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 Superior Audio Equipment Review April / May 2009
Reimyo DAP-999EX Digital-To-Analog Converter
You owe it to yourself to listen... I already miss it.
Review By Jules Coleman
Reimyo DAP-999EX Digital-To-Analog Converter With two exceptions, I
have never heard digital playback approach the sound of music. One of
those exceptions came in the form of an early proto-type of the VRS
hard drive system that John Hughes, then a principal in the VRS
project, demonstrated at my home in the company of several of my audio
friends and others from the industry.
That demonstration gave me a respect for the possibilities of the
digital medium. The VRS involved bit-by-bit playback and to that point
I had yet to hear music sound nearly so good from spinning aluminum.
That changed when the North American distributor of Reimyo products,
May Audio, arranged for me to review the Reimyo CDP-777. Soon
thereafter I was invited to review an entire Reimyo system including
the preamp, amplifier, speakers as well as assorted interconnects,
power cords and speaker cables.
I listened to the Reimyo CDP-777 in both contexts in my then reference
system (with Shindo electronics) and in the full Reimyo system. It
shone like no other CD player before or since has. The one box player
produced the most natural, relaxed, revealing, and overall musically
persuasive sound that I have heard from digital. The Reimyo CD player
set the standard against which I assessed the performance of other
digital playback systems. Because nothing since has approached its
performance, I find that digital playback has been relegated to back-up
duty and plays very little role in my reviewing.Even if digital
playback has been little more than an afterthought in my serious
listening sessions, I have not ignored it completely. In fact, I have
reviewed more than my share of digital products over the years. An
early version of Gordon Rankin's Cosecant USB DAC excelled at
portraying the rich tonal palette of real music whereas John Tucker's
modifications of various Denon players were especially well-balanced
and musical. Empirical Audio's modified DACs uniformly conveyed a
dynamic realism that few other units could match. Virtuous in its own
way, each player fell considerably short of the Reimyo, however. Only
the Reimyo presented digital as a musically resolved whole and in that
crucial way, only it presented digits as passable conveyers of music.
The impact of Reimyo's presence in my system and its subsequent
departure was far greater than I had anticipated it would be. The
Reimyo was the exception to my experience that digital sounds more
similar than different. As a result, once the Reimyo left my reference
system, I have found it difficult to invest more than $2000 in digital
playback.
If anything, my sense is that the floor' of quality in digital has
risen significantly and that one can do quite well (for digital) at
ever-lower prices. At the same time, I have heard no reason to believe
that the ceiling has been raised. There are finer and finer gradations
between the floor and the ceiling of digital playback and more products
are capable of revealing those fine gradations in quality and are
priced accordingly.
That is one reason why my eyes lit up and ears perked up'
(sympathetically and instinctively) when I was offered an opportunity
to review the latest Reimyo digital product, the DAP-999EX,
digital-to-analog converter. I had every hope that first rate digital
playback would grace my listening room again if only for a few months.
I was not disappointed. In fact, even my most optimistic expectations
were surpassed.
Enter The King
The good folks at May Audio arranged for me to listen to the DAP-999EX
accompanied by the Reimyo CDT-777 CD transport (which will make an
$11,000 dent in one's pocketbook) as well two Harmonix power cords and
the Harmonix digital interconnect. I am a believer in one voice' audio
systems and understand that I own a system that, with the exception of
digital playback and speaker cables, is Shindo Laboratory from
turntable to speaker system and all stops in between. I don't believe
that one hears what a particular component is designed to sound like
outside the context of the components with which it was voiced. And so
I was grateful to review the DAC in the context of the Reimyo
transport. At the same time, I realize that many readers who are
interested in the DAC would likely pair it with other transports and
employ other digital interconnects; and that is why I also auditioned
the DAC with several one-box CD players serving as transport, and
employed a Stealth digital interconnect as an alternative to the
Harmonix supplied by the distributor.
The full Reimyo digital front end was placed in my reference system. It
replaced my reference' Meridian and other players that I had been
shuffling through, but I did not compare its sound with theirs which
would have been pointless. I rarely compare components anyway, and
certainly not in the context of how they perform in my reference
system. I listen to the system as a whole with the component in it; and
make adjustments if necessary in order to optimize the performance of
the component under review.
Sometimes doing so requires cable or interconnect changes. Often it
requires moving the speakers around the room to alter tonal balance.
Every once in a long while it requires changing equipment racks, and I
have done so. Whatever it takes to optimize the performance of the
component under review, I take it that my task is to report on the
musically significant attributes of my system with the component under
review. It needs to perform at its best, or at least as best as I can
get it to perform given the limitations of my room, equipment and other
components I can substitute into my system. My experience has been that
very few components sound as they were intended to when one merely
plops them into one's system. Something that one has probably spent a
good deal of time voicing already.
It's hard enough to take reviews seriously (once you hear what most
reviewers' systems sound like), but it is impossible to do so if the
reviewer does not take some considerable care in working with his or
her reference system to bring the best out in the component under
review. I make every effort to do just that and then to report on how
my overall system sounds. To try by describing and characterizing the
sound heard in the light of what I take to be musically valuable
attributes of playback. I try to resist making comparisons because the
only comparisons one can have confidence in making are those between
systems. It is the sound of the system one hears, not the component. In
order to isolate the sound of the component one would have to hear it
in a number of different systems. The sweeping judgments that
characterize so many reviews are largely unwarranted and not helpful. I
try to avoid making evaluative comparisons beyond those that are too
obvious to ignore.
I could care less how the Reimyo sounded in comparison with the
Meridian or with any other CD player. I care whether or not it makes
music, or to put it another way, I care whether it conveyed the
musically important dimensions of the performance as captured on disk
in a way that is credible and satisfying.
The Transport And The DAC
One cannot let this review pass without saying a few words about the
CDT-777 CD transport. It is gorgeous, beautifully made and finished and
in conjunction with the DAC provides a foundation to the musiC a sense
of relaxed control that I simply could not duplicate with any of the
other digital front ends serving as transports I had on hand.
One of the great joys of the original one box CDP-777 was the JVC
transport device that is unfortunately no longer available. Instead of
abandoning a CD transport and producing only a DAC, the legendary,
Kiuchi-san, the resonance control and component voicing magician behind
the Harmonix company, remained committed to engineering a transport
worthy of his DAC. After considerable experimentation, Kiuchi settled
on the much praised CD-Pro M2 drive manufactured by Philips. The
transport unit that houses the drive is a work of industrial art,
weighing in at a tad over 30 lbs, and features the typical Kiuchi
concern for resonance control and component voicing. There is but one
digital out socket and it is designed for the standard 75 Ohm digital
interconnect.
Like Shindo who encourages the use of Shindo interconnects, Kiuchi's
products work best with Harmonix interconnects and power cords. Kiuchi
clearly envisions someone using the transport to do so in conjunction
with the DAC. Though I did not audition the transport with other DACs,
something I would likely have done had I been reviewing the transport
as well as the DAC, I am confident that it will work well as a
transport in any digital front end and that it will give a solidity,
control and overall sense of balance to the presentation of any high
quality DAC.
Stylistically, the DAP-999EX DAC compliments but does not emulate the
appearance (or weight) of the transport. The DAC employs JVCs K2
technology. The K2 processor converts standard 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs to
24/88.2, and then sends that signal through the ubiquitous Burr-Brown
PCM1704U converter chip. The net effect is a 24-bit, 8x oversampled
analog signal.
The DAC housing is slender and elegant. There is little excess in the
design. The rear panel allows for after market power cords (again the
Harmonix is favored); balanced and unbalanced analog outputs, AES,
coaxial, optical and BNC connections. A special treat is the presence
of a switch for shifting phase, though its location on the rear makes
it less likely to be used than might be optimal. The front panel has
button selection mechanisms for choosing the appropriate connection
(made on the back), LEDs to indicate both the connection made and the
sampling frequency. Everything that is necessary in a package suitable
to its function; and nothing more. What a relief and but for the phase
switch a joy to operate.
Both the transport and the DAC had seen some service before the review
and so I was able to avoid the longish break-in periods that invariably
accompany new products. Within a few days of constant playing, I was
able to listen critically. Both the transport and the DAC worked
flawlessly during my time with them.
Music
In the early days good digital was often equated with inoffensive
sound. In general digital was rendered inoffensive by taking the edge
off the presentation, by rounding it into shape so to speak. The
problem was that in rounding the corners and the edges, musically
relevant information was sacrificed in order to preserve listenability.
Inoffensive and listenable: hardly perfect sound forever.' For the
better part of its existence, digital playback has exhibited all the
dimensionality of cardboard with a soul to match. With few exceptions,
digital playback favors an undue emphasis on the leading edge of notes
at the expense of revealing their harmonic structure and a sense of
natural decay.
The emphasis on the leading edge of notes naturally invited a fixation
on what I take to be musically irrelevant features of playback:
soundstaging and imaging. Digital highlights visual rather than
auditory features of performances and in doing so distracts from and
obscures the musically significance of a performance timbral integrity,
tonal accuracy, dynamic realism, overall coherence and structural
integrity what I think of as resolution (in the same way in which in
art we distinguished paintings that are resolved from those that are
not).
Digital has come a long way, but some characteristics of it remain
largely unchanged. Of the many artifacts of digital playback three have
proven almost insurmountable obstacles to my ability to enjoy listening
long term to it. I can perhaps best characterize the true excellence of
the Reimyo by identifying the digital artifacts that the Reimyo largely
if not completely avoids.
First, most digital playback strikes me as rushed and harried. I often
get the sense that the performance is not developing but is being
rushed along. I hear this as failures of timing and flow. In saying
that I experience digital playback as exhibiting timing defects, yet do
not mean to suggest that digital gets the beat wrong or that it can't
keep time. Rather, to my ears, there is a difference between walking
and marching. Digital marches along; it almost never walks, swivels or
sways along. Have you ever tried to keep time with a musician? There is
something about the feel of a musician keeping the same time you are
keeping. It exhibits an ease by comparison to your relative rigidity;
there is a flow to it that yours typically does not exhibit.
Digital playback is often unnerving to me because it presents music in
what for want of a better term strikes me as at an a-musical speed.
Analog can be rough and frenetic; but it has a grace and flow that
seems appropriate to music that digital lacks or which digital displays
too infrequently. Have had the same response to the way some modern
turntables keep time: a military march rather than a walk with Fred
Astair. Marching to a conclusion: making sure you get from point A to
point B; as opposed to say, enjoying the walk or the trip, or just
going at a natural and appropriate pace. This feature kept me from
fully enjoying the otherwise impeccable Clearaudio Reference turntable,
for example.
The second feature of digital that is a bar to my appreciation of it is
that the music decays into an infinite darkness. This accounts in part
for the clarity of digital playback, but it is completely unnatural.
Real music decays into space that has density and dirt. The dark
backgrounds of the digital domain do not replicate the space in which
real music is played and recorded. As a result the way in which notes
hang in space and decay in digital is far removed from the way in which
notes are expressed and develop and meld with one another in the real
world. This gives digital a kind of presence that is doubly weird. The
music is presented hanging in space rather than as occupying space and
so it stands out and an apart from what is in fact an integral part of
it. At the same time the presentation is more a visual picture and
leaves the listener at a distance from it thus creating a presence that
oddly one cannot be immersed in.
Finally, partially as a result of one and two above, digital
reproduction often strikes me as a collection of parts and not as an
integrated whole. Digital playback lacks the kind of integration that
presents the performance as structurally complete, as resolved, and
thus as a potential source of meaning. All the elements are presented,
but too often in a way that draws one's attention to their
distinctiveness rather than to the contribution each makes to the
meaning of a piece. If these elements of digital playback sound
familiar to you, then the Reimyo digital front end may be your savior.
For me, the Reimyo front end is analog like in that it overcomes much
of what is artificial about digital and more.
The Reimyo front end does not eliminate entirely the unnatural darkness
into which digital sounds decay. That is very much a function of the
recording technique I fear and can only be altered by CD playback
adding dirt' or grain' that is itself an artifact, and likely to
appear in places it is not wanted. In this regard, the Reimyo front end
is essentially and unavoidably true to digital. Elsewhere it is much
truer to music than to the medium.
Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the timing and flow of the
musical presentation. The Reimyo front end presents the music in a
forthright and direct yet altogether relaxed and natural manner. There
is a grace to its presentation that is seductive and intoxicating. Yet
there is nothing soft about it. There are no rounded edges or rolled
off frequencies top or bottom. The presentation is honest and true, but
the Reimyo almost looks beyond the mode of recording to the essential
emotional and musical values of the performance itself.
It conveys everything that is essential to the musical event with a
modesty and confidence that is beguiling. The Reimyo is (in my
experience) unmatched in its timbral integrity and tonal accuracy. And
when mated to the extraordinary transport gives the music a strong,
unwavering and persuasive foundation that carries the performance from
machine to one's heart. The Reimyo engages, engulfs and immerses the
listener. It does not present the performance as something staged for
one to observe from a distance in another part of the room. It invites
one into the performance; it immerses one in it as does vinyl.As I
mentioned above, I find most digital presentations to emphasize the
parts at the expense of part-to-part and part-to-whole relationships.
The music is taken apart but rarely put back together. The great thing
about the Reimyo is that it misses none of the parts and one can follow
along to them or focus on them should one choose to do so yet it draws
one's attention to the whole; and it does so by revealing the
structural integrity of the performance. A fully resolved performance
is rendered as such. A less than fully realized work is portrayed
accordingly.The Reimyo front end could not achieve this level of
performance if it lacked the capacity to unravel and accurately portray
the most complex and demanding passages in orchestral music. The Reimyo
system was never once tripped up and at no time did it sound confused
or confounded by the material. Rare is the player that display all the
complex individual parts of a performance yet does so in a way that
does not unduly direct one to the trees at the expense of the forest.
I do not think that the Reimyo front end is meant for those audiophiles
who like to take their music visually. I am sure that with the right
(or wrong) associated equipment the Reimyo will image and soundstage on
a par with the best of breed. But that is not what the Reimyo system is
all about. Mr. Kiuchi is notorious for his ability to employ his tuning
devices' to change entirely the voicing of everything from instruments
to listening rooms. But the voice he hears has always been that of
music. Those who have visited his rooms at CES will notice that his
taste runs a bit to the sweet, dense and rich. If his electronics,
including the digital front end, have a coloration at all, it is that
they too favor the rich and full over the lean and light. I found this
coloration less to my liking in the Reimyo preamplifier and amplifier
than in the digital front end. In fact, I find it downright desirable
in the digital domain.
The DAC stands on its own as a great achievement, but there is no
denying that it shines most brightly when partnered with the Reimyo
transport. When I substituted other CD players used as transports alone
there was a corresponding reduction in overall level of performance.
The greatest loss was in the strength of the foundation to the music
that the transport provides. The Reimyo system did not fool me into
thinking I was listening to vinyl. What it did was make the fact that I
wasn't significantly less important. If you are interested in listening
to the best that digital has to offer, then you owe it to yourself to
listen to the Reimyo digital front end. And if you are in the market
for a state of the art digital to analog converter, I cannot imagine
your doing better than the Reimyo DAP-999EX. I already miss it.
Specifications
Type: High resolution digital to analog converter
Frequency Response: DC ~ 20kHz (+/-0.5dB)
S/N Ratio: Better than 114dB (IHF-A)
Dynamic Range: Better than 100dB
Input Quantization: 16-bit
Sampling Frequency: 48, 44.1 and 32 kHz (auto-switching)
Digital Inputs:
AES (XLR-3P- Hot: No.3) Input Impedance:110 Ohm
BNC: 75 Ohm
Coaxial (RCA) 75 Ohm
Optical (TORX)
Signal Procession: K2 Technology (CC Converter IC; 16-24bit)
DA Converter: 24-bit 8-time oversampling/multi-bit
Phase Inverter SW: 0-180 on the back panel.
Analog Outputs:
XLR balance/ 5.1 Vrms/ Low Imp.
RCA unbalance/ 2.55 Vrms/ Low Imp.
Linearity: +/-0.5dB (+10dBm ~ 90dBm) 1kHz IHF-A
THD: Better than 0.003% (30kHz LPF on)
Channel Separation: Better than 105dB (1kHz)
Dimensions: 430 x 44 x 337 (WxHxD in mm)
Weight: 11.2 lbs
Standard Accessory: Harmonix X-DC2 1.5m Special made (ROHS compliance)
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