Listener Magazine Sept/Oct 2000

Get a job!

You saw that coming, didn't you?

Review by Wayne Donnelly

JOB DA96 digital‑to analog converter: $1250.

Manufactured by Digital Audio SA, 2 Chemin de la Graviere, 1222 Geneva, Switzerland.

www.jobsys.com

For this, my first Listener equipment review, it's a great pleasure to (figuratively) sidle up to the reader and whisper out of the corner of my mouth, "Hey buddy, have I got a hot one for you!" The job DA96 represents what I think Listener is all about: a truly excellent component, delivering superb musicality at a most reasonable price.

Since the marque is hardly a household name in the US, let me give you a brief rundown on job. The company was launched in 1994 by a group of Swiss researchers and engineers, with the goal of designing and manufacturing high quality products for the audio/ video and computer markets. Their first product was the job speaker, a single‑cabinet small footprint box capable of generating a reasonable stereo image. In 1996, job was acquired by Goldmund, a company noted worldwide for top‑tier, very expensive audio components. Within the Goldmund organization, job continues to serve as a product research and development source. In addition, job manufactures audio components which sell for considerably less than Goldmund products. Successful Job circuit designs are incorporated into Goldmund products, with the same circuits executed with more expensive parts and housed in far more elaborate and luxurious casings. Until now, job has marketed, in addition to the job speaker, integrated and monoblock amplifiers. The DA96 is Job's first digital product. it is available on direct order from job (e-mail is suggested) at a price of $1250.

As its name may suggest, the DA96 is capable of decoding digital bitstreams up to 24 bits at 96 kHz. This means that in addition to playing conventional CDs, it is also capable of reproducing DVD audio discs‑if it is fed by a transport which can read and transmit the 24/96 signal. Some, but not all DVD players feature a 24/96 digital output. job is currently developing a DVD player based transport to accompany the DA96; it is not yet available.

Swiss designs are widely admired for their precision and functional efficiency, and the DA96 ably represents that tradition. The appearance of this very compact unit is elegantly simple. The front panel sports only a single knob, for selecting one of the three digital inputs, and two LEDs: one indicating power and the other confirming a lock to the transport. On the rear panel are a power switch, an IEC socket for the AC cord, two RCA jacks for analog output, and, on my review sample, three RCA jacks for SP/DIF digital input. According to the job website, the standard configuration will be one RCA, one XLR, and one Toslink.

There is also a functional reason for the compactness of the DA96. All job designs emphasize speed and wideband response; those are best realized through very compact circuits with short signal paths. In the DA96, apart from the small lengths connecting the input and output jacks to the board, there is no wire in the signal paths. Rather than relying upon off‑the‑ shelf DAC chips, as is common with most manufacturers, the DA96 employs a proprietary job DAC module, in addition, placing the input receiver immediately adjacent to the DAC module significantly reduces jitter.

When I first receive a new component for review, I like to listen to it for anywhere from a couple of days to a week without forming any serious judgements about the piece. And, of course, when the component requires a longer break-in before it begins to sound itself, that interval may grow even longer.‑I have sometimes had to wait a month or more before I felt I had a true handle on the sound of a given component. But, even apart from break-in considerations, substituting anything within my system leads to a noticeable change in the overall character of the sound. So it is necessary, I think, to take time to "forget" about the sound one is used to hearing; otherwise the natural tendency is to regard the usual sound you hear as the norm and the sound of the new component as a deviation from that norm. Of course, if the new component is radically better (or worse) than the old, these considerations do not come into play. But most of the time, this kind of delayed deliberation proves very helpful.

Having proclaimed my high-minded patience as a reviewer, I must now admit that my usual method was seriously challenged by the impact of the DA96. Try as I might to simply listen without forming premature judgements, the vivid immediacy of music heard through the DA96 captivated me from the outset. It seems pretty clear that job's emphasis on high speed and low jitter had paid off. Two of my most‑listened-to CDs exemplified this musical excitement: Richard Thompson's brilliant Capitol CD Mock Tudor and Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture and Suite on Reference Recordings, zestfully played by the Minnesota Orchestra under Eiji Oue, both emerged with even greater life and drive than I had been hearing previously. Have you ever noticed how some systems seem to hang on to the music ... to subtly hold back the rhythmic drive inherent in the performance? I hadn't thought that was happening anywhere in my system, but after listening to the DA96 I realized that even the very good players that had preceded it had been less nimble than this little Swiss processor.

After a few days' running‑in time, I began to perceive several subtle but substantial improvements. The harmonic presentation, initially a bit on the cool, lean side, fleshed out and gained a welcome touch of warmth. Dynamics, especially in the bass, were more exciting. The speed and control of the bass drum thwacks in Candide became absolutely thrilling.

In fact, one of the strong points of the DA96 is its accurately scaled dynamics from bottom to top of the frequency range. The brass choirs in Candide had the requisite bite and bloom, and the high triangle and xylophone transients,‑typically a weakness in digital reproduction,‑had a wonderful sparkle.

Smoothness of frequency response mirrored the dynamic precision of the DA96. After weeks of listening, I was unable to detect any coloration that would favor one octave over another. The resulting clarity was evident in another Reference CD from Minnesota, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Das Lied has long been a favorite of mine, and I own at least a half dozen performances. But here I felt that I was hearing more deeply into Mahler's complex and subtle orchestration than ever before in 30 years of listening to it. During the hushed close of "Der Abschied," the final song in the cycle, I felt almost suspended in time as I followed mezzo Michelle De Young's every breath, every syllable. (I share our editor's disdain for the kind of "audiophile" recordings that gave rise to the dictum, "the better the sound, the worse the music." But the two Reference CDs mentioned here are of exemplary musical as well as sonic value.)

It should be obvious by now that recommending the DA96 is a no-brainer. It outperformed each of the CD players I compared it to, whether using that player as a transport or using the Pioneer DVD. That includes slightly edging out the excellent Linn Ikemi reviewed in the previous issue of Listener. So, if you currently own a CD player with a digital output and are looking for a cost-effective upgrade, you could hardly do better than investing in the DA96 and a decent digital interconnect. And even if you are already using a separate transport and DAC, you might want to audition a DA96, even if your DAC was more expensive. I think the DA96 challenges the existing price performance structure of digital audio.

So, is the DA96 the best digital I have heard? Well ... perhaps not quite. I do prefer the sound of the Thor DC‑1000, a tubed DAC which sells for more than six times the price of the DA96. The Thor has a luxuriant, burnished quality (due, I am sure, to its tubed analog section) which is difficult to resist, and which gives the music a warmth and bloom not quite achieved by the DA96. But the DA96 was not shamed in the comparison, and in fact the differences were noticeable mainly when switching from one unit to the other. If I listened to the Thor one day and the DA96 the next, I did not find myself wishing for the Thor during my listening sessions. I could easily live with the DA96 in a system where it would be one of the least expensive items. I suspect most of you could happily live with it as well.