DCS Rossini DAC/ Rossini Master Clock
Cambridge-based DCS has an enviable digital audio heritage – from developing digital products for military agencies to making digital converters for pro use – and that experience shines through in the Rossini DAC (£17,090) and Master Clock (£5520).
To call the Rossini a DAC is understating its capabilities; DCS labels it an Upsampling Network DAC. It is more of a digital hub for a system rather than a mere digital-to-analogue converter. It packs a UPNP music streamer, supports Tidal, Spotify Connect, Deezer and Apple Airplay, and works as a digital preamplifier. Just add a power amp or active speakers to get sound. File support for streaming is excellent. All the major digital formats are covered, making the Rossini about as accommodating as we would hope for.
Look inside and it’s clear the company has an obsessive eye for detail. The highlight is dcs’s proprietary conversion circuit, called the Ring DAC, and the processing around it. Here the company uses FPGAS (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), in-house software and innovative circuit topology to create number crunching capabilities that DCS feels are beyond those possible by using off-the-shelf solutions.
Overall build quality is superb. The casework feels immensely solid and is finished to flawless levels. The Rossini DAC’S controls work with precision and
the unit, along with the partnering Master Clock, gives off an understated luxury aura that befits the sky-high price. The unit is operated via a dedicated app, with a remote an optional extra (£390).
There’s no shortage of connectivity, with all the usual inputs – USB, coaxial and optical – alongside less common items such as multiple AES/EBUS. The asynchronous USB will cope with the full range of file formats up to 24-bit/384khz and double-speed DSD, while coaxial tops out at 24-bit/192khz and optical is limited to the usual 24-bit/96khz.
Use a single AES/EBU and it adds single-speed DSD to the coax’s capability, but connect both of them and doublespeed DSD is on the menu. Connect one of dcs’s disc players to those twin inputs and SACD playback is possible through an encrypted transmission of data between the twin units.
We’re impressed with the way DCS has implemented the Apple Airplay feature too. The Rossini is quick to connect to our iphone, and the sound is stable and good enough to stop us complaining about the lack of Bluetooth. You may be wondering what the point of the Rossini Master Clock is, and how much difference it makes. We connect the two products together and it takes no more than a minute to be convinced. The Rossini DAC is a superb performer in its own right, but add the Master Clock and that performance goes up a level or two. Given a suitably transparent system, there is no doubting the increase in precision, solidity and transparency.
Once optimised and given a few days to settle, the Rossini pairing turns in an astonishingly good performance whether we use the streamer, the in-built music services or the digital inputs.
Stable soundstage
We listen to Bizet’s Carman Suite from our Naim NAS and our first impressions are of a huge, stable soundstage packed with precisely located instruments that don’t waver, regardless of changes in dynamics or musical complexity.
With so much resolution, we hear textures in instruments and dynamic nuances that most rivals don’t notice. The Rossini combination lays it all bare. Everything is easy to follow and kept under control without ever sounding restricted. The Rossini’s presentation is so clean and crisp, with leading edges that are sharply defined and harmonic decays that happen in a natural way.
In the past, dcs’s products have tended to put analysis over the music, but the Rossini Dac/master Clock pairing simply lets the music take centre stage. Their tonal neutrality helps – rarely have we come across a product that sounds so natural across the frequency range.
We listen to a range of music from Nirvana’s hard-charging Nevermind and PJ Harvey’s gothic-tinged White Chalk to Debussy’s Clair De Lune, and the DCS pairing delights, excites and entertains. It has the insight to keep detail-obsessives happy, but also a musical nature that lets us just sit back and enjoy the music.
While the Rossini is out of reach of most, we haven’t heard a cheaper alternative that betters its performance or extensive feature count. If you have the budget, buy this with confidence.