What’s in store for us
In front of me are two solid boxes, but knowing that not only a DAC, but also a integrated amp is in there, I find them rather small. I had to rethink my opinion, however, when I opened the box and removed the protection from the amplifier. What a heavy, decent and beautiful piece. Its front easily matches the DAC, and by their build and width they can even stand next to eachother on a rack perfectly. And that’s great news for potential buyers, that already have a rack or a different location, on which all shelves are occupied already. An extra DAC normally means an extra spot, so in this case its a great first bonus. And we haven’t even started properly.
The exclusively English manual is very clear and arranged logically. I get to know this DAC is 8.5 inch wide, 3 inch high and 12 inch long. It has everything to measure itself with the big boys. It’s a 16/20/24-bit 32kHz to 192kHz digital to analogue converter that can handle ‘all’ two-channel digital sources.
But what exactly is a DAC? DAC basically means digital-analogue-converter. A DAC can be stand-alone, or part of a digital source. This converter makes sure that all music from any digital source that is encoded digitally (ones and zeroes) is converted to an analogue, decoded form. This analogue music signal is then amped, and from thereon goes to the speakers. The better the conversion, the better the result. Every drive needs a DAC, and in a lot of integrated players in the past not much attention was given to this. But because of the ever growing medium of computers, that with its WAV-, FLAC- and ALAC-files is trying to best the cd, with variating results, Rega has put in a lot of effort and research in the optimisation of their existing DAC. The base DAC is used in all of their cd players, but now they have made it into a stand alone unit. A major point of attention was the suppression of noise, a hard to tame spoilsport in a lot of converters. Is it ready then, with its two Wolfson Ics and five freely selectable digital filters, one of which is USB type B, two optical and two coaxial, and then another optical, coaxial and analog output?
Connecting to a DVD/Blu-Ray/cd-player, a game console, all kinds of TVs, computers, even a satellite receiver, it’s all possible. Dolby Digital or DTS are a bridge too far, though.
Onwards to the Brio-R integrated amplifier. It has RCA-inouts for an MM cell or high output MC cell from a record player, four others for possible accessories and one record output. Noticably there’s no grounding connection next to the input, but rather on the bottom of the amp. No problem for a single connection, but when you wish to demagnetise your cables and cell regularly, it’s not an easy solution. Besides, you have to keep in mind that when connecting a fifth source shuts down the record output. Rega itself advises the use of 8 Ohn speakers. Of course this does not exclude the use of 4 Ohm speakers.
Once connected this amp packs 50 Watt RMS on two channels when two 8 Ohm speakers are attached. This rises to 73 Watt at 4 Ohm. A warning: the amplifier might become warmer than 40 degrees centigrade in this setup. If you want more technical specs, be sure to check out Rega’s great website.
