That’s the essential premise behind filter-less or non over-sampling DACs – at least on a sales and marketing level. Of course, getting rid of complex processing hardware and algorithms has the added attraction of simplifying product design, development and parts count – not that that has stopped the creation of expensive filter-less designs like the Audio Note DAC or the various Lampizators. However, personally I’m not totally convinced. Just as glass CD demonstrates the efficacy of straight 16/44 encoding, I’m equally persuaded that a well-engineered DSP-based replay chain will deliver superior results. But there’s the rub: if you are going that route, you’d better know what you are doing and be doing it in the time domain – and that both ups the ante and narrows the field significantly. Which begs the question, just what do you use for digital replay if your budget won’t stretch to a CH Precision C1.2, let alone a Wadax Ref DAC? Suddenly, the inherent simplicity of filter-less designs offers a potential price and performance advantage. Time to ask the question, is no processing better than bad processing?
Where better to start than Konus Audio’s typically iconoclastic Digitale 2000 DAC. With a line of descent that traces directly back to the 47Labs 4705 Progression DAC (in terms of experience, exposure and philosophy, if not design DNA) this is a minimalist approach that takes minimalism to its logical (or perhaps illogical) extreme, reducing not just feature count but component count too. Built into the same, small, square chassis as the other Konus Audio components and sporting the same grey and orange (or orange and grey if you prefer) colourway, the facilities are pretty much as simple as they can possibly be: the rear panel offers both coaxial S/PDIF and USB Type B digital inputs (so that’s one more than the 47Labs!) and a single pair of single-ended RCAs for output. Other than that, you get an IEC input for power and a toggle switch on the front panel to select your chosen source – and that is all she wrote. Internally, the chosen decoding hardware is the popular (amongst audio designers and audiophiles of a certain, slightly retro persuasion) Philips TDA 1543 R2R ladder DAC. It’s the same chipset you’ll find in DACs from the likes of Border Patrol and CAD. But perhaps the most reassuring thing about the Digitalle 2000 on first acquaintance is its sheer density. For a box that stands seven inches square and all of three inches high, it feels surprisingly solid and weighty – a real lump. Given the paucity of active components inside and the generic casework, it suggests that the one thing the Konus DAC isn’t lacking is a decent power supply.
The round file?
The USB input might be seen as a sign of the times and it’s certainly a case of Luddite tendencies colliding with harsh commercial reality. But it’s also one of the few extravagances on the Digitale 2000 – not because of its presence, but its implementation. The Konus DAC offers an entirely separate input topology for USB, based around a high-res capable Burr-Brown chip, used as a receiver. The 48kHz I2S output is then fed directly to the Philips DAC for decoding. Part using a second chipset for the USB source is hardly the stuff of minimalist efficiency, but the alternative is to compromise the performance of the S/PDIF input by using a DAC chipset specifically chosen to accommodate USB. It’s certainly an unusual approach, but then it’s perfectly parallels dispensing with over-sampling, up-sampling or filtering altogether.
