dCS Debussy DAC - Review

BlueFox

What is gap less music? I don't think I see (hear) this issue with my BDP-1, or the Lumin S1, whether I am playing a CD straight through, or bouncing around randomly on a playlist which consists of tracks between 44/16 to 192/24, and some DSD on the Lumin.

DarqueKnight

A "gap" is a space of time between the end of the last song and the beginning of the next. "Gapless" refers to the next song starting immediately at the end of the preceding song. Some DACs prefer there to be a small gap between songs.

Nightfall

Live recordings and some studio albums, such as Pink Floyd DSOTM, don't sound right with gaps.

DarqueKnight

Same holds for classical.

JRiver lets you specify gapless or a gap of a specific length.

BlueFox

I guess I have been lucky so far, as the Bryston BDA-2, Auralic Vega, and Lumin S1 have been fine with this. I mostly listen to classical during the week, both straight through a CD, or random shuffle on the classical playlists with no issues. However, all my classical is just 44/16, so that might be why I don't hear any issue.

Nightfall

BlueFox wrote: »

I guess I have been lucky so far, as the Bryston BDA-2, Auralic Vega, and Lumin S1 have been fine with this. I mostly listen to classical during the week, both straight through a CD, or random shuffle on the classical playlists with no issues. However, all my classical is just 44/16, so that might be why I don't hear any issue.

Right, he's saying there's only an issue when the next song is a different format and/or sample rate from the previous song if I am understanding correctly.

DarqueKnight

Correct...and only with some DACs.

tonyb

Not to derail, but man....I must be getting old.

In my day, "gap" or "gapless" was reference to the distance between a woman's thighs.

Brave new world I guess....

txcoastal1

DK, Question about your issues with gap/gapless as I am looking at Simaudio's 380D/780D, DAC/Streamer. I came across this review. Do your issues fall somewhere in the mentions of this article?......wireless vs wired vs bit rates

"As usual I always test network inputs for their ability to accept high resolution audio and play it back gapless. The
MiND input on the 380D DSD was able to play up through 24/192 audio gapless via its wired Ethernet interface
without any issues. The newest version of the MiND card also supports DSD playback at DSD64. ThisDSD capable
MiNDS will ship to consumers later in 2015. When I switched to wireless playback via my 802.11n 2.4 GHz WPA2
network, I wasn't able to play 4x PCMcontent (176.4 / 192) without significant dropouts. I had success playing 24/96
material but not gapless. To get gapless playback I had to go down to 24/48 audio."

Appreciate the detailed reviews, and look foward to your answer

---Ron

DarqueKnight

The article appears to be discussing dropouts while streaming audio at higher sampling rates. My issue is dropouts only at the beginning of a song while the DAC reconfigures to accept a sampling rate different from the previous song.

asindc

DK,

Thanks as always for the thorough and informative review.