Whether it’s the explosive vigour and staccato rhythms of Orange (Caroline Shaw and the Attacca Quartet – Nonesuch 7559-79260-9) or Nanci Griffith’s lilting spoken interludes on One Fair Summer Evening (MCA DMCF 3435) there’s an almost physical quality to the shape and substance of voices and instruments. The Konus DAC might not be the last word in harmonic texture, the widest, most sudden dynamics or leading edge definition, but it’s innately natural sense of proportion and timing ties the musical elements of a recording into a single, coherent and intelligible whole. Other DACs at slightly higher prices than this will offer greater space within recordings and make peripheral or incidental sounds more obvious. Play ‘Roy Rogers Is Riding Tonight’ (from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and the travel of Trigger’s retreating hoof-beats is more clearly defined, as is the low lowing of the steers on the B.audio B DPR EX – but even if you can barely hear the beeves on the Konus, Trigger sounds like a bigger horse that’s not just moving, but moving quicker…
Putting your money where it matters!
At €3,900 (plus sales tax), the Konus Audio Digitale 2000 isn’t the cheapest filter-less DAC on the market. It’s handily undercut by its own sibling, the Digitale 1000 at €2,900 (plus sales tax) and there are plenty of other contenders too. Listening with the Konus Audio certainly suggests that, if budgets are tight then in musical terms, the filter-less route is well-worth investigating, if no guarantee of success. Spend more and you get more: more hardware, more facilities, generally more detail, almost certainly more box. But the crucial question is where the tipping point comes? At what point does the extra technology overcome the inherent simplicity and musicality of the filter-less design? That price might well be both higher than you expect and higher than you want or are able to pay. But buyer beware. There are no silver bullets in audio: Not all filter-less DACs are created equal and more cost doesn’t necessarily equate to more performance, just as there’s no “all you need to spend” number. What the Digitale 2000 does is get that cost/benefit balance just right. There are more expensive filter-less designs that offer no advantage over the Konus. There are more affoordabler designs – including the Digitale 1000 – that don’t come close to its musical substance, coherence and integrity.
In this particular case, the quality of the chassis and its styling (perhaps best described as ‘individual’ or ‘eclectic’) is unlikely to ever sell a single Digitale 2000. It doesn’t come with celebrity endorsement or an inch thick front panel to reassure purchasers that they’re making the right choice. You buy this product not because of how it looks but how it sounds. The pride of ownership comes from the knowledge that the money has been spent on the inside and that buying the Konus DAC indicates that you are smarter (or listen more carefully) than the average audiophile.
The Digitale 2000 is a great sounding DAC that also happens to be filter-less. It is possibly the most affordable, really good, musically communicative and involving DAC I can recommend. It hits the musical sweet spot in the price/performance equation, delivering a sense of the musical performance you can’t get for less and which it will cost you a serious sum to better. As of now, this is my benchmark DAC for serious musical performance on a budget. It’s quirky, it’s entertaining and it’s engaging. It’s definitely a talking point. But more than all those things, it’s a serious musical trip: use, enjoy, repeat…
