Follow by the popularity of Musician Pegasus, his bigger brother Musician Aquarius is finally here!
Currently Musician Aquarius is the mid range DAC from Musician, a very much anticipate R2R DAC everyone is waiting for. Musician Aquarius with many excellent reviews, easily can out perform many costly DAC (including other R2R DAC) in market
Excellent Reviews:
1)https://soundnews.net/sources/dacs/musician-aquarius-r-2r-dac-review/
Design and Build Quality:
-It uses CNC machined oversized metal plates on all sides, it will easily protect the precious unit from all wireless interference, including EMI and RFI.
-Equipped with shielded Linear O-Type Transformer effectively isolate the power supply use for digital and analog
-Equipped it with one of the best metal feet I’ve seen on D/A converters, with silicon absorption pads that will effectively absorb micro-vibrations
-The use of high precision 0.005% resistors to convert from digital to analog signal
-The R2R ladder network is being controlled by an ARM CPU and by an Altera Cyclone IV FPGA infused with their own custom code
Controls & Connectivity:
-There are 7 buttons on its front panel, the one in the middle is your On/Off button, on its left there is your input selectors and a phase invert button. To its right there is a NOS (Non-Over-Sampling) button, its either On (Non-Over-Sampling is engaged on) or Off (Oversampling mode is engaged), followed by a Mute and Mode button
-Digital inputs are present as USB, AES, Coaxial, Optical and two I2S inputs. Aquarius is a fully balanced DAC and as such it offers a pair of XLR and RCA analog outputs which have fixed volume levels. Its signal amplitude sits at 3.6V via XLR and 1.8V via RCA
-Custom-made USB interface that uses the full-bandwidth of the USB 2.0 standard. This is a future-proof module that supports the highest possible sample rates as 1536 kHz 32-bit PCM and DSD1024 (x8)
Warm Tips for Aquarius:
The burn-in time of is one week: Standby or Powered on 24/7 (300 hours), you will get the best performance after the enough aging hours.
Connecting RCA or XLR output simultaneously is not recommended, it will degrade the sound quality because they are shared. Even if the downstream equipment is on/off, the output signal will still be transmitted to the input stage of the downstream device.
If possible, please use the XLR output. As a ture balanced DAC, the XLR output will be more superior.
Sound Performance:
-Incredibly clean offering gobs of micro-details and highly resolving, easily highlighting all the tiniest details and it is such a natural sounding
-A wide-open soundstage that has no bounds or borders
-Holographic, layered and 3D sounding all the time
-Mostly linear sounding, extended frequency response with zero roll-offs
-Slams and pounds like a gorilla, goes in and out instantly – impressive transient response
-Superior low noise floor (basically noiseless)
-Engaging and toe-tapping, impressively dynamic
-Organic, full-bodied and life-like sounding
Technical Highlights:
Proprietary R2R + DSD Architecture
True balanced 24BIT R2R + 6BIT DSD (32 steps FIR Filters)
Adopt 0.005% precision resistance
Low distortion, Low Noise Power Supply
O-type single crystal copper transformer
FIFO Buffer
Digital Signal Processing via FPGA
DSD1024, PCM1536 Supports On USB & I2S Input (the audio source needs to be compatible with the native interface)
Proprietary USB Audio Solution via STM32F446 Advanced AMR Based MCU
Licensed Thesycon USB Driver For Windows Platform
Driverless On Mac & Linux
DSD
DSD64-DoP On All Input
DSD1024 On USB & I2S Input
PCM
24bits / 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192KHz On All Input
1536kHz On USB & I2S Input
Sampling Mode: Non-Oversampling NOS / Oversampling OS
Digital Input
USB * 1 ， AES/EBU * 1 ， Optical * 1 ， Coaxial * 1 ，I2S* 2
Analog Output
RCA * 1 ， XLR * 1
Unit Size:
33*30*7.5cm
Unit Weight:
5.6KG
Packing weight
7.35KG
I2S Pin Configuration of Aquarius:
PS: There is no industry standard of I2S connection. Different brand/product has different I2S line order.
MUSICIAN Aquarius trying to compatable with most of device by the following mode setting method if you are using standard HDMI cable:
1. Select the sound source input to I2S;
2. Press and hold the NOS button for 3 seconds until the I2S light flashes;
3. Press the NOS button during the flashing process to cycle through the phase modes (there are total 8 modes, 1X, 2X, 4X indicator lights are binary mode Display);
4. Stop the operation when you selected the satisfied sound, the machine automatically exits the mode setting function.
Through the above I2S settings, Aquarius can basically meet most of the brands on the market.
If it can not playing properly(such as hiss sound) by the above setting. This shall not be considered as a defective product, but just a matching failed. The suggested solution is to use a customized HDMI cable(The pin layout is on the right).
E-Storz 