The sound
Contents
Immediately we hear the energy of the Violectric back in the music we play. Compared to the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge the DHA 590 shows more oomph’, the projection of the sound is more forward, into space. We hear a lot of detail and transparency in the tracks. The energy and drive is by no means tiring; the Violectric takes every detail out of the track and shows it well.
In comparison with the Pavane and Pass Labs we hear the difference clearly. The Pavane and Pass add a nice smoothness to the sound, while the Vioelectric shows more detail; by the way without getting boring, on the contrary. It is a different sound signature; Violectric unmistakably more studio-oriented and Pavane/Pass is more ‘hifi’ … music for the living room. But both setups perform at a high level and when we consider that the Vioectric costs € 3,200 and the Pavane/Pass combination about € 14,000, we can only conclude that the DHA 590 has a lot to offer for its asking price.
Resampling
The difference between upsampling or no upsampling was very audible. The more, the warmer. We noticed that we preferred the sound without resampling. The DHA 590 shows very well the differences between 1x, 2x and 4x upsampling of the signal. It’s nice and fun to toy around with.
Headphone amplifier
The DHA 590 has two 6.35mm headphone outputs and a balanced (4-pin XLR). We have had many headphones connected to it, such as the Hifiman Sundara, the Oppo PM-3 and the Fostex RP-50. Balanced we listened to the Hifiman Arya. Again, it is striking how much power the DHA 590 has. The amplifier ‘grips’ firmly in the grip and you can clearly hear that.
The difference between balanced and unbalanced can be heard in the volume of the headphone outputs. This is also logical, because the output voltage is doubled with a balanced signal. Balanced is actually the same cabling as your loudspeakers: for each side a cable with – and + (so a total of 4). Unbalanced headphone outputs have 3 channels; left and right share the ‘minus’ or neutral channel. When balanced, there is less/no crosstalk and “neutral channel contamination”.
We find the difference very subtle but definately audible. This may be because the voltages of headphones are much lower than those of speakers. But depending on the headphones you use, the differences may be greater. In any case, it is nice that the Violectric offers the possibility to connect headphones in a balanced way.
German pocket knife
The DHA 590 is also an enormously versatile device. The analog part has a fully balanced and unbalanced designed input and output section. You can use balanced (XLR) in and RCA outputs and possibly tune the gain on both sides.
You can use digital XLR, optical or coaxial in and use the analog RCA out. Pre or post fader (with or without volume control). We have used it in the comparative test of streaming services, to record a cassette tape. The exceptional quality of the recording was not only because of the Nakamichi deck, but also because of the excellent preamp that the DHA 590 is.
As far as we are concerned, the very pleasant remote control is the standard for other brands; it is small but not too light, the functions are logically placed with a minimum of buttons. Also the choice between listening to headphones and / or the signal to the power amplifier was very pleasant in practice. When listening to tracks, we can easily switch between the headphones and the speakers. Or we can turn it both on. Long live buttons!
Volume control
One thing we noticed was that the volume control showed small clicks. This was not disturbing, but we wondered how this could be explained. Fried Reim writes the following about it:
The DHA V590 equipped with a 256-step reed-relay volume control. The advantages of a system like this is that there is definitely no channel mismatch between the left and right channel and the crosstalk between left and right is dramatically minimized compared to “normal” potentiometers. There will never be some scratching noise known from old potentiometers. Also there are audible enhancements as only two resistors are in the signal chain instead of the large resistor area of a standard potentiometer. But: no light without a shadow. During turning the volume knob from left to right, 256 switching actions for the left channel and 256 switching actions for the right channel will take place. Additionally there are always small amounts of DC current part of the signal. This DC together with the action of the switches causes little clicks or glitches when turning the volume knob. We think that these issues are acceptable for a technical and audible outstanding volume control with many advantages over standard approaches. There are also many positive customer opinions about the 128-step volume control from Violectric HPA V281 concerning the sonic improvements versus the standard volume control.
Conclusion
The Violectric DHA 590 is a headphone amplifier, a DAC, a preamplifier with a balanced and single ended signal path. All these functions can be used independently and together. The adjustability is huge! And the sound is studio level; very detailed, spacious, energetic and fast. And all this in a robustly designed no nonsense cabinet with a small but very practical remote control. This Violectric has it all. Use it with good quality active speakers and your basic system is complete. Whether your source is a computer with music editing software, a CD player, streamer or record player, the DHA 590 lets you hear every micro detail.Studio quality also has a downside; what hasn't been properly recorded or remastered, also sounds bad. High end consumer audio sometimes wants to be forgiving for less good recordings; studio equipment is just made to show off the weaknesses in a recording. For this price, you can hardly get a better combination of a top-of-the-range DAC, preamplifier and headphone amplifier.