By now you’ll have gathered that I like this DAC – a lot. In a world where decent DACs are few and far between, the B.audio delivers not just detail but a sense of musical order. In other words, it retrieves and preserves that detail but also puts it to use. Its ability to capture both musical form and instrumental identity is uncanny, along the way capturing the chemistry within the recorded performance and presenting it to your system. What happens after that is down to you. Which begs the obvious question: if the DAC section is this good, wouldn’t hooking it up even more directly to the amplifier(s) be even better? Time to wheel in the DPR module with its analogue inputs and variable output…
Using the B.audio as a digital/analogue controller
Ever since CD achieved market dominance and somebody had the bright idea of putting phono-stages into standalone boxes, it was inevitable that digital designers and marketeers would try and colonise the role of the line-stage. On paper it makes perfect sense: Just add a volume control to the output of your DAC and hey-presto, you’ve rendered the line-stage redundant. You can see why the DAC manufacturers would get behind the notion. Suddenly their expensive DAC looks like a bargain, a different box rather than another box, one that improves digital replay AND replaces the line-stage. And you can see why end-users would buy into it, for much the same reasons. Everybody loves something for nothing, but perhaps they should also pause to question whether something sounds too good to be true? The problem can be summed up succinctly: If you are going to assume the responsibilities of the line-stage, you’d better take those responsibilities seriously…
It’s easy to underestimate the importance of what looks like a switch and a volume control. The line-stage does undertake those functions, but its real role is as the anchor for the system, the reference point in dynamic and temporal terms. It’s no easy task, which is why top-quality line-stages are remarkably few and far between, as well as invariably expensive. Hanging a pot (and a bit of rudimentary switching if we’re lucky) on the output of a DAC really doesn’t cut it. Sadly, those digital manufacturers who are the loudest advocates for the approach are the same ones whose digital electronics have already wrought havoc on the temporal, dynamic and rhythmic integrity of the signal – to the extent that they aren’t even aware of the inadequacies of the variable output solution they offer.
If you want to turn your DAC into a digital system control unit, you’d better take the challenge seriously. Fortunately, that’s exactly what B.audio have done. The B.DAC already boasts an independent transformer and heavily regulated supply for its balanced analogue output stage. As noted above, specify the DPR module when ordering your B.DAC and in addition, you get three analogue inputs and a relay switched resistor ladder volume control, all based on fully-balanced, discrete circuitry and fed from that same, dedicated analogue power supply. The three additional inputs are indicated using the same six LEDs and display that designate the digital inputs, but in this case, the LEDs are lit in pairs. It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” solutions that keeps the fascia free of unnecessary clutter (and production free of unnecessary component variations).
