This was my second DAC in this price range, or rather a small step up in price over the Lampizator Amber 3 I owned at the time.
It was an impulse purchase, I bought it primarily to have a point of reference for the Amber 3 which had really astonished me.
At one point I was driving both the Amber and La Voce from the same PI2AES, and I could swap them over both at the same line level while listening, switching like that not only could I not hear the difference immediately, but I couldn’t hear the switch at all. Having said that if I thought I was listening to one, I could easily tell I wasn’t after a few minutes, since I commonly accidentally blind A/B tested myself, thinking one was running when it was the other.
They have a lot in common, both are very natural sounding DAC’s, as noted above the difference isn’t frequency response (and that’s true of pretty much all DAC’s)
The Aqua is more resolving than the Lampizator.
Stage wise the La Voce sounds very natural it is narrower than the Lampizator, but with better defined positioning.
Both have excellent Macro dynamics.
Both have good tonal density/richness, but the Lampizator has some additional richness in the Mid and Bass regions, it’s hard to stress how subtle this is, but it does make a difference.
In the end I decided I couldn’t keep both, TBH it was a difficult choice, the staging, and richness of the Lampizator or the marginally better technicalities of the Aqua. I kept the Aqua and it really came down to which DAC I used more.
No I have limited experience at this price point, not heard the Sonnet Morpheus. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the Chord stuff but not in extended listening, the big difference would be in the tonal weight there, the Chord stuff tends to skew more analytical and to my ear lean or thin.
I own a Dave, but it’s not a fair comparison given the price difference.
They’ve creeped up in price since I bought mine, I actually ended up paying less for the Aqua than I did the Lampizator, but the Lampizator was open box from a dealer and the Aqua used.
I paid $2500, the range I’ve seen is $2400-$3200, with more recent listing tending towards the higher end. Given what seems to have happened to Amber prices recently, it would probably be comparable.
I’d personally say the morpheus is a downgrade from the la voce, the s3 is a step ahead. I do think they are somewhat going for the same signature but in a different way, both are more neutral natural leaning with a bit of an extra clarity and lighter balance focus. The sonnet feels a bit more lean and dryer in comparison but on it’s own still has good body and weight, sonnet feels larger but more hazy and less defined in stage, timbre wise the aqua nails that better, sonnet takes a bit more of a balanced dynamic approach where aqua does tend to lean more toward micro, but the aqua is still overall better there imo. Generally speed wise they are both pretty fast, aqua is more natural with it’s speed though. Resolution wise the aqua can just pull more and present it in a more convincing manner, although the sonnet does a great job with it’s presentation as well. There’s some unnatural smoothness about the sonnet that bothers me, can’t put my finger on it, but it feels I hate to say the word veiled in comparison for the treble. Both are pretty lively overall
Somewhat harder to compare as I feel the aqua is just an overall step above, but they do go after similar things at times so I could see someone liking both
I was about to pull the trigger on a used one a few months back but the seller apparently doesn’t check where he posted the listing often so he ended up seeing my message much later. Unfortunate indeed.
I wonder how the higher-end Aquas are (la scala and formula)…
Not positive from my experiences lol, I don’t have enough time with with the la scala to say as much, but the formula xhd rev 2 was quite underwhelming for the money, you have to be looking for an extremely specific sound. It was seriously not great to the point where I genuinely think I must have had some busted unit (I didn’t, confirmed that with another rev 2 owner), or found the worst possible synergy but that was also unlikely given on the range of things I had tried it on. Is it still an enjoyable dac? Absolutely, it has a lot to like on it’s own. But when you compare to what else you could have for that money, things really change
Almost everyone I knew raved about that dac, but I just didn’t hear it
The la voce s3? Yeah I’d likely take that over the scala based off the brief time I’ve had with the scala, more refined, better tuning, more engaging and enjoyable, less picky (the scala was more technically able but I don’t have enough time to say how far ahead it was). The S3 overall is quite different from most of their lineup tbh
So currently from my experience the S3 is very much the thing to have from their current lineup, would be skeptical on their other options if they would be compelling
Oh right, which is the ideal output to use on the S3 (BAL or SE)?
I don’t see them market it as fully balanced so I’m assuming SE might be the way to go.
Balanced is a bit better (a bit better macro performance) but the se is pretty close and I would have no concerns using se only, so close enough to not be a deciding factor imo
I got my Aqua La Voce S3 as an upgrade from an Yggy and the first changes i noticed was the better detail retrieval and depth to the stage that was added. The bass lost some extension but was way more realistic and organic. Some width was lost but man, the increase depth was very nice and prefered.
How are the inputs in terms of sound quality? All good or some are better? I have my eyes on one that has Toslink digital socket instead of AES / EBU so curious if that is an issue. I planed to use aes on the dac I originally wanted to get.
Plus I want to feed both my future dacs from su-2 but I am wandering what would be the best way.
La voce would be obviously primary dac and bifrost secondary.
That is a downgrade. I’d say personally on the aquas i2s>aes/ebu>spdif bnc>spdif rca>>>toslink. USB I would separate because it’s hard to say because it depends on the quality of what you are feeding the other digital inputs with. I’d say usb is equally good as the above with some of the cheaper ddc, but when you start getting nicer transports the other digital in pull ahead
