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The 16-bit/44.1kHz RedBook standard has been with us long enough to assume that hardware manufacturers had sufficient time to optimize its playback. The latest announcement for the consumer sector in that regard is the appearance of 32-bit professional AKM AK4397 chips in Esoteric's 20th anniversary D-05. Regardless of conversion math however, the CD format is forever locked at 16/44 encoding. No number crunching can add data that's not already on the disc. That's a salient bit of common sense worth remembering. It's not about adding anything. It's about not missing all that's there.


By relying on commercially available silicon from a handful of semi conductor fabricators -- AKM, Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic, Texas Instruments (Burr Brown), Wolfson to name a few -- the list of possible ingredients in the conversion process is quite limited. Now factor that certain chips' isolated super specs already exceed the possible, for example their dynamic range and S/N ratio being actually delivered through the entire system chain to the ear. It's easy to appreciate why in the end, so many state-of-the-art digital machines should sound more rather than less similar. It's like Mexican food. How many different ways can you combine beans, cheese, chile, rice, guacamole and salsa and expect unique flavors?

As Daniel Weiss explained, one distinguishing feature is the avoidance of errors in the time domain called jitter which should lead to higher resolution. Output stage devices -- tube or transistors, what kind -- are another area of distinction. With those, one would expect sonic differences greater perhaps than those purely math-based. To find out, I assembled four different systems. Three of those deliberately avoided valves (unless installed in the competing CD players) and relied on a preamp with memory gain trim to enable level-matched input switching. For context, the Polish granite-encased Ancient Audio Lektor Prime is fully balanced input to output, uses the same Philips transport as the Weiss and runs a 6H30-based valve output stage. The AMR CD-77 centers on a long discontinued Philips vintage chip, a proprietary transport, a tube-based output stage and selectable DSP enhancements. The Lektor Prime retails for 10K, the AMR for 8K, both significantly less than the Weiss duo.


It would be all swell and well to assume and then be told that for the additional money spent, the Weiss duo crushed the competition. In this case, that sort of thinking is best left for teenagers and their comic book heroes. In the real world, once a certain threshold of digital decoding competence has been crossed, the remaining difference may be measurable in the lab but what seems to have greater relevance is the choice of output devices. While you could think self-fulfilling prophecy -- after all, I'm known to love valves and the two other players were so equipped -- I held no foregone conclusions. If anything, I expected that a doubling or tripling of expenditure would net demonstrable justifications.

What I heard instead -- with three identical compilation CDs burned from an Olive hard-drive server running simultaneously on each machine to readily switch level-matched inputs for the hoped-for aha realization -- was an exceptionally level playing field. Differences remained but they were truly small, leagues removed from establishing a clear winner. Allegiances would also shift depending on track. In the end, there was that old devil Practicality. The horned one felt that considering money, complexity and features, the Polish Ancient Audio player -- the most compact of the bunch, with analog domain volume, 7V max signal strength plus one analog input -- represented the best value here. Even sonically, it fell between the Weiss and the AMR, combining the latter's tone colors with most of the former's separation power.


But let's start at the beginning. The valved machines did hold a small advantage in color temperature or inner pressure, translating to slightly higher density or solidity. However, both faded a bit in intensity at the lateral edges of the stage where the Weiss maintained its center image density from extreme stage left to right. The AMR had the most powerful bass coupled, to a very small degree, a nearly subliminal blur or roundness on the leading edge which the other players rendered more articulated - though shifting the CD-77 into oversampling could equalize that.


On coloratura soprano against symphonic forces [Mozart l'Egyptien 2], the Weiss and Ancient Audio players separated more incisively to feel more vigorous. On Azerbaijani singer Ilqar Muradov's minor-key lament against ethnic background chorus and lute, the AMR's very organic way with voices held the aces, with the Weiss in particular sounding cooler.

Mind you, teasing out subtle shifts in presentation required multiple rolls per track. Hearing a difference was one thing, knowing what, exactly, made it so another. To be clearly superior should mean an unambiguous, no-matter-what-track advantage that's readily explained. This wasn't that, not even close. However, I did have the review loaners long enough and in sufficiently diverse company to come to certain conclusions eventually.
On ECM, MA or Waterlily type fare -- very well recorded, with cubits of ambient cues -- the Weiss' number crunching did in fact dig the deepest. No hit-you-over-the-head obviousness, such discoveries belonged into the zone of late-night sessions when you give yourself over fully and trip the lights fantastic over the minuscule. How deeply one can latch on to decay trails, pursue the location of the recorded front wall, enter harmonic envelopes to explore fractional events... it's for such deep listening when all one's attention is truly focused that the greater nothingness between the audible notes of the Weiss rendition revealed minutiae the other players skipped over.
During one such session, playing a track over and over again from one machine to the next, one action suddenly presented itself in a clear mental image. Over the Weiss, things stood still whereas with the other machines, they always kept moving just a bit. This odd observation was in answer to wondering why the Weiss made it easier to see down to that 'molecular' level. It was like being asked to count crawling ants on a hill and retorting, rather irritated, "if the bloody buggers just stood still long enough".
Was this seeing lower jitter in action? Perhaps. However, those hoping for unconditional statements will look in vain. Spinning Misia's "Verde Anos" from her gorgeous Canto album of
Carlos Paredes tunes set to song, the deeper timbres of the string quartet from the valved players obliterated any fascination with extreme nuances in favor of being bathed in more burnished colors and pathos. Here, the Swiss player was cooler and more aloof - again, not drastically so (none of this commentary warrants anything more than your favorite micro quantities of "tad", "bit", "skoch", "smidge") but meaningful because of the unapologetic romanticism of the music.

Heavy juju music like Zawose & Brook's Assembly with its potent bass funk and unhinged African power vocals isn't introspective by a long shot. This boiling brew asks to be consumed at happy levels. The most important qualities then become drive, density and dynamics. The Weiss components proved heavyweights in the crunch and slam departments, keeping their cool when things got complex, raucous and high energy. The qualities of unwavering separation and evenness were perfectly appropriate for this rollicking material.
It's become commonplace to say how the magic of a superior hifi lives in those last 5% whose every partial gain equates the oxygen-starved efforts of a mountaineer spending minutes on a
single additional upward tackle. For those who view the job of a premium digital source as an extractor of maximum data, the Weiss in the above context justifies itself. Others will want some thermionic effects in the small signal domain. They will be willing to step down ultimate resolution just a tad to win tone color in the bargain for one. Such folks can come within spitting distance of the Weiss for significantly less coin - and arguably get ahead with certain aspects.


Another commonplace observation is the equation of extreme resolution with something unnatural. Conceptually, that shouldn't be. Unless the recording engineer deliberately concocted artifice with microphone placement (having you see down the throat of the lead singer while the band is mixed down in level to create unnaturally close-up focus for example), captured detail resolved is simply that: giving you what's been recorded. And the Weiss components plainly do not walk the path of etch and edge. It's simply instructive to realize how little purportedly state-of-the-art data recovery offers beyond what machines like the AMR and Ancient Audio already manage at their certainly not insignificant but still significantly lower pricing. Make no mistake - months of listening clearly suggest that after all the foreplay of tech talk is done with, normal listening -- already deeper than completely casual -- will not enter the depths where the Weiss advances operate. If you're not a listener who habitually approaches music listening as a no-mind meditation, what the Weiss offers beyond its half- or third-priced competitors will be lost on you. In fact, the differences you'll hear otherwise will likely have you prefer the tube-based players for their more obvious tone density.

It is, however, pertinent to remind oneself that anything not recovered at the head of the hifi trail won't make a surprise appearance later on. If you forgot anything before leaving for this trip, it won't miraculously show up in your luggage at your destination. It's even intuitive to suspect that valve-based digital machines invariably introduce a however benign softening or blurring whose opposite in premium non-valve machines must not be an automatically starker, drier, less organic thing but simply one that more perfectly "stands still" to make for a sharper, clearer recognition of what was recorded. After all, a sharper photo is never criticized for better focus than one slightly out of focus. Comfort items like thermionic warmth or harmonic color can be introduced in the preamp or power amp stages.


In conclusion, the Weiss duo completely avoided my reactions to the first-generation NuForce amps and Benchmark Media's DAC-1 where I felt that the presentation of detail against ultra-black backgrounds exhibited an unnaturally heightened contrast ratio, ultimately lacked tone and suffered artifice in the treble. The Weiss sound is free of those shortcomings. In fact, it's free of anything that could be termed sonic shortcoming with a straight face. In amp-direct mode with speakers like Rethm's Saadhana, I personally preferred the Ancient Audio's 6H30 action for enhanced timbral richness but as with every sound comment in this review, the delta of difference was a small fissure in the ground only ants would mistake for an abyss.


Features are truly comprehensive; the remote is a poster child for intuitive organization; build quality seems superlative - and pricing befits Swiss luxury kit. Competitors I've reviewed are the two-box Esoterics and, for converters, the Stylus Systems Had. If you've been through the kid-in-the-candy-shop phase, you'll appreciate the unadorned, compact material implementation of Weiss. Considering the unstoppable ascendancy of hard-drive and eventually solid-state memory-based playback, the sheer fact that RedBook-only products of the Weiss Jason + Medea's caliber remain available to 2-channel non-professional hobbyists is astonishing. This, after all, is professional kit. How many home-based audiophiles will be prepared to invest steeply into a fading delivery format is a question for the pundits and their crystal balls. Those in the market for $30K digital machines know exactly who they are. It's to them these Weiss pieces are relevant. Those content with 98%, at the associated component level I'm personally playing at, can enter this game far earlier during the coin-saving process...

Quality of packing: Foam end caps in single card board.
Reusability of packing: Can be reused at least once.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: Very easy.
Condition of components received: Perfect.
Completeness of delivery: Components, remote, power cords, owner's manual.
Quality of owner's manual: Top notch.
Website comments: Has all the necessary specs and basic photos.
Warranty: 3 years.
Human interactions: Quick responses to all questions directly from the designer.
Pricing: Expensive.
Application conditions: Insure the remote is unlocked.
Comments & suggestions: The Jason display isn't large enough to be fully meaningful in the listening seat.
Manufacturer's website