SW1X DAC II

What a long strange trip it’s been. When I first embarked on my digital audio journey I opted for DACs with all the bells and whistles, all the features and every possible hardware connection. And over what has been easily more than a dozen DACs each from different manufacturers, I realised that finding the sound with which I could be happy should be my primary concern and then everything would fall into place.
My present SW1X gear as pictured: SW1X DAC II and SW1X LPU 1. If someone had told me that some 10 years later my everyday DAC would connect to my digital source via an RCA Coaxial cable and play files at a maximum of 24-bit/96 kHz resolution, I would have laughed at them mercilessly. Still, now I have to admit, I’ve never been happier listening to music from my digital library, so much so that I doubled down and got the LPU I phone stage to cover all my bases.
I decided to go with SW1X because once I heard them at someone’s in London, England, I knew I had to know more so I travelled out to SW1X HQ and interviewed its founder/designer Slaw Roschkow. That interview has been posted in the group several times. Having visited Slawa and learning more about his design philosophy and dedication to making gear that delivers the utmost in playback and sound reproduction, I was sold right then and there

I have been considering a new DAC for a few months. As one does, I have been scanning, reading, chatting and musing about DACs for that time.
I reached out to Slawa at SW1X and asked if I could come to check out his DACs. He was very helpful and accommodating, so I planned time to visit. It was fun. To share some direct thoughts after the visit, here are a few lightly moded excerpts from PMs I exchanged with two other head-fiers.

I spent a good ~4h w/ Slawa's. I can't un-hear any of it. I am now clear on a few things (and less clear on others!):
I really should get a new DAC.
He makes very nice DACs.
USB as transport needs thinking on how to handle.
ASR-like SINAD, THD, etc DAC measurements really do not correlate with "sounds good".

Slawa is a nice and interesting guy who likes to experiment and make cool DACs. He certainly has strong views on how DACs should be made. There was another long-time customer there picking up his DAC3 after having some minor mods and a new USB-SPDIF unit. He was interesting to talk to.

We listened for a bit to Slawa's main "killer 2-channel system" as-is for a short while (including one of his DACs). We then put my RME ADI II DAC into this setup, replacing his DAC. The very, very audible power supply wall-wart switching noise was a horror to behold once we even plugged it in, with the DAC itself still in the box. The RME compared to any of his DACs (which we did cover later) sounded completely flat and lifeless. The RME was a small 2d napkin in front of you as opposed to a giant 3d spatial image. No hyperbole; it was so night and day I was floored. We played the same song, ~volume-matched back/ forth and it was stark. Instruments moved "into place", things sounded alive. With the RME it was almost like you just took "the real music" and squoze it from top to bottom, left to right, with overall less amplitude and conceptual acoustic-mass.

We then compared his DAC1 and DAC2. DAC1 sounds good, DAC2 sounds even better, DAC5 sounds better. I am sure the intervening models follow the line between 1-5.
.....
Well, I am happy to say that I am the new owner of an SW1X DAC II w/ USB & AudioNote capacitors. I have enjoyed working w/ Slawa.
For now, all I will say is that this thing is full of music 😉

Yesterday I received a DAC II Special ($4595) destined for another customer. I was able to understand the difference in sound between the two, and it is substantial. The Special has way more resolution and musicality. It had me seriously tapping my foot and involuntarily moving my body during a number of cuts. The original plan was for the customer to photograph and pack up his dCS gear and listen to the DAC II until his DAC V arrived, assuming the DAC II would at least be generally listenable, which was, for a time, in question. That way we would get a jump on selling the dCS. When he hooked the DAC II back up in the correct configuration last night he was able to simultaneously use the balanced output from his dCS stack and switch back and forth between DACs in real time with the preamp remote. He reports that they are about sonically equal except that the dCS might be slightly warmer (and slightly louder). BUT...He was using a cheap RCA SPDIF cable in and cheap RCA cables going out of the DAC II to the pre and he’s using is our top of the line PranaWire Nirvana ICs and AES/EBU to his dCS system. I am using the same Nirvana IC here. Just to test, I listened to a lesser cable going from the DAC II Special into my preamp, and the differences were prodigious. So this wasn’t even a fair test to the DAC II. He reports: The $3275 DAC II Standard using cheap interconnects and digital cable is more or less the equal of the $80,000 + three box dCS Vivaldi stack using a world class IC and input cable. I have no doubt that with the Nirvana ICs that the DAC II Standard would prevail by a wide margin, and, the DAC II Special easily outshines the Standard that he is comparing to the dCS stack. I can't begin to imagine how the V will sound. The dCS Gear is being packed up as I write this.

I am not a huge contributor to this Board with maybe a dozen posts, likely less. I used to be a regular on AudioAsylum dating back to '95 or so and then on A-Gon forums. I live in Columbus OH, am a lawyer, and have zero connections to the audio industry.

So with that out of the way, my custom SW1X arrived ten days ago-the model in the subject line ordered through Joe Cohen of Lotus Group. Photos of my system are attached. As you can see, I like to swap out the DeVores with a pair of Spendor D7.2's every six months because I love both, and they play to different strengths. That said, I am not sure I need the strengths of the Spendors any more but I am getting ahead of myself. I grew up as a kid in the 70's with a high-end system in the house and my dad's friends all had hi-fi systems too. It was more prevalent back then for educated middle class households. Within a week of my being born my dad bought a Thorens TD124 and an SME 3009 arm and that TD124, rebuilt and modified, is my system today. I bought my first pretty decent system when I was a senior in high school in 1977.

The SW1X went into my system in place of a perfectly functional Abbingdon Music Research DP777 I bought new about seven years ago. My music is stored to the internal hard drive of an Aurender N100H and my USB cable is a WW Starlight Platinum 7. 95% of my digital files were burned from CD with the rest being so called high definition downloads from HDTracks.

I am here to to tell you that the SW1X made a more significant change to my digital playback than any previous upgrade or change.

After four and half days of constant play, I settled in to listen.

What struck me first-for the first time since getting floorstanders in place of B&W 805 standmounts-was soundstage depth, width, and height all expanded, with instruments and voices clearly localized.

Second, the music sounded more forceful and fluid, with more meat to the bones.

XTC's "Nonsuch" is not well-recorded. It is bright, brittle, and dry. For the very first time in my system, the opening track "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" sounded truly rewarding/satisfying. Ambient cues in the first five seconds of the intro were vivid and startling-I had not heard them clearly before. Andy Partridge's voice sounded real for the first time-I could hear his chestiness for the first time. The previous grating glare was of the recording was completely gone. Kenny Burrell's Midnight Blue and the cut "Mule" displayed new touch and tone to the prominent bass in the intro that I had not heard previously. The same album's "Wavy Gravy" now featured bite to the guitar not heard before and there was newfound depth and space. Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage gave me goosebumps with touch to the piano not heard before, shimmer to the cymbals not previously heard and a minute thirty into the track the sax that comes from the left was startling in it's immediacy-the microdynamics and macrodynamics are unprecedented-at least as far as my system experience goes.

And for bass, I listened to a little known gem, Black Grape's It's Great When You're Straight-Yeah and the opening rowdy track "Reverend Black Grape" which now demonstrated a level of propulsive funk, tone, and 3-D space to the overall presentation not present before the swap of DAC.

Do I have any negatives at all? Well, I find it necessary to adjust the volume much more frequently than in the past. I believe this is due to more dynamic range though I am hard-pressed to explain the phenomenon. And one little nit with the internal USB to SPDIF converter-due to it being tube based, when powering up the DAC II Special I have to disconnect and reconnect the USB cable on one end or the other about sixty seconds after the DAC has warmed up before the Aurender and the DAC II Special can "shake hands" with each other. Other than those two minor things, my only cavil is that the pleasure the DAC II has given me forces me to think about an audition of a customized DAC III. And last, Joe has been absolutely great to work with. I could not ask for more from him. Slawa too has been great to exchange messages with. I don't know that I understand much of what he has to say, but I sure trust that he is onto something many of the rest of us have trouble grasping.