| Review on the DIP SUPER DRIVE
Fellow Pfer Lynn Olsen introduced me to Monarchy Audio several years ago at a stereo get together down at Tony Glynnís place(Tony is the owner of Lowther America, importer of the British Lowther drivers.) Lynn brought a modified Monarchy DAC to the gathering and it put out quite a sound. So impressed was I that shortly after that eventful afternoon I contacted Monarchy and soon had a Model 22B of my own. I found the digital section of the DAC to be first rate, and with some tweaks here and there in the analog side, my DAC was causing embarrassment to units costing many, many times its price. |
| Soon I was selling copies of my modified Monarchy DAC to audiophiles all over the country. As Monarchy Audioís owner Mr. C.C. Poon and I began to exchange more and more phone calls and faxes, he encouraged me to try one his DIP processors. The name, DIP, is an anagram for Digital Interface Processor. It is one of those little boxes that go between the CD Transport and the DAC to clean up the signal that the transport should have produced correctly in the first place, but never does. Audio Alchemy had built a small fortune on boxes designed to the same job, and I had some experience with them, and thought I should give them both a try in my system to see for myself just how much magic they could conjure. The Monarchy DIP arrived and immediately impressed me with the build quality. Weíre talking solid. The chassis is built from really thick aluminum and painted with a classy black wrinkle paint. I read the reviews that were packed with the unit, just to see if my listening impressions would match what others had said. The other reviewers all gave the DIP a very high rating, but frankly, I donít often agree with the superlative hyperbole that some reviewers spit forth. I needed to hear for myself. And hear I did! The others were right, even to the degree of superlatives. I settled down to several months of more enjoyable listening, but the story didnít quietly end with a ëhappily ever afterí. Mr. Poon told me he had a hot rodded version on the DIP, aptly known as the SuperDIP. It was supposed to sound better. Hey, the regular DIP sounded just fine, but why the heck not give it a try. Wow! The regular DIP easily rated the top 5 stars awarded by one reviewer. The SuperDIP will require a new rating level at 6 stars. It is at the top of the heap! No other digital signal processor I tried even comes close. |
| The Monarchy SuperDIP has two inputs, selectable by a small toggle switch. They are an optical TosLink and RCA jack S/P-DIP type. The selected digital signal enters the SuperDIP and goes through a complete reconstruction. The waveform is buffered and totally re-clocked, and in that process is also amplitude corrected. The corrected output is available in either of two related formats. A standard pulse transformer driven RCA jack is available, but the real beauty is the high speed buffer amplifier driven BNC jack. This is the trick output. By using a high speed electronic buffer. Mr. Poon was able to eliminate the potential ringing and phase shift problems inherent in any transformer. The low source impedance of the direct buffer also allows longer cables to be driven than would otherwise be possible, and also serves to slightly reduce the differences between different cable types. Thoughtfully, Mr. Poon also supplies a gold plated BNC to RCA adapter, so that those of us owing only RCA terminated digital cables can use the SuperDIP with no further investment. I compared the sound of this adapter to generic nickel plated parts, typical of what you might find at a commercial parts distributor, and found the Monarchy adapter to be superior in every way. The RCA jacks on the unit are high grade gold plated and of robust construction. The BNC is an industrial high grade part and should perform very reliably for years. Power enters the SuperDIP via a filtered IEC type socket. The filter module dramatically reduces the amount of digital noise sent out via the power cord, thus reducing the negative effects that power line hash might have on your other equipment. A heavy power cord is also included, but should you wish , any of the audiophile power cords could be used. There is no power switch. The SuperDIP just runs all the time, but only sips a few watts from the mains. A small LED illuminates when an audio signal is passing through. |
| I know that some audiophiles are put off by the idea of having to use more and more boxes to achieve better sound, especially when a transport ought to provide a proper output signal. If you are a member of this crowd, get over it. This box is flat out the very best digital signal conditioner I have encountered, at any price. What is really cool is the truly affordable price of about $299.00. |
| I havenít yet said much about the specifics of how the music improves, and for a product such as this itís a little difficult to pin it down. When one encounters an audio product that has some strengths and some weaknesses, a review is easy to write. Comparisons of goods and bads are easy to make. When you have device that just plain excels, it is truly much more difficult to describe. How does one describe the degree of musical improvements possible, when the result exceeds the benchmarks? That is the position I find myself in now. Suffice to say that all aspects of the music improve. Nothing degrades, or even stays the same. Grainy texture on the highs goes down. Spatial reconstruction improves dramatically, allowing you to hear a bigger hall on orchestral or other natural sound recordings, this with no loss of definition of individual instruments or voices. The sense of the music becoming real rather than a recording is brought one step closer to realization. |
| A few months later
the saga continuedÖ..
There I wasÖ.staring at the tubesÖwhen suddenly it hit me!Ö(I have wanted to use that phrase in an article for years, and in this case itís totally true!) I was enjoying an evening of music in our darkened listening room, lit only by the glow of dozens of vacuum tubes and a handful of LED. If the SuperDIP could clean up the imperfect signal from a transport so well, what would happen if it got to start with a really good signal, say like that that from the SuperDIP already in the system. I reached for the lights and bolted from the sofa, heading for the shelf on which sat two more SuperDIPs. (These were destined to be shipped off to customers, but they had arrived and hadnít yet sent them off.) I grabbed them all. A quick trip upstairs and I had some more of our JENA LABS digital cables. I headed for the back of the equipment rack and inserted one more SuperDIP. Back to the sofa and a pressing of the lay button on the remoteÖÖOh, Geeeeze, was it really possible? It had to be, as I was hearing it for myself. Everything got better by about the same magnitude as with the first SuperDIP. If two is good, how ëbout three? Well, yes, but only by a tiny amount. Just to prove the limit, I called one of my freinds that already had a SuperDIP and asked him to drop by with it. It was quite a sight! We had four of these puppies stacked up on top of the equipment rack. Here are the results of our experiments. Four sounds identical to three, three is only a little better than two, and two is ëouta sight, man!í In the following days I disassembled two SuperDIPs and literally bolted them together, internally wiring the output of the first to the input of the second. Just because Iím a tweak, I also installed Cardas RCA jacks on the input and buffered output, connected with an inch or so of guess whose wire. ( WellÖ, I do use my own products.) Without the jacks and extra interconnect, this Siamese twin sounded better than three connected by interconnects! I was nothing short of stunned. |
| By the way, I use the optical input too. Our Pioneer LDS-2 laserdisc player has both an S/P-DIF and an optical Toslink digital audio output. In this case, the optical sounds better than the wire. We use a glass, not plastic, fiberoptic interconnect. I can honestly report the same performance improvements found in CD are found from this source as well. Music, dialog, and sound effects cream the sound from even the best DVD machine tested to date. |
| This has been an interesting year for me, in music and audio terms. I have discovered several products under a grand that really work well. Those few products on this short list dramatically exceed their cost to musical value expectations. The Monarchy SuperDIP is certainly one of those rare products. Amazing it is, and at the super affordable price you simply must have one or two. Very highly recommended for any digital audio system, regardless of expense. Six Stars indeed! |
| Jennifer E. Crock
Sr. Editor, Positive Feedback Magazine
Reprinted with Permission by: Positive Feedback Magazine * |
| Positive Feedback is published by:
Positive Feedback Magazine 2939 N.E. 155th Portland, OR 97230 Business Office : (503) 256-1300 Internet Address: david@agora.rdrop.com |
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