Review: dCS Bartok APEX DAC with Headphone Amplifier

    Audio: Listen to this article.

Review: dCS Bartók APEX DAC with Headphone Amplifier

Rajiv Arora

How time flies! Has it really been over 4 years since my review of the original dCS Bartók? Indeed it has, and dCS have since released major updates to both the hardware (the APEX upgrade) and the software (v2.0). These are substantial enough to warrant another evaluation of one of my favorite digital components. Of course, improved performance comes at a price, and the Bartók APEX is now priced at $20,950 (DAC only) and $22,950 (with headphone amp).

Let me be clear about what this review is not. It is not a review of how much the APEX and 2.0 upgrades improve the Bartók. I didn’t have access to an original Bartók to make this comparison. Nor is this review simply a description of the sound quality of the Bartók APEX. That would be boring. News Flash: it sounds outstanding. Uh, at $22,950, it had better!

What then is the focus of this article? I will be looking at the Bartók APEX in the context of:

• How does it compare to other comparably-priced standalone DAC/ amp products? I’ll be looking at my reference Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC/L2i SE, as well as a Chord DAVE with DIY power-supply enhancements, a combo I’ve dubbed the Super-DAVE.
• How does it scale (i.e. sound better) with:
  •    A dCS Lina word clock
  •    A dedicated headphone amp. I’ll look at both the L2i SE and a dCS Lina.

With the objectives defined, let’s jump into it. I encourage readers to first have a look at  my original review, where I covered the core Bartók design principles and philosophy as well as an assessment of the sound quality at the time.

APEX and 2.0 Improvements

What are these APEX and 2.0 improvements?

First, the free Bartók 2.0 software upgrade, which preceded the Apex upgrade, delivered several claimed sound performance enhancements.

• 2 additional enhanced mapper options that run at 5.644/6.144MHz (for 44.1k or 48k source rate families), compared to the previous 2.822/3.072MHz,
• An optional DSD128 (DSD X2) Upsampling stage in the PCM oversampling sequence, and
• Additional PCM and DSD filters.

The APEX upgrade, in contrast, is a hardware update of the Ring DAC board. It was first delivered on the Vivaldi and Rossini platforms, and has since been released on the Bartók. Priced as a $9000 upgrade for existing owners of these DACs, it also contributes to the increased price of the Bartók APEX relative to the original. As dCS explain in their APEX: A Closer Look page, APEX is an ambitious redesign of their Ring DAC board, that includes:

•  improvements to the reference power supply,
• an improved analog output stage with lower output impedance,
• improved summing and filter stages, and
• replacing individual transistors with compound pairs.

dCS claim that as a result of these improvements, the enhanced Ring DAC board is over 12dB more linear.

All this seems wonderful, of course. But dry feature lists are one thing, it’s how they translate into sound quality (SQ) that actually matters. So let’s find out.

My Listening Setup

Review System Topology

My baseline reference system topology for this review is shown in the picture above. It consists of an optimized network chain, the Taiko Switch, the Taiko Extreme, equipped with the Taiko USB and Taiko NIC cards. Audio data is output over USB to my reference DAC/Amp, a Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC module in an L2i SE integrated amplifier with Takatsuki TA-300B tubes. My reference headphones are the T+A Solitaire P and the Meze Elite. The switches are powered by independent DC rails supplied by a Paul Hynes SR7MR3DRXLFC10 power supply. AC power is delivered via a 6AWG dedicated circuit to a Sound Application TT-7 Reference power conditioner, to which the amps, the Extreme, and the Paul Hynes PSU are directly connected. Additional details are available in the System Details section below.

The L2 DAC sounds best with upsampled music files, at DSD512 via the PGGB offline upsampling tool, and this is how I listen.

As I covered in this article, to drive my reference headphones from a speaker amp, I use the functionally versatile and excellent sounding Transparent Ultra Headphone Cable System, which comprises an Ultra banana plugs-to-female XLR adapter, the Ultra cable, and then headphone-specific leads for each of my headphones. This enables me to switch between headphones while using the same cable.

Review Playlist

Bartók APEX Review Playlist

To enable you to listen to the same tracks that I did, I have created a public playlist on Qobuz USA. This playlist includes the tracks mentioned in this review, as well as some of the others I listened to in the course of this evaluation. Please note that in some cases, the Qobuz track will not match the mastering I listened to, especially since some of my listening was with PGGB-upsampled files, stored locally on my Extreme server. Still, this gives you a sense for the music I listened to for evaluation.

Listening Impressions

Due to its versatility, describing how I integrated the Bartók APEX into my system is best shown in pictures. The red lines in the figure show you the music data path. In later sections, these red lines will allow you to follow the different paths being compared and listened to. 

I first listened to Bartók APEX as a standalone Streamer/DAC/headphone amp, using the builtin Mosaic streamer module playing music from Qobuz. This is about as simple as it gets, as all you need here is a power cable, and a wired connection to your network. Everything else you need is done via the dCS Mosaic app. Music data flows from the Internet through the network chain, and directly to the Bartók APEX through its Mosaic module, as shown by the lines in the diagram.

The dCS Mosaic app on iOS is itself a model of simplicity and elegance. It controls both the music endpoint software on the Mosaic module, as well the DAC parameters like the choice of input, filter, mapper, output level, crossfeed, and so on.

As expected, the Bartók APEX sounded great in my system. In the 4+ years since its predecessor was in the house, my system has also changed almost completely. Yet, listening to the Bartók APEX was like meeting an old friend after a long time. All the familiar attributes were there in spades. 

I started with a classic: Symphony No. 9 from Herbert von Karajan’s 1963 cycle on Deutsche Gramaphon (24/96). Despite the vintage of the recording, the sound was rich, detailed, spacious, and dynamic. As before, the tonality felt inherently right: neither bright nor dark, just real. And wow, the instruments were fleshed out in a way I don’t recall in the OG Bartók. In fact, this reminded me more of the OG Rossini that I listened to as part of that previous review. Was the 2023 Bartók APEX closer to the OG Rossini of 2018? Who knows, there was no way for me to tell! Still, it boded well. And ultimately, the real question was how well the Bartók APEX compared to other competitive offerings in its price range.

A final point to note here. If someone who wanted ultra-simplicity and outstanding sound quality bought the Bartók APEX, a nice pair of headphones, an iPad, and stopped right here, I guarantee they would be delighted at the sound quality this simple and elegant setup achieves. No fuss, no muss.

Tuning the Bartók APEX for the best sound quality

Of course, the audiophiles among us want to extract the absolute best sound quality, even at the expense of complexity. So my first experiments were an exploration of the various inputs and operating modes to achieve this with the resources available in my system.

Taiko Extreme Server over USB

While Mosaic streaming as described above is the simplest and most convenient usage scenario, I found the diagram below to be the best sounding, although it involved more components in the chain. This is not the place to debate the value and relative merits of music servers, and I don’t intend to. I’ll merely say that when driving the Bartók APEX over USB with my Taiko Extreme server, the sound quality uplift on the Bartók APEX was startling, just as I’ve experienced with every other DAC I’ve tried. I also found local files to sound better than files streamed from Qobuz.

Line Level

This setting was only relevant for the scenarios described in later sections, where the Bartók APEX was connected to a downstream external amplifier. The line level setting defines the maximum line output voltage, and can be set to values of 0.2V, 0.6V, 2V, and 6V. The optimum setting will of course depend on the input sensitivity of the amp(s) in use.

I found both my amps were fine handling both 2V and 6V outputs from the Bartók APEX without overloading. Given that, I found that the 6V output sounded better, with better dynamics. Of course, this needs to be tested with whatever amp is used, and the Bartók APEX conveniently provides a range of output voltage values to suit.

Mappers

The dCS mapper is an integral aspect of the Ring DAC operation. By the time the music data reaches the Ring DAC, it has been modulated to a 5-bit PCM stream. For every sample, a subset of the 48 unitary current sources in the Ring are dynamically selected based on the magnitude of the sample. But which subset? Ah, therein lies the rub, and this is what the mapper decides. 

With the 2.0 upgrade, users now have a choice of 3 mappers on the Bartók APEX. The original mapper, which operated at 2.822 or 3.072MHz, is now designated Map 2. The two new mappers operate at either 5.644 or 6.144MHz. One is the default and designated Map 1, whereas the other is an alternate design, and designated Map 3.

In my listening tests, I expected to hear very subtle differences between these mappers, and to my surprise, the differences were not subtle at all. Indeed, I heard a bigger difference between mappers than I did between dCS’s filters.

I preferred both Map 1 and Map 3 over the original Map 2, but over extended listening, Map 3 was my consistent favorite. To my ears, this setting was both more transparent and more dynamic than the others.

Filters:

I actually found the difference between the inbuilt filters to be quite subtle. I settled on Filter 4 for input PCM rates up to 24/192, and Filter 6 for DXD. For DSD inputs I preferred DSD Filter 5.

Software Upsampling:

Upsampling is, like many other topics in audio, a fraught and certainly overloaded term. dCS offer an Upsampler in their flagship Vivaldi line, whose role is to offer both a sound quality benefit, but also a plethora of rate conversion options that speak mostly to professional uses.

For audiophiles, the term is primarily focused on sound quality. Many DACs do their processing in stages, which typically include an oversampling filter stage and/or a sigma-delta modulator stage. The premise of doing software upsampling on a PC upstream of the DAC is that using the PC’s powerful computational resources enables the use of algorithms that are just not possible with the limited hardware resources in the DAC. There are two approaches with these software tools: either in real-time with HQPlayer, or ahead of time with PGGB. 

Of course, for this approach to be sonically beneficial, two conditions have to be met:

1. The DAC must be designed to “get out of the way,” i.e. be able to bypass its internal processing when presented with an upsampled stream, and
2. The upstream algorithms must actually be sonically superior.

Before condition 2 can be tested, condition 1 must be true. The Bartók APEX does not really satisfy condition 1. In a series of emails with dCS’s James Cook, I ascertained that:

• while the Bartók APEX only accepts up to 24/384 (8FS) PCM inputs, internally the processing pipeline further upsamples to 16FS (705.6/768 kHz) before handing off to the Ring DAC module. Furthermore:
• while DSD inputs bypass the PCM oversampling as one would expect, they are still modulated to the multibit PCM format used by the Ring DAC.

I did listening tests on the Bartók APEX with music files pre-upsampled with PGGB to 24/8FS (352.8/384 kHz) as well as DSD128, the highest rates accepted by the DAC over DoP (DSD over PCM). Was there a benefit? To my ears yes, but the improvement was quite modest at best.

This can mean different things to different people. For those with an existing upsampling chain already in place, it means that they can easily try 24/8FS or DSD128 upsampling and determine for themselves if it further enhances the SQ of their Bartók APEX. However, for those who prefer simplicity, and would just like to play their native music files, whether locally from their libraries, or via streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal, they can rest easy that the Bartók APEX is delivering outstanding sound quality out of the box. 

If you can sense a theme of elegance and simplicity here, you are correct. This is a DAC/amp that is equally comfortable serving those that just want to turn it on and listen, all the way to those who want to tweak every parameter and configuration in a quest for the most sound quality.

So in summary, for all the listening tests described below, I made the following choices for the Bartók APEX:

• played native files,
• selected Mapper 3,
• selected F4 for PCM inputs up to 24/192, F6 for DXD inputs, and F5 for all DSD inputs.

Comparison 1: Vinnie Rossi L2i SE amp with L2 DAC module and Takatsuki TA-300B

Shown below is my current reference system, to which I compared the Bartók APEX, playing local files served by the Taiko XDMS music player via USB. While the L2i SE is no longer available, this combination would have retailed for roughly $24,000. So pricewise, these are comparable systems. 

Since the L2 DAC sounds best with DSD512 upsampled music files, I played the native files on the Bartók APEX, and the same files upsampled to DSD512 via PGGB on the Vinnie Rossi.
  

I happened to be on a nostalgia trip listening to iconic songs from the 70s, which is how I ended up hearing Killing Me Softly, Roberta Flack (24/192, Rhino Atlantic) on both setups. I had not heard this song in years, and never on systems of this quality. The effect on both setups was mesmerizing and almost overwhelming. There is a tremendous amount of detail and subtle harmonies in this song that I never knew even existed! On the Bartók APEX, I was instantly transported to when I first heard this song as a teenager. It was impossible to analyze the sound critically, as it just pulled me in emotionally. There is no better experience in audio, let me tell you. 

Switching to the L2i SE, the differences were small but noticeable. On the one hand, microdetails were blurrier, but on the positive side there was more oomph and heft to the sound.

It was interesting to note how the sonic differences I heard reflected the relative distribution of strengths in the subcomponents of both products. It was clear that the Bartók APEX’s DAC had better transparency, resolution, and dimensionality. In contrast, while the L2 DAC was no slouch, especially when getting the benefit of PGGB upsampling, the L2i SE pre and amp stages were clearly pulling a lot of the weight in delivering excellent dynamics and soundstage.

Indeed, you would expect that combining these strengths would yield another substantial SQ boost, and that is exactly what I heard when I listened to this configuration below.

The effect of replacing the builtin Bartók APEX amp with a bespoke external amp delivered a significant SQ boost, as expected. I’ll cover this configuration more in a later section.

Comparison 2: Chord DAVE with Sean Jacobs DC4 ARC6 and SRC-DX “Super-DAVE”

For my second comparison, thanks to the generous loan from a local audio friend, I was able to reprise for a few days a setup that was my reference for quite some time prior to my adoption of the L2i SE. I am speaking, of course, of the Chord DAVE – and friends, or a configuration I’ll affectionately refer to as “Super-DAVE!”

For those who might be interested, please check out my previous article, where I described my DAVE reference system, and why I moved to the VR L2 DAC/L2i SE.

The system I reprised for this review is actually superior to my previous reference, because it has the Sean Jacobs DC4 ARC6 PSU (I only had the DC3). The full chain is shown below. With the DAVE, I played PGGB-upsampled 24/16FS (705.6/768) files, as these sounded best to me. 

Listening to this setup brought back some fond memories! Those of us who have at some point in our audio journeys had the Chord DAVE will understand that special transparency and spaciousness that the DAVE does so well. The Sean Jacobs DC4 ARC6 transforms the DAVE to a different level, adding heft, dynamics, and a larger soundstage. Of course, this also raises the cost of the combo to ~$24,000 MSRP, which makes it an appropriate configuration to compare with the Bartók APEX.

We reviewers don’t always get or take the time to sit back and thank our lucky stars for having one of the best jobs (OK, the pay is atrocious!) in our hobby. As I was listening to these DAC/amp combos, I could not believe I had laid out in front of me not one, but three of the best headphone setups money could buy, and I could listen to them all day long, every day! Believe me, I am thankful, and I do not take this bounty for granted.

Listening to Mahler IX, Herbert Blomstedt, Bamberger Symphoniker (24/96, Accentus Music), the DAVE combo reminded me of my ownership days with the things it does almost uniquely well. There is a level of clarity and transparency that DAVE owners immediately recognize. Extremely fine details and textures are rendered so well, as are transients. This applies to leading edges for instruments like cymbals and triangles, and decays of long French horn notes, for example. Thanks to the DC4 ARC6, the DAVE’s soundstage is huge, and instruments are precisely placed. All this means for dense orchestral passages, the ability to locate and distinguish melodic and harmonic lines from different instruments is just uncanny.  

Switching to the Bartók APEX, it was striking to hear how well it too did all of the above. The DAVE pulled ahead slightly on transparency, but the Bartók APEX brought its own strengths to the party. Even with the DC4 ARC6, the DAVE could not match the Bartók APEX’s muscularity and weight. On Jodhaa Akbar (24/96, UTV), the latter’s soundstage was just as big, but additionally, instruments were more fleshed out and sounded more real and palpable. While the DC4 ARC6 has considerably tamed the somewhat bright signature of the DAVE, the combo was still tonally a smidge brighter than the Bartók APEX. To my ears, the Bartók APEX’s tonality along with its ability to portray instruments with more realism, made me find it more timbrally accurate.  

Summary of DAC/Amp Comparisons

So how do I declare a winner here? I can’t! Each of these DAC/amp combos is outstanding, and which one appeals most to a potential buyer will depend on the attributes they value most. 

Both the Bartók APEX and the Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC/L2i SE illustrate the benefits of integration. The former’s DAC stage is clearly superior, with better transparency and coherency. On the other hand, the VR’s analog stage and amplifier provides a better level of dynamics and physicality. It depends which of these attributes matters more in your own evaluation.

Almost the same words can be used to contrast the Bartók APEX and the Super-DAVE, but this time with the Bartók APEX being the more dynamic and muscular one.

Were I starting from a clean slate, I would pick the Bartók APEX. If I already owned one of the other two? That’s a tougher call. But all of these choices sound wonderful, so this would be one of those classic first-world problems.

Effect of adding a dCS Lina Master Clock

All dCS DACs are designed to accept inputs from an external word clock that can provide a higher quality (lower phase noise) 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz reference signal for the DAC to synchronize its internal clocks. There is no companion Bartók clock in dCS’s lineup, but dCS assured me the Lina Master Clock (MSRP $7,750) was an excellent match.

Testing the Bartók APEX with and without the external clock engaged is easily done via the Mosaic control app. I had heard the Lina Clock with the Lina DAC at various audio shows in the past, so the improvement with the clock did not come as a complete surprise!

With some tracks, the effect of the clock is so profound that it can make you laugh out loud. I’ve heard clock improvements in many aspects of the audio chain, and the word that always comes to mind is “focus.” As in: the sonic image was fuzzier before, and the improved clock snapped it into focus, like a better camera lens. On Von der Schönheit from Das Lied von der Erde, Michael Tilson-Thomas, San Francisco Symphony (24/88.2, SFS Media), the soundstage with the clock engaged was not just bigger, it was enveloping. It transported you into the hall. Instruments were more holographic . Thomas Hampson’s voice had a solidity and presence like never before. Strings had more texture, and timpani strokes had more crispness and clarity.  

What can I say about this clock upgrade? Admittedly, it adds more to the already considerable cost of the Bartók APEX. But once heard, it’s almost impossible to imagine going back. And therein lies the answer. I could not imagine buying the Bartók APEX without also buying, or planning to buy, a dCS Lina word clock. It’s that good.

With the Lina clock in place, as shown in the diagram below, the combo’s SQ was now significantly better than both the Super-DAVE and the Vinnie Rossi. But now we’re comparing different price points, so this is more about making choices than declaring winners and losers.

Effect of adding an external dCS Lina Headphone Amp

But wait, there’s more! Does dCS perchance have a dedicated external headphone amp? Indeed they do. Enter the dCS Lina Headphone Amp (MSRP $9,750).

On the surface, the key benefit the Lina headphone amplifier provides over the built-in Bartók APEX is more of everything: inputs, outputs, and power. But the specifications alone hardly tell the whole story.

Let me say again: the Bartók APEX’s builtin headphone amp is very good. It quite easily drives my somewhat efficient T+A Solitaire P (92 dB/mW), and very efficient Meze Elite (101 dB/mW) reference headphones as loud as I desire. But an amp’s quality is not just its loudness or gain.

Listening to Candela on Buena Vista Social Club (25th Anniversary Edition) (24/96, World Circuit), the improvement when moving from the built-in amp to the Lina was immediately apparent. Even at lower levels, the Lina was more dynamic and rich, with more body, better bass definition, and a bigger soundstage. This is one of those cases where you are tempted to equalize the difference by raising the volume of one, only to find that gain does not get you there! With a source component of the quality of the Bartók APEX DAC, it isn’t surprising that it benefits from an external amp. 

Comparing the Lina Amp with the Vinnie Rossi L2i SE

This was an interesting comparison. The L2i SE is a 100Wpc speaker amp that also serves superbly as a headphone amp, from a designer who’s best known for his analog electronics. It is also at a higher price point than the Lina amp. Finally, the L2i SE in my setup is configured with a Direct Heated Triode (DHT) tube preamp stage and solid-state power amp stage. The Lina, in contrast, is a bespoke solid-state headphone amp design, and operates in Class AB mode.

On Virah from Bandish Bandits (24/48, Sony Music), despite the price and power differential, the Lina held its own in this comparison. It closed the gap in density, dynamics, and bass depth that the L2i SE had over the built-in Bartók APEX’s headphone amp. I found both the Lina and the L2i SE to be compelling in their own ways. What I have always loved about the L2i SE was the fact that it it had that holographic image and immediacy that tubes do so well, especially the Takatsuki 300B DHTs, while still being as taut in the bass, and as crisp in the transients as any good solid-state design. The Lina is more neutral across the board, without highlighting or diminishing any aspect of the music. It just gets out of the way and lets the music flow without any editorializing. While the L2i SE’s soundstage is just a bit bigger, and its overall signature airier, the Lina portrays instruments with more density and its bass articulation.

I would honestly be happy with either amp. The L2i SE’s extra power might make a difference with extremely inefficient headphones, and the remote control is a real plus. The Lina’s advantage is its multiple headphone outputs. Ultimately, the fact that the Lina held its own and even bettered, in some areas, an acclaimed speaker amp says a lot about its quality and value.

Wrapup and Concluding Thoughts

What does it take to improve an already excellent DAC/amp? Hard work, solid engineering, and yes, more money. There is nothing mysterious about the list of improvements that comprise the hardware (APEX) and software (2.0) upgrades to the Bartók. These are all meat and potatoes engineering concepts that resulted in the Bartók APEX I reviewed here. And the results speak for themselves.

If you made it to this point, it should come as no surprise that I absolutely loved the Bartók APEX! In terms of absolute sound quality, it came out ahead against my current and erstwhile reference DAC/amps that are both in the same price range. It is also more feature rich, containing a full-fledged streamer within the box. And this allows tremendous flexibility and scalability.

You can start with the single box by itself and have yourself an incredibly simple, yet excellent-sounding headphone setup. Or, you can scale out on multiple axes to achieve even higher sound quality. On one axis, you can add a music server and/or streamer of your choice. On another, you can (and should!) add a word clock like the dCS Lina Master Clock. And on a third, you can add a dedicated headphone amp like the dCS Lina Headphone Amp.

With these capabilities, the dCS Bartók APEX caters to anyone from novices to inveterate tweakers. All they need in common is an abiding love of music played exceedingly well. And this, when all is said and done, is what the Bartók APEX does. It plays your music. Exceedingly well.

Highly recommended! 

Product Information:
 
dCS Audio - Bartok APEX with Headphone Amplifier: $22950
dCS Audio - Bartok APEX: Product Page
Purchase: Where to Buy

System Details

Music Server:                         Taiko Audio Extreme Music Server, Taiko USB card
DAC:                                        Vinnie Rossi L2 DAC module
Amp:                                        Vinnie Rossi L2i SE integrated speaker amp
                                                Takatsuki TA-300B tubes (QSA treated)
Reference Headphones:       Meze Elite, T+ A Solitaire P, 
                                                Sennheiser HD800 (SD mod)
Ethernet Switches:                Buffalo BS-GS2016 (modded for LPS), Taiko Switch
Power supplies:                     Paul Hynes SR7MR3DRXL (dual regulation, 3-rail)  
                                                Paul Hynes SR4-12, SR4-19
Power Details:                        Dedicated 6AWG AC circuit 
Power Conditioner:                Sound Application TT-7 Reference
Power Cables:                        Sablon King (wall to TT-7)
                                                QSA-Lanedri Spectra Infinity Prince (Extreme)
                                                QSA-Lanedri Gamma Infinity (L2i SE)
                                                QSA-Lanedri Gamma Revelation (SR-7) 
                                                 Cardas Clear for all other components
USB cable:                              Shunyata Omega USB
Ethernet cables:                     generic cat 6a, QSA-Lanedri Gamma Infinity (to Taiko Switch)
Direct Attach cable                5m supplied by Taiko
Clock cables:                          QSA-Lanedri Gamma Infinity (Lina clock to Bartók APEX)
DC cables:                              Curious DC cables (SR-7)
Headphone cables:               Transparent Ultra cable system
Headphone adapter kit:        Transparent Ultra, banana plugs to XLR4 adapter
Accessories:                          Synergistic Research Tranquility Base XL UEF. Galileo MPC
                                                Synergistic Research MiG 2.0 footers
                                               Taiko Audio Daiza Isolation Platforms and Daiza footers
                                               High Fidelity Cables Trinity Helix Headphone Module.

Acknowledgments
 
Many thanks to the following companies for supplying cables and accessories to aid in this evaluation: 
* Transparent Audio, for the Transparent Ultra headphone cable with a full complement of headphones leads and source terminators,
* QSA-Lanedri, for a variety of their cables,
* Cardas Audio, for a variety of Cardas Clear and Clear Beyond cables.

About the Author

Rajiv Arora — a.k.a. @austinpop — is both a computer geek and a lifelong audiophile. Having retired from a corporate career as a researcher, technologist and executive, he now combines his passion for music and audio gear with his computer skills and his love of writing to author reviews and articles about high-end audio.

He  has "a special set of skills" that help him bring technical perspective to the audio hobby. No, they do not involve kicking criminal ass in exotic foreign locales! Starting with his Ph.D. research on computer networks, and extending over his professional career, his area of expertise is the performance and scalability of distributed computing systems. Tuning and optimization are in his blood. He is guided by the scientific method and robust experimental design. That said, he trusts his ears, and how a system or component sounds is always the final determinant in his findings. He does not need every audio effect to be measurable, as long as it is consistently audible.
 
Finally, he believes in integrity, honesty, civility and community, and this is what he strives to bring to every interaction, both as an author and as a forum contributor.