dCS threatens with a 7-figure lawsuit over a review

[Blorg]

At least the YouTube title says it is the dCS Vivaldi, which is the TOTL and costs about 50k, so it would be interesting in it´s own and the most expensive DAC ever measured by Amir AFAIK. But my guess is still that a $100 Topping DAC does not score worse.

GoldenSound measured the Bartok.

There's also an ASR thread discussing those measurements. The thread also has links to Stereophile's measurements of it.

Stereophile measured the OG Vivaldi in 2014 and the Vivaldi Apex in 2023.

 

[shuppatsu]

For what it's worth, I spoke to an individual who knows both David Steven and the other person who seems to be involved yesterday. The person I spoke to is a reasonably well known reviewer/editor who owns a hifi publication, and has visited DCS's UK location on several occasions. His opinion is that David Steven is a straight-up guy, and that the other person whom I won't name isn't. The editor's experience with that person was when he worked for another well-known manufacturer.

I think that's a good resolution. End of story now, the drama is over.

I think dCS' letter is very good and as much as one could expect. I agree that culture follows from the top, but to me it seems truthful and credible that the offending dCS employee acted (or in the case of the never-sent apology, neglected to act) on their own with the actions that are called out as such in the letter.

dCS's letter was very good, but one thing it was maybe too successful about is shifting the focus from what we were originally exercised about, to a lesser sin that is easily apologized for.

Yes, the behavior of dCS's VP was deplorable, and his failure to apologize and purportedly lying about that to his boss is really bad behavior on his part. But the reason why we're all here is because dCS threatened a reviewer with litigation over a negative review. Mr. Steven admitted he knew that the demand letter was going out.

By his telling, he didn't think of it as a litigation threat so much as an invitation for the parties to keep working through their disagreements. That may well be true. Demand letters can be and often are deployed tactically. But that doesn't erase the fact that he knowingly threatened litigation over a negative review.

 

[Mart68]

Sure. Multiple people who make it clear that they would never never buy an expensive DAC such as the one that was reviewed because you get nothing in the way of objective improvement or audible differences are very quick to speak to he motives of those who do buy DACs like the one in the review.

And they mostly ascribe the motive of status. Or other fairly demeaning motives. And yet if they were to actually communicate with these audiophiles and ask them why they would buy a $10K or $30K DAC (as I have asked) you would likely find, as I have, that it is invariably based on the firm belief that they are getting substantially better sound quality.

Absolutely. It can be hard to grasp for some but I know plenty of people with expensive DACs.

They all think it was money well spent on superior sound, and they just don't understand why I don't also get one. They're totally convinced that I'm missing out.

 

[Somafunk]

Sorry if this doesn't add much to the broader issue, but I found Cameron's comment about the Bartok sounding soft with electronic music to be a curious thing.

I just recorded this with an iPhone, and it's with YouTube compression on the upload side. Less than ideal, but I think most would agree... this isn't "soft". Given, this is from a Vivaldi One, but I'd guess any differences would be minor. And this is with YouTube as the source. Speakers are Focal Scala Utopia Evos.

This is mapper 1, filter 6, DXD upsampling.

Mods - please feel free to delete this comment if it's counterproductive or prohibited. Not trying to cause drama.

Charlotte De Witte , excellent choice….one of my fav techno artists, “Doppler” and “Closer” are pretty much perfect tunes.

 

[markstein]

I don't really agree with this. You can get a few intersample overs just by using a normal amount of compression and converting to lossy formats, but it should not be audible. It might produce some extra THD for a couple milliseconds maybe once or twice per song.

If the recording is compressed enough to produce audible distortion from intersample overs, I think you would need to see peaks clipped for tens of milliseconds at a time, a really atrocious result and not something I've actually seen in the worst cases. Even someone who has never mastered an album before would probably notice it sounded bad and back off.

This issue could be easily avoided during mastering, so I see no reason to somehow justify it. For me it is simply a technical mistake.

It might not be the worst mistake - excessive DR compression is surely worse.

Film industry seems to have much more meaningful audio mastering standards than audio industry. Would be nice to find a recent mainstream audio production with headroom and DR comparable to a recent mainstream movie...

 

[mocenigo]

Intersample clipping/overs are a mastering/software problem, not the responsibility of a D/A converter to remedy.

While I agree in theory, in practice I disagree. There is a lot of music with intersample overflows out there, and doing something is advisable. It is not my problem since my DAC AK4499 based with volume control done in the chip itself, and it is almost always between -6 and -15Db (intersample clipping that goes over that is exceptional), but some architectures do add one bit of resolutoin to handle that. They can handle the clipping itself by making it smoothed out.

 

[kemmler3D]

many companies know and understand that subjectivists are roughly the same as Flat Earthers; illogical, unscientific and frequently deluded.

I think the committed subjectivists - those that understand measurements and refuse to believe their hearing could be subject to cognitive bias effects, are a lot like flat earthers.

But most consumers of overpriced / subjectivist gear tried to learn about audio / audiophilia and simply learned the wrong stuff from the wrong people. They never rejected measurements or an objective approach because they never got exposed to it properly.

They see subjectivists with fancy gear, writing for fancy magazines or with big youtube followings, and assume they know what they're talking about.

I think they turn flat-earther when they decide to make *knowing about audio* part of their hobby after buying subjectivist gear. They get exposed to the scientific approach and end up in a psychological dilemma - either admit they wasted a ton of money on subjectivist gear that isn't actually better (some people here have shared experiences like this), or double down and reject the scientific approach and go full flat-earth (you can find them in the stereophile comments section).

 

[kemmler3D]

possibly quadrupled or more.

Speaking from experience, retail being 4x of landed product cost (the product itself, shipping to the destination country, packaging, tariffs, etc) would be normal, some companies would even see it as low. 3x is considered really low and 2x is considered insanely, unsustainably low. 9-10x is considered high but not shocking by any means, especially if there are dealers / distributors involved.

 

[Billy Budapest]

As someone that owns a Rolex looking at the Batman now that prices have somewhat gone down and it's possible to actually get one in an AD, this is complete BS without context. Even if an automatic watch is calibrated, it depends on the angle of the watch, temperature, altitude, etc. The bps of a quartz crystal is just so much faster than that of an automatic/mechanical watches, unless you're talking about a Spring Drive Seiko. To be honest you should be talking about Grand Seiko Hibeat and Spring Drive movements as well as Rolex if talking about automatic/mechanical watch accuracy.

Batman? AD? Can you please explain your terminology?

 

[Ste_S]

If one wants to show off, one can show off a Rolex, a Lamborghini etc., nice speakers for sure. But who does one show off a DAC to? Most wouldn't know or care what that even is.


JSmith

In the audio world, it's done on the street, where your headphones almost denote your social status.

 

[Doodski]

In the audio world, it's done on the street, where your headphones almost denote your social status.

Like those Beats headphones I see so often that are broken but still being used.

 

[Salt]

Like those Beats headphones I see so often that are broken but still being used.

As they're subjectively felt sufficient

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I think the committed subjectivists - those that understand measurements and refuse to believe their hearing could be subject to cognitive bias effects, are a lot like flat earthers.

I very much disagree. Round earth is common knowledge. We grow up understanding it and everything that goes with it.
When were you first exposed to psychoacoustics? I don’t know about you but I never heard of it until my 30s. And as such I spent 30+ years believing I could trust my senses. I’m pretty sure that’s much more common than not.
So flat earthers are coming from a very different place

But most consumers of overpriced / subjectivist gear tried to learn about audio / audiophilia and simply learned the wrong stuff from the wrong people. They never rejected measurements or an objective approach because they never got exposed to it properly.

And they trusted their subjective impressions without reason to doubt the veracity of those impressions.
That makes a serious impression

They see subjectivists with fancy gear, writing for fancy magazines or with big youtube followings, and assume they know what they're talking about.

I think they turn flat-earther when they decide to make *knowing about audio* part of their hobby after buying subjectivist gear. They get exposed to the scientific approach and end up in a psychological dilemma - either admit they wasted a ton of money on subjectivist gear that isn't actually better (some people here have shared experiences like this), or double down and reject the scientific approach and go full flat-earth (you can find them in the stereophile comments section).

Which is very different from the path of a flat earther.

 

[kemmler3D]

I very much disagree. Round earth is common knowledge. We grow up understanding it and everything that goes with it.
When were you first exposed to psychoacoustics? I don’t know about you but I never heard of it until my 30s. And as such I spent 30+ years believing I could trust my senses. I’m pretty sure that’s much more common than not.
So flat earthers are coming from a very different place

And they trusted their subjective impressions without reason to doubt the veracity of those impressions.
That makes a serious impression

Which is very different from the path of a flat earther.

I think the analogy still works from certain angles.

Flat earthers actively decide to trust their subjective impressions (earth looks flat) over science.

Committed subjectivists know about measurements, but actively decide to trust their subjective impressions (expensive DAC sounds better) over science.

I think the rest of the subjectivists out there don't work in an analogy with flat earthers, which it seems like we agree on?

 

[amirm]

And they mostly ascribe the motive of status. Or other fairly demeaning motives. And yet if they were to actually communicate with these audiophiles and ask them why they would buy a $10K or $30K DAC (as I have asked) you would likely find, as I have, that it is invariably based on the firm belief that they are getting substantially better sound quality.

They do believe in that. But they also believe and feel special owning such gear as evidenced by posting pictures of them, asking people to come and listen, etc. Heck, I do it as I talk about how expensive my measurement gear is! It is just human nature to think, "this is the best and I own it even though it is so expensive." This is what I call "audio voyeurism" and is quite apparent in high-end audiophiles. BTW, no $10K DAC falls in this category. $30K would be the starter price. Anything less would be a mid-fi DAC for them.

 

[Music1969]

As for dCS, like Tekton, they are cancelling themselves...

how stupid are they

they are doing more damage to their brand from these legal threats, than these lowly viewed reviews they perceive as negative

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I think the analogy still works from certain angles.

Flat earthers actively decide to trust their subjective impressions (earth looks flat) over science.

Committed subjectivists know about measurements, but actively decide to trust their subjective impressions (expensive DAC sounds better) over science.

I think the rest of the subjectivists out there don't work in an analogy with flat earthers, which it seems like we agree on?

The difference I see is the investment. Audiophiles are passionate about audio and generally have made major investments in non scientific beliefs.

Flat earthers have disinvested from their upbringing and common knowledge base.

And it’s often hard to digest when science tells us or senses, instincts and intuition are wrong. Just look at the criminal justice system. Up until the last 20-30 years and still today in most courts confession and eye witness testimony were and are considered the two most reliable forms of evidence. Through science we now know they are possibly the two least reliable sources of evidence. Does that make the entire justice system anti-scientific? Or just very invested in existing beliefs?

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

They do believe in that. But they also believe and feel special owning such gear as evidenced by posting pictures of them, asking people to come and listen, etc. Heck, I do it as I talk about how expensive my measurement gear is! It is just human nature to think, "this is the best and I own it even though it is so expensive." This is what I call "audio voyeurism" and is quite apparent in high-end audiophiles. BTW, no $10K DAC falls in this category. $30K would be the starter price. Anything less would be a mid-fi DAC for them.

Did you buy the measuring gear for status?

 

[amirm]

Did you buy the measuring gear for status?

The choices were partially made for credibility. I was for example was going to make my own filter for testing class D amp. But someone gave me good advice that I should get the much more expensive one made by Audio Precision for that reason.

I am not sure why you ask anyway as I didn't say high-end audiophiles only bought the gear to show off.

 

[Doodski]

Did you buy the measuring gear for status?

Metering and calibration gear is bought for maximum reliability. To be servicing gear and have intermittent metering or false readings is inexcusable for a seasoned operator. At @amirm's sophisticated level of metering he requires something totally reliable, repeatable and of the utmost accuracy. That costs lotsa dough. As a side benefit the exclusivity comes with that.