dCS: Only the music

Only the music, possibly the most apt 3 words to describe what dCS does in a nutshell. 

Data Conversion Systems to give them their full title have been around for a few years now (over 21 to be precise), we’ve been a dealer for quite some time and I honestly can’t think of another product which has impressed me, and moved me as much as dCS has.

The current range of products (Puccini, Paganini and Scarlatti) launched in late 2007. Since then there have been a couple of new additions to the range plus a new model altogether, the Debussy Dac.

Most people who are into hi-fi have heard of dCS, primarily due the dCS Ring DAC chip that Arcam used in several of their products in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s (The Alpha 9 CD Player and the FMJ CD23 were the 2 most well known).

The fully leaded dCS Ring DAC is without doubt the star of the show, coupled with a little bit of magic and pixie dust from the men in white coats at dCS the resulting product is nothing short of mind blowing.

The dCS Ring DAC has developed and evolved over the years into what you find in the product range today. Since its inception dCS has designed and produced the most accurate digital signal processing equipment in the world.

Which chip set do they use to do this....?

The answer is none.

While most audiophile DACs are based on standard DAC chips from one of approximately six manufacturers, the patented dCS Ring DAC circuit uses around 40 chips, none of which are DAC chips. The digital processing circuitry is based around Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips and a microcontroller system, all of which runs code developed and maintained by dCS.

The dCS Range

The Puccini CD/SACD Player

The dCS Puccini is a one box CD/SACD player.

 It upsamples standard redbook CD to DSD and plays back SACD at native resolution. It has 2 digital inputs to use with external sources, has the ability to drive a power amplifier directly and can lock to an external clock to further improve performance/reduce jitter.

The price - £11,299.00

The first thing you notice when see the Puccini is the beautiful milled front panel, it really is a work of art, you can have it any colour you want as long as it’s black or silver.

Pick it up and it feels reassuringly weighty.

Playing music......Wow, that was the first thing that sprung to mind when I heard the Puccini for the first time...I was listening to music, not plinky plonky hi-fi but real music. We found ourselves looking for old CDs we hadn’t heard for years (many of which a lot of systems render unlistenable.....read... systems, not the actual CD discs themselves) and playing them one after another.

The Puccini had arrived; it had raised the bar significantly from its predecessor, the P8i. In fact the P8i couldn’t keep up.

Uncoloured and neutrality are two of the two key words when describing how the dCS Puccini relates to the music; it presents you with a huge open window onto the musical performance and puts a huge smile on your face every time you use it. Detail retrieval and focus is phenomenal, the amount of information it pulls off a disc (even ones you have been very familiar with for years) is scary.

You often hear dCS being described as “analogue sounding” and whilst that’s almost become a bit of a cliché it’s sort of right.

The last one box CD player you ever need or should hear......probably, no, definitely!

It does things with your music collection that most other players can only dream of.

The dCS Puccini U-Clock

The Puccini U-Clock was launched by dCS in early 2009. The U-Clock is a grade 1 master clock. When the Puccini CD/SACD Player is locked to the U-Clock the performance is lifted even further. More focus, better timing, better transients - it lets you hone in even more on the musical performance. dCS takes clocking very seriously and when you hear what it does you will understand why.

The U-Clock does have another rather useful feature under its hood - A USB to S/P DIF converter