Earlier in the year, Sino reader Yu Bai wrote that "recently a famous Chinese audio reviewer compared the Aqua La Scala MkII to the Chord Dave and Prism 8XR converters. He clearly chose the Aqua as the best." Sydney-turned-Berlin contributor to these pages John Darko lists the same machine on the top spot of his personal DAC index. Yours truly has used it as one of his reference decks ever since its review. German colleagues at Hifistatement.net gave it top marks as well. In short, with this machine Aqua gained quite universal accolades for sonics, build and relative value.


Now LaScala v2016 turns its back on dwindling supplies of NOS silicon and joins the ranks of discrete ladderists like Aries Cerat, LessLoss, MSB, Rockna, S.A.Lab, TotalDAC, Wagner Audio & Bros. This contingent plays counterpoint to the cadre which converts all PCM to DSD like AK Design, Meitner, Nagra, PS Audio & Co. who clone 1-bit converters from custom-written FPGA code. The far bigger middle ground between these two camps is taken up by the Sigma Delta brigade which, these days, seems to fancy ESS Labs Sabre chips over most others though Asahi Kasei, Crystal, TI and Wolfson remain popular. Finally there is a small group with members like Metrum Acoustics and Schiit who pursue the R2R multi-bit route with on-chip solutions from either the industrial sector or self-rolled; or who do everything by FPGA like Chord.


In my Formula review, I compared the original LaScala MkII to the Formula. Today focuses first on comparing old and new LaScala MkII. This assignment is thus particularly for owners of the original who may wonder what a €1'000 retrofit buys. For starters, let's look at what changed materially; rather more than a single new PCB module. To avoid charging for face plate swaps or sticking a tacky MkIII badge on the back, Aqua wisely opted against a name change. The MkII remains a MkII. The new opto logic hides beneath the bonnet like grey matter inside a skull: out of sight but responsible for the IQ.