Something inexpensive yet valuable

What is true value? I don't mean something that is valuable because it is expensive, but rather what delivers real value to you as a Gentleman Audiophile. Is a £15000 CEC transport delivering true value when it is so expensive and, basically, doing no more than a £200 CD player, albeit with massively more style? Were I to hear what one can do I might believe in the price but, for now, I find it difficult to accept it can possibly be worth the investment.

True value to me as a Gentleman Audiophile is for something to deliver in spades and cost relative peanuts. I can accept something sounds good and is expensive, but of those things from which I derive most pleasure, it's the ones that go the extra mile and deliver real value that make me want to crow about them.

One of those products is the venerable Cambridge Audio DacMagic. Here's a picture:

The other is an obscure upgrade for it by a small operation called Custom Hifi Cables, just a big toroid in a box with some additional electronics that refine the power from the wall and replace the wall wart that comes with the DacMagic:

DacMagic first. I've heard this beast in a number of systems and respected and admired it, but displayed a dogged resistance to getting one until two months ago. It is, clearly, not a patch in hifi terms on my Lindemann D680 SACD player.

And yet... tide was turned at a fellow GA's house, where we pitted his DacMagic against the (then new) Naim DAC with XPS and the Weiss DAC2. All three were excellent, but in that demonstration I came to realise that the slight reductions in detail, soundstage width and depth, drive, bass quality and so on which came with the 'downgrade' to a £200 DAC from the other two in the £2k-£5k mark, was actually outweighed by an increase in immediacy and musicality from the DacMagic.

Not until we conducted a blind test - me sitting on the sofa cradling my trumpet filled with Rioja, eyes fixed firmly straight ahead whilst fellow GA switched SPDIF connections behind me, did I mistake the DacMagic for our other favourite the Naim+XPS and ended up expressing a clear preference for the David amongst Goliaths.

What sold it to me was the tension it displayed in the rise of voices, the strumming of guitars, the brassiness of instruments and the hammering of a piano. Whilst putatively better dacs might deliver a better bass or tighter, more palpable image, the drive and musicality of the DacMagic was a clear winner.

It is a trait that, once tuned into, one can appreciate and seek in other equipment and usually find lacking.

It can make digital music more interesting and, whilst I'm sure it can be surpassed, to date only my Lindemann has come close to surpassing it; and I have to say, even it doesn't do tension and rise as well.

My fellow Gentlemen have compared it to the Audio Note DAC5, the Naim+XPS, Weiss DAC2, Bryston and Rega and Arcam, and the prototype Tron Dac, which I have separately heard. Those ears I trust tell me the Audio Note and the Tron are the only two to clearly exceed it, and by then we're into Single Malt territory

The DacMagic is a bargain at £200 and I love it because it delivers that which I believe the GA should seek - musical enjoyment over bells, whistles, and weighty, alloy-clad equipment that actually doesn't work as well. Where there is a secret, it seems the DacMagic has two major susceptibilities which, if corrected, are what enables it to stand up in such lofty company.

The first is the quality of the transport. I will post my theories on digital audio in another blog entry but, suffice it to say, if you have a good transport it really sings, that that attribute of rising tension and dynamics is accentuated. With a slightly less good transport, it sounds dull, certainly compared to the Naim. It has a USB input, but that is clearly inferior to optical and coaxial SPDIF. Avoid.

At the moment I have a Macbook plugged in via an optical connection and it works well, but is a bit hard and glassy. With an Audio Note transport through coax, it really sings and bass lines become at once more distinct and deeper. As an speculative purchase, I have an Audiophileo 2 on order and being delivered tomorrow, so we'll see if an ultra-low jitter USB->SPDIF converter can trump its' sound quality. Other users with the M2Tech, Sonicweld or even a dedicated CD transport may concur.

The other element is power. With the DacMagic battling Naim and Weiss in my fellow Gentleman's system, I neglected to mention he has a dedicated and comprehensive mains installation that required street diggers to install a hospital grade incomer and a nest of individual mains cables. The benefits to all equipment were obvious, but to the DacMagic perhaps more than the Naim with its dedicated XPS.

With that in mind, I ordered the external power supply from Custom HiFi cables at just over £100, and haven't regretted that decision at all. It lifts the presentation in every aspect - detail, depth, width, palpability and so on - and there doesn't appear to be a downside. Too frequently an 'upgrade' is just a 'change' and what gains you make in, for example, detail retrieval actually combine with unacceptable brightness; or more bass oomph somehow kills the easy musicality of what went before.

In this case there is no drawback and the value is obvious. It's not ugly but isn't sexy either; both the DacMagic and the power supply are tucked away in a cabinet in any case. Entirely recommended.