I heard the same with Abigail Washburn’s City of Refuge. Washburn is a modern bluegrass and folk artist with a beautiful voice. She also happens to be a virtuoso on the banjo. The album features both original and traditional songs, with great, natural sounding production and terrific arrangements. This type of recording would seem to me to be a very good test for a digital set up. Through the rDAC’s USB input, it sounded amazing. Again, lifelike images, and it preserved the organic quality of the music.

My last source used for evaluation was my trust Squeezebox 3 connected via a Transparent Toslink cable. Again, the results were exactly what I expected after seeing what the rDAC did with the other sources. More transparent, musical, and dimensional sound. This consistency across multiple sources...music sever, transport, computer, and streamer, was very impressive and commendable.  It also leads me to believe that Arcam has effectively addressed jitter and made sure that none of the inputs on the rDAC were there as convenience.

Conclusion:

Arcam, in its long history, were early movers into the digital market. But they have not made a stand alone DAC for quite some time now. The sub $1000 DAC category is extremely crowded these days, so coming to the table with something special is essential, if standing out from the crowd is the goal. I  believe Arcam has done something special here. Nothing in the sound, to my ears, calls attention to the Arcam’s sub $500 price. It  truly sounds great. Musical, coherent, and textured.

Along with superb sound, the rDAC offers flexibility and and ease of operation that can only come from a well engineered, well thought out product. The S/PDIF inputs sound excellent. As a matter of fact, I felt all the rDAC’s inputs sounded excellent.  I also think it was a brilliant move to use dCS’s asynchronous USB technology. I can safely say it works.  Having three great sounding inputs allows you to make the rDAC the center of a digital music hub. And the wireless option offers even more choices.

The rDAC is also an attractive component, and can easily be integrated into any system. For me personally, the USB only DAC’s that have recently flooded the market are too limited in application for them to be attractive to me. I am just not ready to make a computer my only digital source, and Arcam is catering to those with similar mind sets. I cannot imagine an audition with the rDAC would leave anyone anything but impressed with the sound and feature set, unless one listens to mostly to source material sampled above 96 Khz, which I can’t imagine could be the case.  At $479 this DAC is a steal.

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3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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