Rega DAC-R DAC Review

[Deleted member 5641]

I wonder if the new ownership has improved the reliability and build quality of their power amps?

I've seen some shocking builds.

Consider “Handmade in England” a warning.

 

[Mart68]

I wonder if the new ownership has improved the reliability and build quality of their power amps?

I've seen some shocking builds.

I owned some of their older electronics for a while and never had a problem - it's a different ballgame now, all a lot more professional, but more expensive as a consequence.

Their semi omni speakers aren't my sort of thing at all. Still, they have a niche and they sell into it. I had no trouble selling it on, gone in hours, so that tells you something.

Was the same with the Croft kit I had.

 

[Anthony T]

Oh I see, you are a fanboy.

You’d be shocked by the BOM of most any “high end” gear. You’d probably lose sleep over it.

R3 turntable is about $50, for example.

Don’t be offended. You’d also be shocked by the BOM of your favorite shampoo. Goop is cheap and costs nowhere even near retail to make. So are laminated MDF turntables. If the dealer can take 40%, what does the distributer take? the manufacturer? And what’s the overhead? Break it all down and that leaves just enough for some MDF, plastic laminate, cheap power suppliers, motors, and tonearms made with ancient moldings long depreciated. It’s all very old tech. The most expensive thing about it might be the shipping. The most technical the logistics.

Again, wrong forum if you want “moderators”. The GORTs at SHTV (and similar) are there to keep your biases aligned with industry interests and nothing more (some perhaps unwittingly so)

Oh dear, you really are clueless aren’t you? MDF? LOL. Only for the basic turntables you numpty. P6/P8/P10/Naia/Naiad are definitely not made of MDF

Please check your facts before posting. It really does pay to actually know what you’re talking about, and you don’t.
Whats worse is some may even believe what you’re pushing, this is exactly the sort of drivel that needs pushing back on. You have a agenda and it’s obviously personal, did you buy this DAC and are disappointed with the SINAD or something?

I can assure you I know exactly where I am I just don’t think it’s for a member with under 50 posts to start telling other members where the door is. I don’t post here often, would you like to know why? Because I don’t know anything about electronics so leave the heavy hauling to others whilst picking up a little knowledge here and there.

I suggest you do the same…

 

[Deleted member 5641]

Oh dear, you really are clueless aren’t you? MDF? LOL. Only for the basic turntables you numpty. P6/P8/P10/Naia/Naiad are definitely not made of MDF

Please check your facts before posting. It really does pay to actually know what you’re talking about, and you don’t.
Whats worse is some may even believe what you’re pushing, this is exactly the sort of drivel that needs pushing back on. You have a agenda and it’s obviously personal, did you buy this DAC and are disappointed with the SINAD or something?

I can assure you I know exactly where I am I just don’t think it’s for a member with under 50 posts to start telling other members where the door is. I don’t post here often, would you like to know why? Because I don’t know anything about electronics so leave the heavy hauling to others whilst picking up a little knowledge here and there.

I suggest you do the same…

Are you suggesting the RP10’s hardened foam (plastic laminateed plinth) justifies the premium? Epoxy Resin Foam I believe it’s called? The same stuff is used for surfboards, aircraft insulation, prototyping, wind turbine blades…. while a more expensive material than MDF it’s not $5k per sq ft more expensive.

Tancast Polyurethane Foam Aerospace Industry Foam - Trident Foams

Trident Foams are Manufacturers of Rigid Polyurethane Foams, Floral Foam, Buoyancy Foams, GRP foam materials, Insulation Foams, Liquid Foam, Tricast Foam, Tripor Foam, rigid polyurethane foam sheets and Insulation Foam

www.tridentfoams.co.uk

Or did you think the RP10’s plinth was made from rare magical space dust?

I see you are British. I’m sorry to criticize your national pride, I really am. I seriously gave it a fair shot while under the spell. And I’m sorry that national pride is linked so strongly to what amounts to a garage snake oil operation.

 

[simbloke]

This line of attack is somewhere you want to go?

I see you are British. I’m sorry to criticize your national pride, I really am. I seriously gave it a fair shot while under the spell. And I’m sorry that national pride is linked so strongly to what amounts to a garage snake oil operation.

 

[Purité Audio]

Amir’s recent reviews have sadly placed U.K. Hi-Fi firmly in the naughty corner.
Keith

 

[simbloke]

Amir’s recent reviews have sadly placed U.K. Hi-Fi firmly in the naughty corner.
Keith

True, and I have no sympathy for them. The text I quoted above isn't about that.

 

[Deleted member 5641]

True, and I have no sympathy for them. The text I quoted above isn't about that.

It’s about the presumed source of bias informing Anthony T’s irrational attacks.

Rega gear is worth the take-down, especially on this forum, and if AT is going to defend with irrational subjective hot takes let’s understand whats driving the emotional level of negative engagement.

 

[Purité Audio]

I’ll get the tar and feathers.
I have always thought that with vinyl replay you can more or choose to have any sound you like, so many parameters to play with, having said that the TT does have to rotate at somewhere near the correct speed.
Keith

 

[simbloke]

It’s about the presumed source of bias informing Anthony T’s irrational attacks. Bet he’s a Brexit voter too.

Rega gear is worth the take-down, especially on this forum, and if AT is going to defend with irrational subjective hot takes let’s understand whats driving the emotional level of negative engagement.

Don't assume it has anything to do with national pride.

I don't know if you are British but the B word divides friends and families and should not be used in such an insignificant debate as this.

 

[engineeringDynamo]

I would love to have 2 coax and 2 toslink inputs.
Too bad the Rega performance is so bad.

 

[rocksteady]

Doesn't surprise me. Rega's success has always baffled me.

Their speakers are not great, their amplifiers are expensive for what you get, their cartridges are terrible, and their turntables are embarrassed by any Technics model for both sound and build quality.

Having owned the Rega Planar 3 yonkers ago, I can attest to that statement. It sounded surprisingly poor, probably worse than my early 1980s cheap Technics. And that despite being equipped with a pretty good Cartridge, a Linn K9...

 

[rocksteady]

I kind-of knew this day would come

Rega prices are obscenely high away from the UK market and visuals aside @Mart68, you'd need to sit down and properly evaluate a Technics modern vinyl deck with a Rega 3, let alone a 6 which may not have as good a drive, but the RB330 arm is in a different world - and does actually measure close to the very best in terms of friction and resonances which the Technics tonearms never will! My RB330 is far better finished too than its predecessors which I know only too well I agree their home made MM's are awful (a leftover from the early 80's) but their MC's are good if you can afford them (I'm more an AT OC9 these days bit still). This dac, like Linn's early ones, was/is being sold into the rather closed-off and blinkered vinyl world so although totally alien to the ethos of this site, a valid product *in that world.*

This dac started life in the late noughties I recall and yes, those who listen to music primarily rather than the gear, actually liked what it does. It was around five hundred quid at the time and as none of the far eastern or Schiit wonder-dacs were around back then, in the UK it was hard to find anything better and cheaper, although I believe M-F and Cambridge? did something (flogged out through a discount chain so not really sellable or easy to compare through a specialist dealer). The Stereophile tests weren't that wonderful and of course here, the blanket good performance from sub $/£250 dacs in recent times makes this thing a kind of anachronism today and very much a 'vintage' design (note the reference to EL84 valves on the circuit board which will tell you all you need to know ). This brand here is sold as a step up to Naim or Linn by a lot of dealers it seems today as well, so regarded as more a 'starter-brand in those circles...

I still rate the company from an after-care point of view (almost all the far eastern cheap dacs are landfill if they fail I believe and not everyone can afford to basically waste $/£200 a pop), but I have to accept that the design is now way out of date from an increasingly bygone era (of which I was a tiny part) and maybe not that wonderful (designed to be 'good enough' as a lot of UK gear was) when first launched all those years ago (they fought asynchronous inputs for years I gather).

R.I.P...

It is true that Rega Tonearms are excellent, especially taken in consideration the obnoxiously high cost of most of their competitors. I myself use an Origin Live modified RB250, mounted on a DC-motor modified Roksan Xerxes (1st Gen?), and the combination is absolutely superb. Beyond that, however, not much of what they do is that good...

 

[rocksteady]

Even in 2015 a $1200 DAC with no balanced output and the SINAD of an AV receiver was comically bad. Would vote lower than headless panther i

This Rega R dac dont use any IC at the analog output. Its a discreet design. It mirrors the sound of an older Linn Klimax DS, almost the same dacs used ( Wolfson 8742 and 8741) and using filter 2 on the rega has about the same filter caracteristics as a Klimax.

Regarding the Rega , its a very polite sound without any digital glare combined with a very good and tight bass drive .
Maybe a coloration, but its a good one

A polite sound...usually it sounds boring to me.

 

[rocksteady]

Interesting review, thanks.

My 16 bits Sony PCM-R300 DAT recorder from the 90s has better SINAD and performance on its DAC part (and also overall).
The only exception is the noise (97dB vs 104dB here)

So age is for sure not an excuse.

No, of course not. Design incompetence is mostly to be blamed. Especially with Digital sources. It's definitely not their Forte, and the same could be said about a few other traditional British hi-fi makers...

 

[rocksteady]

It is always the same: If you paid that 1000£ back in 2015, it has to have a well-deserved reputation and even more than this. Autosuggestion.

Please stop yapping about the £1000 figure. It didn't cost nearly as much.

Tested at £600​

 

[DSJR]

It is true that Rega Tonearms are excellent, especially taken in consideration the obnoxiously high cost of most of their competitors. I myself use an Origin Live modified RB250, mounted on a DC-motor modified Roksan Xerxes (1st Gen?), and the combination is absolutely superb. Beyond that, however, not much of what they do is that good...

Do be aware that OL modify the arms backwards, adding resonances that Rega engineers took so long to remove (HiFi Review reviews back this up), making for an artificially 'exciting' tone. The power supplies of early Roksan decks were flaky to say the least (I had to basically rebuild one a couple of years back...).

 

[rocksteady]

Do be aware that OL modify the arms backwards, adding resonances that Rega engineers took so long to remove (HiFi Review reviews back this up), making for an artificially 'exciting' tone. The power supplies of early Roksan decks were flaky to say the least (I had to basically rebuild one a couple of years back)

I Don't dispute what you say about the OL modifications. All that I can say is that I don't hear such resonances at all and the whole package sounds superb (with the help of of an AT-150MLx). As for the original PSU, it has given up the ghost long time ago. Well, not so much has died, but it began behaving erratically. So I took the opportunity to vastly improve upon it with the referred modification, fed by a Battery PSU... BTW, could you provide links for the Article(s) regarding the OL modifications?

 

[rocksteady]

Don’t underestimate Whathifi’s power.

And Hi-Fi Choice, Hi-Fi News,etc...

 

[rocksteady]

Mediocre performance, high price.
However, looking at this DAC I can't help but wonder why even companies that produce high-level low-cost DACs can't insert double digital inputs, it doesn't seem like something difficult to implement.
For example, despite having a Topping E30 OG that fully satisfied me, I purchased a Topping DX3 pro+ only and exclusively because it provided a double coaxial input (always in a compact form factor)
But what could possibly be difficult about putting two optical, two coaxial and maybe two USB inputs?

+1! And an AES-EBU thrown in for good measure. And yes, it's perfectly feasible on a Half-Rack sized unit, such as the Emotiva DC-1, among others...