades. It's elegant and nimble, yet the bass has been stripped of an unknown layer of murkiness or constriction. The voice is more present. The soundstage is more alive yet there's no tension. Things are quite at ease."


You should get the drift before this civilized left side caves in to the loquacious right. This improvement's gravitas seemed the equal of going from the analogue outputs of the Marantz to the digital feed via the Odeon. Yet while the first step was additive -- more bass weight, more fullness, more color, more density, more air, more ambient cues -- the second subtracted: Smaller textural grain, less tension, lower noise.

Revisiting the Marantz on its own merely confirmed this two-step. It sounded far more disappointing in this juxtaposition than in the previous A/B between it and the DAC. It thus appears that our Gallic friend Gilles Gameiro (that's three G's for good, gooder & goodest) has concocted a superior analog output stage. It's plainly outfitted with the requisite drive and transparency to get the better of my very good $2,400 preamplifier.


There's a common worry. Going amp-direct from a digital source, while possibly raising the stakes in the transparency race, also carries in its darker shadows a leanness or relative wussiness that can only be ameliorated by the fresh blood infusion of a preamp.


In a previous review against the same SET (using its optional attenuator as the bypass to determine coloration or loss of transparency with the PRe1 in the loop) I had called this very preamp "superior table water - crystal clear and no self taste at all, my idea of the ideal preamp: Do nothing but control volume and switch inputs".

Perhaps there's enough evidence to support the no-preamp worry as a likely general shortcoming of the direct approach. It's akin to the passive versus active preamp dialogue. But - the Odeon-Ag, at least in my system, clearly transcended these limitations. It made a superior solid-state preamp -- dead-quiet, neutral to a fault and in this particular comparison mated to the impedance-optimized 3 o'clock setting of the Odeon's volume control - well, not only redundant but clearly inferior. As though adding it to the chain dampened things. And I'm not getting rid of it. It's functionally way too cool with its volume-memory per input, its precise attenuation and balance control via remote. It's usually invisible. And I'll need it for my Cairn Fog.


Yet while this review now concludes with the DAC-2 comparison to run its final course (with a brief pit stop in the Toslink camp), I feel compelled to make a conclusive point already. Regardless of the next findings, the total performance gains of the Odeon-Ag, used as a $1,390 triple input digital preamp/DAC, were proportionately far more pronounced than just feeding it into an analog preamp. Perhaps that's also because, unlike Wadia's much pricier variable direct outputs in the digital domain, the Birdland doesn't throw bits away when you throttle way back as I had to with my super-efficient hornspeakers.


To verify that, I alternated attenuation procedure between running the Birdland wide open and cutting gain on the PX-25's volume control, or bypassing the amp's attenuator and adjusting the Odeon's instead. Same difference - the Ag's sonic quality was independent from where I parked its pot (with the amp wide open, this equated to about 8:30 to 9:00 o'clock, i.e. heavily attenuated).


Any prospective Ag owner must evaluate the Odeon in direct-mode to ascertain its complete performance potential. That functionality is there for a reason. Your mileage may vary, that's how it goes in audio. But I'll say this: From retail and writer friends, I gathered post-review feedback on the PRe1's stature against further competitors. That only underscored my already very strong personal regard for it.


I thus feel reasonably certain that in order to not hear an improvement via the Odeon-direct route would require quite the monster preamp - likely a rather expensive proposition that only becomes a concern if you have analog sources that the Birdland can't accommodate. The only other obvious scenario for preamp preference? If you've opted for a tube preamp with a recognizable valve sound. In my case, zee toobs are in zee amp - I wanted crystalline neutrality and transparency in the pre to not muck up the SET aroma. For sonic reasons, I thus don't really need a preamp. But in my second system I run the eVo 200.4 preceded by the valved Art Audio VPS-DM. I enjoy the latter's tube-induced minor harmonic enhancement and injection of dynamics. I would lose these particular added qualities going Odeon-direct.

I again began with an instrumental solo to not initially get sidetracked by too many diverse timbres and the complexity of added percussion: Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit" with Nojima on piano [Reference Recordings 35], a trusted regular of a superior piano recording with absolutely mindboggling performance.


Close, very close. That was my first impression of the two DACs. However, there were two subtle differences I could discern, the first in the realm of timbre. The DAC-2's harmonic envelope suggested red gold while the Odeon-Ag was more silvery - as though the Bel Canto weighted the lower overtones more while the Birdland shifted the harmonic center slightly upwards.

Nojima's Hamburg Steinway thus sounded a bit more massive, physical or "grounded" via the DAC-2 and a bit more delicate and elegant via the Odeon - two refined yet understated and somewhat elusive takes on the same subject.


The second aspect of minor differentiation repeatedly suggesting the word "elegance" for the Odeon lay in the way notes ended - as though each died in its own bubble of space that itself took its place in the bigger space of the Oxnard Civic Auditorium where the recording occurred. Combined with the silvery aspect, this created a somewhat "otherworldly" mien offset by the DAC-2's slightly denser or meatier rendition.

Both converters resolved all the myriad little mechanical playing noises, the actuations of the damper and sustain pedals and the occasional nail on ivory. These performance cues created a kind of emotional intensity that nearly suggested Nojima's bodily movements quite in visible terms.


I next selected the first 6 minutes of the opening Non Allegro of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances Op. 45, with one of my favorite European orchestras, the Concertgebouw under, in this instance, Vladimir Ashkenazy [London 410 124-2]. From massive kettledrums, mighty brass and a very unusual wind band with saxophone interlude, this fin de siecle romantic tone poem proves why Rachmaninoff, like Ravel, was considered a master orchestrator.

Both DACs proved experts at mapping out a positively gargantuan soundstage, well outside the speakers, with the DAC-2 providing slightly more width and illuminating the far corners a bit stronger. The thunderous kettledrum thwacks were rendered with glorious impact on both, the DAC-2 exhibiting a minor edge in bass slam.


If I owned the 2, I'd back off the DUO's subwoofer pot by one click. The present setting reflects teamwork with the Marantz which is an LF welterweight compared to these heavyweight bass rulers. The Odeon still works within said setting by maxing it out to what appears realistic while the DAC-2's added oomph tipped the scales in slight need for a reset.

This comment doesn't suggest an imbalance. In the context of the Avantgarde's adjustability, it merely describes my reaction to the Bel Canto's astonishing bass heft. Beyond minor soundstage differences, the only other change I could identify in multiple A/Bs was again the harmonic content, with the DAC-2 sounding slightly fuller, the Birdland a mite leaner. Backing off from such microscopic inspection, a somewhat more casual observer would refer to these components as far more identical than not.

Petru Guelfucci's title track on Corsica [Tinder Records 42841882] opens with piano and solo cello. The piano via the Odeon once again had that more silvery "elegant" demeanor, the cello a bit less wood than with the DAC-2. Accompanying Petru's powerful voice by singing with him internally, I intuited him a bit lower in my chest with the Bella Voce / Bel Canto, a bit higher toward the throat in the Odeon.


In the short male chorus, the Bel Canto, by now expectedly, added an extra measure of robustness to the men's voices while the Odeon emphasized perhaps a stronger separation between them. But aside from such a desperate hunt to identify minor differences, both DACs seemed essentially cut from the same cloth - luscious bespoke Italian designer brocade.

On Oscar Castro-Neve's Tropical Heart on xrcd [0008-2], I dig "Envelope", a tightly tweaked groove with solid drum work, steady bass guitar punctuations and Oscar's urban funk acoustic guitar atop.

On this track I was hardest pressed to zero in on differences. The only items I felt reliably drawn to were Alex Arcuna's closed cymbal work on the hard left, possessing that extra iota of zip & zing via the Odeon-Ag, and certain short bass excursions that might have had more punch on the DAC-2.


But at this point -- and for the purposes of this "sidebar" comparison in what is a feature write-up on the Birdland Audio converter, not a drawn-out count-the-freckles shoot-out -- I felt comfortable that both DACs perform as their close pricing suggests they should: Neck-to-neck, or shoulder-to-shoulder.

If the Japanese award for the Birdland is any indication (presumably said party had some in-depth familiarity with the various offerings available in the category to single it out for this bestowal) both DACs belong on the pedestal of high-performance units under $2,000. Perhaps they even compete with costlier ones - both firms have a track record for offering value-priced components.


Did I have a preference? If I lived without a preamp, I'd opt for the Birdland and run it direct. If I had a preamp, I'd probably lean toward the Bel Canto DAC simply to avoid putting multiple attenuators in series (though listening suggests this attenuator is about as sonically invisible as they come).


At the end of the day, it's really half a dozen of one and six of the other, just as my opening statement of well-made like-priced modern-day digital predicted. Both examples provided me with an astounding level of resolution, albeit -- and thankfully -- without any of the attendant sensory overload annoyance, coldness or mental-only stimulation that I felt faced with when first listening to the original Tact Millennium digital amplifier a few years ago. By clinically rendering every wart, pimple and wrinkle during that long past encounter, I ultimately missed the forest for the trees and moved on.


Speaking of which, the only to-do item left on today's assignment is the promised comparison between S/PDIF and Toslink feeds. I've made arrangements to investigate this issue in more length during the upcoming Bel Canto DAC-2 review (using cable pairs from multiple manufacturers to minimize inter-brand voicing concerns). For today, we'll look at merely one example: Using the well-liked Acoustic Zen S-PDIF MC-squared=Zen $298/1m reference against the ...