If I were allowed just six words starting with my initial 's' to paraphrase the Classic DAC II, I'd use serene, settled, smooth, soft, stately and substantial. Rather than even remotely flashy via top-down glossiness or crisp outline limning, the Nagra asks where on the etch-to-edge axis we like to sit. Then it decides that at most we'd opt for the 3rd 'e' but still prefer to be more removed. Forget flitty nerviness altogether. This DAC seems to take more time rather than be in any rush. Neither is it fresh, frisky or front row. Its domain is the depth of the classic concert perspective where music happens at a distance rather than turns lurid lap dance. These are descriptors of a mood or climate. They're not suggesting that close-mic'd recordings mixed to be in our face suddenly morph into a genre-crushing caricature of a capacious symphonic setting. Still, the general gestalt reflects decades of Nagra sponsoring the Montreux Jazz Festival and being most familiar with its and other Lake Geneva venues like Lausanne's JazzOnze. With their DAC II fronting a system, expect echoes of that listening culture.
In a stereo setting, fully unfurled depth relies on proper setup. But it also needs very low self noise and minimal temporal confusion to capture the often subliminal ambient cues which easily vanish in the noise floor unless we play too loud to lift up a recording's least significant bits. Even then they may still blur in time. The DAC II's excellent depth recovery points back at Matthieu's earlier comment. One of the revision's design briefs was about super-silent power supplies for still lower noise. It's why the DAC II needn't flaunt full-frontal freshness to be high resolution. It can remain calm and civilized because true res as harmonic micro data and subtle recorded reflections is in the bag. No need to fake it up with crispy edging and upper mid/lower treble forwardness. Compared to retrieving elusive overtones and ambient intel, hearing a sax's keys clack or a guitarist's finger slides is coarser business. There's a level below such incidental noises. That still finer less blunt level informs true tone and the overlay of the recorded ambiance onto our own room. It's simply less obvious high resolution if that makes sense; and relies on recordings which pack a high dose of tone modulation and space cues in the first place. It's back at Nagra meaning 'to record'. These folks are very familiar with that other side of the biz. Here what's made isn't playback hardware but music and the gear and expertise necessary to capture it properly. What's more, Nagra prefer recording in the analogue domain. Not expecting that to inform their playback hardware would wish for a zebra with spots not stripes. Why would one?
Suspecting that I'd not yet heard the DAC II at its best—I thought it somewhat light on grip, grit and gumption so a bit more sedate than seductive—it finally dawned on me. Nagra intend to partner their converter with active preamps like they make. Meanwhile I ran its low-ish output voltage and 430Ω down 6m of cable into a PGA chip built into my outboard crossover. Once I recognized the error of my ways, synchronicity rang. I had a deluxe two-box Pass Labs XP-22 in the crib. No sooner thunk than clunk, it was in the rack right beneath the DAC II, Cen.Grand in the bleachers looking on. Now I was printing the long green.
Speaker monos on one side of the sound|kaos sub, matching stereo amp to drive each 15" woofer from its own channel on the other. 100Hz/4th-order active xover beneath mono amps. The Mundorf resistor above the speaker binding posts sets the relative treble balance. Qualio offer different values to give the owner tuning leeway.
The Cen.Grand's noticeably higher output voltage was further proof that it had been optimized for amp-direct drive unlike the Classic DAC II. Mistake. Fixed.
