Can the digital era music feed the large and so revealing horns such as the western electric 12a? For those who know these horns they are not like the shorter horns, backloaded etc….these babies give a straight drive from 100ish hz to 5k….and all that with no xover….they reveal just about all the good and bad….things upstream. Make no mistake until you have heard these and then lived with them for a while you cannot imagine…leave the Goto, ale, jbl, altec….candidates aside. Okay not the topic…

Can we mix them with the digital, clocked, dithered and reduced jitter candidates of today’s era?

Between my audio16 partner and myself we have graced in our rooms the most exotic digital sources that can be found on the planet…having said that analog as well…! I had the esoteric, Kondo, cec…..the boutique DAC’s with so called miracle design resorting to low or high impedance chips, using coupling transformers to shape sound, rare and so called “unique” capacitors that if you listen to the users of them are the ultimate….sorry…..”ONLY” solution to grace the ears of the most demanding audiophiles….all the same I just heard these said to myself “WOW” and the ended up back with analog and my faithful EMT 927. I just ended with a broadcasting CD playing to…spin some silver ones…..

Then a good friend of mine using we15a and advice from friends from and in Japan all using the big western electric horns. I was advised to give the dCS Elar plus a shot….my audio16 partner here was all on for this step of mine…he is the hardcore of hardcore digital advocate! He is all clocked in with atomic frequencies! I got him into he EMT 927 turntable game and he even started a thread for the screen focused forum dwellers to expand there capacity to express themselves….go here go here

This was his turn to get me lauched!

I spoke with dCS and what struck me was there detached and simple way of expressing their knowledge. Digital is not analog, this is about equations, algorithm….speed, etc….and etc…no not bias of tubes, capacitance etc….another world indeed….and those who try to transpose the learnt lesson of analog signal to digital are I think making mistakes….

And….well I got the hardware and installed the dcs elgar plus to my Emt 981 that has a word clock in and all better aes digital out…marvellous…just plain fantastic!

I will build up the ladder to see how far one can go on this road and if adding boxes, up sampler, clock and top notch drive will enhance or reduce the magic sound this combo offers to my ears!

Thanks my Bavarian and Japanese friend!