Auralic Vega Digital Audio Processor

Digital auDio Processor

Can this company do no wrong? One of the best-designed, best-sounding, highest-performance DAPs we’ve ever reviewed!

Auralic is a relative newcomer to audio, having been founded fewer than ten years ago, but it’s made

bigger waves in the audio industry than any other newcomer I can think of, not only because of the high quality of its products (as you will soon discover) but also because of its complete professionalism in all areas, from its help lines, to its owners’ manuals, to its website, to its B2B skills and, not last and certainly not least, to its interactions with its customers. Can this company do no wrong?

The equipmenT

The Auralic Vega Digital Audio Processor is a long way from being a ‘me too’ design, cosmetically and internally. The internals you can read about (if you have a mind to) further on under the heading ‘Circuit Details’ but as for the cosmetics, you need do no more than look at the photograph above. Does it look good? You bet! And though it looks good in the photograph, it looks even better in the flesh…err, aluminium… because the bevelled cut-out in the front panel that holds the multi-function control becomes more obvious, the recess in which the power LED is located becomes more intriguing, and the contrast between the shot-blasted aluminium used for the front panel and the brushed aluminium employed for the casing becomes clearly visible, whereas in photographs of the unit it’s barely noticeable.

That single multi-function control I mentioned does a lot of work. First, you use it to switch the unit’s power status between On, Off and Standby. It’s also used to switch inputs (between AES, Coax 1, Coax 2, Toslink, and USB HS (High Speed). It also adjusts channel balance, channel phase, filter modes (of which there are six options, about which more in the following section titled ‘Flexible Filters’), Display Mode (On, Off, Dim, Normal, Bright), Sleep Mode, Clock Mode (Auto, Coarse, Fine, and Exact… more on this in the ‘Circuit Details’ section), Remote Volume Operation Mode, Factory Reset, and System Information. And to make it simple, to access these comprehensive options, the information is spread across three separate screens (which Auralic confusingly refers to as ‘Pages’).

But I have left the best until last, which is that most of the time you’ll be using that multi-function knob as a volume control because the Auralic Vega is also a preamplifier. Which means that so long as you use only digital sources (since these are the only sources the Vega is able to accommodate… there are no analogue inputs) you can assemble a system without a pre-amp… so just the Vega, a power amplifier and a pair of speakers (and, of course, your digital sources) are all you will need.

The Auralic Vega’s volume control is a ‘dual speed’ type, so that turning it slowly gives very fine control over volume while a faster ‘spin’ of the control results in coarser control over volume, but permits faster ‘up/ down’ volume changes. Such fast control may be necessary because the Vega does not have a ‘Mute’ function available via the multifunction switch panel, so the only other way to quickly mute the sound would be to switch to an unused input (assuming you have one), or to grab the remote control and press the Mute button on that. (Speaking of which, the remote control was my only let-down with the Auralic Vega, because the remote is of the standard, ‘off-the-shelf’ generic plastic variety that not only does not provide access to all the Vega’s functions but doesn’t even make it clear which functions it can access.)

With so many functions on offer, it’s just as well Auralic had provided the Vega with a super-large display; one that’s almost the entire width of the front panel. However, the left-most section of the display is basically wasted because when the unit is on, it’s used solely to display an almost perfect electronic facsimile of Auralic’s printed logo. Then even more display real estate is wasted when the selected sources are displayed because, for example, when you select the USB input, the display shows a real USB logo graphic, not simply the letters ‘USB’, which would have been sufficient. Despite this waste of display real estate, the display is still plenty big enough to show actual playback sample rates for both PCM and DSD sources in fairly large letters, to the right of which, in even larger letters, it displays output level as a two-digit number. Alas the display does not display the word-length of a digital signal, which I feel is a missed opportunity. I also was not overly keen on the golden-hued colour selected for

the front-panel display, but I gather it’s a ‘good luck’ colour in Asia, so Auralic probably figured it would help sales in that region, yet would not hinder them in others. However, if you don’t like the colour, you can have the Vega switch its display off automatically after you’ve finished any operation. (After which you can make it come back on temporarily by touching any button on the remote, so you can see what you’re doing, after which it will switch off again.)

Flexible Filters

Filters make a huge difference to the sound you hear from digital (no matter what type of digital) and this includes situations where you are not using a filter at all. In the past, manufacturers acted as ‘gods’ and simply installed the type of filter they thought would best suit their customers. These days, they’ve wised-up, so that most high-end DAC manufacturers offer end-users a choice between several different filters. On Auralic’s Vega you get to choose between one of four different filters if you’re listening to PCM, and between two different filters if you’re listening to DSD. The four PCM filters are as follows: Filter 1 is for the ‘tech-heads’ who believe that the best measured performance will deliver the most accurate sound quality (it’s also the mode test laboratories are supposed to use when benchtesting the Auralic Vega).

According to Auralic, Filter 1 offers: ‘ very small in-band ripple and best stop-band attenuation performance and is best for the playback of orchestral music.’ Filter 2 reduces group delay and rolls off the highest frequencies… characteristics that Auralic says: ‘ are best for the playback of light jazz, chamber music and solo piano.’ Filter 3 is designed to minimise pre-ringing but a side-effect is a fairly steep high-frequency roll-off that Auralic warns ‘ may lose some details in treble for certain kinds of music.’ Presumably it’s because of this that Auralic recommends Filter 3 as being: ‘ the best for vocal, jazz and pop music.’ If you can’t be bothered switching filters every time you change music genres, you’ll probably leave the Vega in its ‘default’ filter mode, which is Filter 4. According to Auralic, it’s a ‘ minimum phase design that has no pre-ringing and is designed to optimate the subjective listening experience at maximum… the “all-best” option for music enjoyment.’ [That was a direct quote from Auralic’s Owner’s Manual for the Vega, so don’t blame me for the grammar.]

As for DSD playback, the two filters for this mode have very high shoulder frequencies on the basis that they’re only intended to reduce the very high levels of ultrasonic noise that’s inherent in DSD files. Filter 5 has the highest corner frequency (and therefore admits the most noise) while Filter 6 has the lowest corner frequency, and thus admits the least noise. (Almost all the noise in a DSD file will be completely inaudible to the human ear, but the noise has the potential to adversely affect the performance of pre and power amplifiers with extended highfrequency responses, and also the potential to adversely affect the performance of extendedbandwidth tweeters… the latter because the inaudible high-frequency energy will cause unwanted heating of the voice-coil/magnet structure. Because of these potential problems, I would recommend that if you can’t hear any difference between the two filters when listening to DSD files, you should use Filter 6.)

CirCuit Details

One of the Vega’s claims to fame is the use of what Auralic calls a ‘Sanctuary Audio Processor’ but which electronics engineers would refer to as an ‘ARM’ processor, so-called because they were developed by a US company called ARM (Advanced RISC Machines). Since this company’s name also includes an acronym, I should explain that RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer. So what Auralic’s SAP is is actually a multicore 32-bit microprocessor using RISC architecture. Auralic is using a processor from the ARM9 family—one that’s specifically intended for applications requiring the processor to provide digital signal processing yet also serve as a microcontroller. The specific processor Auralic uses it sources from Swiss manufacturer Archwave, one of the many companies licensed by ARM (US). According to Auralic, its ARM9 Sanctuary processor runs at 1000 MIPS, and it harnesses some of this power to enable the Vega to upsample incoming PCM data, provide an ‘ActiveUSB’ buffer stage, and to implement the different filters.

Clocking is achieved via a temperaturecompensated crystal oscillator that Auralic refers to as a ‘Femto Master Clock’. Users can select between four clock settings: Auto, Coarse, Fine and Exact. The default mode is ‘Auto’, in which mode Auralic says the Vega will ‘ automatically employ the optimal clock window for any source’. (Which of course begs the question as to why the company provided a further three clock settings!) The so-called ‘Coarse’ mode is said to be provided to allow the Vega to ‘ work with sources that have excessive jitter.’ Fine mode is claimed to result in ‘ the lowest jitter with high-quality streams.’ The ‘Exact’ mode, as its name implies, is said to be the mode that gives the highest sound quality, but it only works effectively when the unit is at its correct operating temperature and when the incoming signal has almost no inherent jitter. (Attaining operating temperature initially can take up to an hour or more, depending on ambient room temperature, but once it’s reached, it will be maintained whilesoever the unit is switched on, or switched to standby mode, so you won’t have to wait an hour every time you want to use it!)

Digital to analogue conversion is managed by the familiar ESS Sabre32 9018 which supports all PCM files from 44.1kHz/16-bit resolution right up to (and including) 384kHz/32bits, (plus all the standard sampling rate/ word-depth combinations in between) and is also DXD-and DSD-compatible. It can decode both DSD64 and DSD128 bitstreams using DoP V1.1 DTP. This method enables native

DSD music playback without conversion to PCM. The DSD files are packed into PCM packets, transferred to the DAC over USB, after which they’re unpacked for playback.

The rear panel is delightfully uncluttered. Only digital inputs are provided, by way of a singleAES (XLR) input, two coaxial RCA inputs, one USB input (Type B) and an optical input (Toslink).

In Use and LIstenIng sessIons

The first thing I tried was rapidly switching between different (obviously digital!) sources, all with different sampling rates and word lengths, because this test trips up quite a few DACs, particularly when switching between PCM and DSD. No worries with the Auralic Vega: it didn’t even skip a beat.

The Auralic has a really excellent menuing system, and I think that most people will really like it. It’s easily readable, and easy to navigate through. That said, I found it continually frustrating because when you press the volume control in to bring up the first screen menu (with six items), none of the options are highlighted to show you where you are. To highlight any option, you first need to rotate the volume control. My problem was that I was forever rotating the control the wrong way, because the six items are in two rows of three, and to get to the top of the first column, you need to rotate the control to the right. I instead foolishly kept rotating it to the left (which seemed to me the obvious direction to rotate it) and that instead took me to the bottom of the second column. No doubt I’d get used to this after several months of continuous use, but I only used the Auralic Vega for several weeks, at the end of which time I was mostly getting it right… but still getting it wrong enough to be annoying!

My warm-up music for the Auralic Vega was White Fence’s wonderful ‘For the Recently Found Innocent’, because Tim Presley is re-inventing music in wonderfully new and innovative ways. For a start, although it’s a studio recording, it has the aura of a live concert recording. Then there are the myriad sounds that are woven through all the tracks… it seems that with every new bar there’s a new sonic surprise. And the recording, although it’s designed to sound grungy, is actually wonderfully clean, an engineering ‘sleight of hand’ that the Vega was able to reveal with stunning clarity. I don’t know how much of the sound is thanks to his new producer, Ty Segall, but I suspect most of it, since Presley used to record his albums himself, in his own home. My only minor criticism of the sound would be that I found it a tad bright, but this could be a deliberate choice by Presley and Segal, because it gives a real ‘retro’ quality to the mix that’s also very endearing. (And if you, too, are a Presley fan, do you reckon he should have credited Lou Reed for the motif used on Sandra (When the Earth Dies), or is that just me?)

What the Auralic Vega did with the lovely harmonies on Cloud Control’s ‘White Rabbit’ was absolutely enchanting, and the smoothness and clarity contrasted with the (mostly) crisp percussion in the background, while when the guitars chimed in melodiously the sound lifted above the ethereal. Many components just can’t make proper sense of the layering in this song, while the special effect at the end (I have no idea what it is making the sound) seems to trip up many DACs. Whatever that sound is, it certainly sounded different (and better!) through the Auralic Vega than I’ve ever heard it sound before.

I checked out the ability of the Vega to deliver realistic vocals with the stunning new self-titled debut album from Arc Iris, which is a project by Jocie Adams (ex The Low Anthem), who’s enlisted the aid of Zach Tenorio-Miller (piano), Mike Irwin (trumpet), Robin Ryczek (cello), Ray Belli (drums), Max Johnson (bass), and Charlie Rose (steel banjo). The sound is outrageously experimental, but all the tunes on Arc Iris are inordinately catchy, and the musicianship so professional that it’s amazingly listenable and completely toe-tappable. US critic James Reed got it right when he wrote of Arc Iris ‘ the album’s unique sound is informed as much by Joni Mitchell as it is by Björk’s sonic experiments and sweeping film soundtracks.’ But Adams’ voice is so much sweeter and tuneful than Björk’s (IMHO) and the sonic soundscape as reproduced by the Vega is breathtaking. Auditioning the track Singing So Sweetly will surely have you begging for more.

As for male voice, the Auralic Vega proved a great opportunity to reacquaint myself with the pipes of Ed Wallis, from My Sad Captains, whose voice I find strangely beguiling. The band’s third album, ‘Best of Times’ is chocka-block with songs that are propelled from intro to outro with innate warmth and musicality, plus a sound quality that will have your system singing. Listen to Goodbye and you’ll hear immediately what I mean, plus it’ll give you a taste of Nick Goss’s ‘sonics’ (he also plays guitar), but be warned that if your DAC and tweeter aren’t up to it, the ‘sonics’ will come out flat and lifeless. (‘ Gravity always gets you in the end’, as the song’s lyric goes.)

But if the Vega is good with normal 16-bit/44.1kHz, you should hear it with hi-res… and I mean real hi-res, not the faux hi-res that’s being flogged all over the internet. If you want to hear what you’re missing out on, and get a huge variety of genres at the same time, my recommendation is to download the Ultra HD Audio ‘sampler’ from iTrax, a site run by Mark Walrep, and one of the very few sites you will find true guaranteed hi-res music. On the sampler are eighteen diverse musical tracks, all in true 96kHz/24-bit. And what a difference! Just listen to the string tone of Laurence Juber’s guitar on Strawberry Fields Forever, or John Gorka’s voice and piano sound on Let Them In. But perhaps the biggest ear-opener is Mujaka, with David Garfield (piano), Louis Conte (percussion) and David Carpenter (acoustic bass): The clarity of the piano, the depth to the sound of the strings, the unique percussion accompaniment… this is what the Vega was made for—to highlight the myriad virtues of true hi-res sound. Download it now, and if your equipment is up to it, you’ll instantly hear what I mean.

ConCLUsIon

I have left the best until last, but you’ve probably peeked already and know that I’m about to tell you about the amazingly low price. Here’s a component that sounds absolutely amazing, performs flawlessly, plays anything digital, looks like a million bucks and is built to a standard that many established high-end manufacturers would envy. In fact, if it had been built by one of those manufacturers, they’d likely have priced it at four or five times what Auralic is asking.

So whichever way you look at it, the Auralic Vega is a bargain.