A round midnight Beyond Frontiers DAC ballade:

Dear audio friends,

that is just to inform you about a hot new: a fantastic DAC that I had the opportunity to listen just before the official launch. On 15 December 2011 I was invited in a “piano bar” just beyond the frontier between Italy and Slovenija by Simon Kosir (Canyon Audio) for a presentation of a new line of English speakers (Kudos Audio), that he will now distribute in Slovenija. The basic system was composed by the floor standing Kudos speakers, Classe power amplifier, Leben tube preamp and Tri tube CD player (not to mention the many Oyaide cables and power distributors). I went and the sound was just good, but nothing extraordinary, as usually happens in the show presentations inside a hotel room.

Nevertheless, around 21:45, Simon changed something in the system and immediately the music improved so much that I could not ignore it.

“Simon, what did you do?” - “Oh, just plugged that black box DAC between the Tri and the Leben...” - “Ah, and which DAC it is?” - “It is the new Beyond Frontiers Audio DAC” - “What? a BFA DAC here in Solkan? Just 1 km far from my home?!?” - “Yep! And it is not all: here in the room there are two guys from BFA!”

Sometimes neurons can really run faster than hormones usually do. In a short time I started to speak with Boško Pješčić, BFA sale manager, and in about half a hour he was in my home to switch on my system and give it a first fast listen. Then we went back to the piano bar to listen also the BFA Tulip amplifier (18 k$), that have replaced the Classe-Leben combo. The sound was really good. I asked to listen more times the Elvis's fever and in particular I noted how much hotter and bigger it was with the BFA new DAC respect to the BFA DAC internal inside the Tulip amplifier (yes, this nice amp has also a good solid state DAC inside!). After the end of the show Boško and his BFA colleague Adrian took the DAC prototype and went again beyond the frontier to my home, where the system was already warmed up.

What an unexpected Christmas surprise! The pre-production new Beyond Frontiers Audio tube-based DAC landed in my my room for a round midnight audition! Of course the final version will have a heavy chassis of the same quality of that of the Tulip amplifier.

Well, to be honest it was not necessary a long audition (just from 23:45 to 00:20, round midnight) in my controlled environment to understand that I never heard red-book digital sounding so well! We heard just a few tracks (4, 11, 15 and 16) of one of my more trusted records (the FIM Audiophile Test IV), but the difference with my highly modified Sony XA5400ES were too large (and in some way similar to those just heard when comparing the BFA internal DAC). Now the details become incredible, all the harmonic richness of true instruments was preserved, the dynamic was much more realistic, the soundstage was tridimensional (nothing seems to come from the speakers) and so on. But what impressed me more was a strong feeling of “undistorted” signal, as if the pureness of music was lastly finding his own way to reach my room. Bingo!

The only imperfection that I was able to note was that the soundstage height was not so high as I usually can hear with my Sony SACD player, but that could be do to the fact that I usually listen the SACD layer of this record, while now we were listening the 16 bit 46kHz layer. A part from that, the sound was incredible and I was really surprised by its quality. Now, I would like to look a moment at this electronic gear to understand a little of its secrets.

The power transformer is only one but really huge!
I don't understand exactly what this board does, but since it has been designed in Canada by Zdenko Živković (formerly designer of Sonic Frontiers and now designer of Magnum Dynalab and one of the owner of BFA) it must be something special. Remember how well the Sonic Frontiers SF CD-1 was sounding? Well, this DAC is probably its heritage. Please, note the thickness of these PCBs!
This is the digital board, with a Cirrus Logic 8416 CSZ audio interface receiver (for I2S, S/PDIF and other formats up to 192 kHz), a Burr Brown SRC-4192i asynchronous sample rate converter (24 bit 192 kHz), followed by a Burr Brown 1794a advanced segment DAC. Of course, the low jitter clock is located very close to the DAC chip. To be honest this board has also a BB2134 OPA, but it seems to me that it is not used in the audio path. The “digital” designer is Andria Sabolcki, the third owner of BFA.
The BB1794a (in the centre) is considered as one of the finest DAC available on the market, even if it is not so expensive as the Sabre 32 or some Wolfson or the discrete MSB. It is able to provide balanced current outputs with a maximum of 7.8 mA pp. It is used in many CD players like Shanling CD T1000, Audio Analogue Maestro SE, Krell Chiper SACD player (yes, the 1794a manages also DSD streams), Nagra CDP3E. In particular I found that the chips used in this board are very similar to those used in the AA Maestro Special Edition and -of course- in the DAC board of the BFA Tulip integrated amplifier.
The Audio board is the heart and the real secret for the magic sound of this DAC. I can say only just a few info: it uses only two dual triodes made by JJ Tesla (a ECC83s and a E88CC) in a patent pending circuit that see the ECC83 as voltage amplifier and the E88CC that provide a virtual ground reference (any help?). Don't know why, but this terminology resemble me the Jocko-Homo I/V converter, while usually in tube-based DAC the I/V conversion is made passively, with a low value resistor, followed by a high gain voltage amplifier (e.g. common cathode) and a buffer stage (e.g. cathode follower). Parts used seem very good, including Mundorf 0.33uF silver-gold oil impregnated coupling caps, many Wima MKP caps, some Dale RN60 non-magnetic resistors, silver plated wires with Teflon insulation... What impressed me more is its similarity with the internal preamplifier board of the BFA Tulip. If the digital board is similar and the tube preamp also... why connecting the external BFA DAC to the Tulip analogue input gave much better results than connecting the digital signal directly to the Tulip digital input? My opinion is that in the Tulip the I/V conversion was made with the BB3124 OPA, while here it is probably made with tubes. What Boško told me is that the only secret is this tube board, that is the culmination of 25 years of audio research by Zdenko Živković, and that “analogue sound belongs to tubes”.

BFA is a Serbian (located in Novi Sad?) company, but has relations with Canada (from where will come the heavy aluminium chassis of the production samples) and now will have also with Slovenija, since they delocalized the production of their DACs in Ljubljana, where the distribution will be made by Vklop. If I understood correctly they are also planning to produce a new version of their flagship amplifier. If you don't think to Serbia as a well-known hi-end provider, then think to the amplifiers made by Karan, BFA, Trafomatic... and you will understand that there must be some hi-fi genes flowing in all that “slivovic”.

Well, that is the end of my short reportage. I have listened this DAC only round midnight, but for me it was enough to say that I never heard before digital sounding as well as analogue. Is it the best DAC ever? Well, for sure no, since BFA is doing also a balanced version with two BB1794a (one per channel in mono mode) that is said to be even better than this SE version. Both these gears will be available in about one or two months from now, while during 2012 they will start working to a stand alone universal player (please add also SACD decoding!!!). The price for the SE DAC will be something less than 5 kE, a lot of money for me, but not for many others who buys DAC sounding much worse than this one. As usual, if you are interested in this product, don't write me, but write to office@beyondfrontiersaudio.com. Thanks to Zdenko and Andria to have designed this gear and thanks to Adrian Sabolcki and Boško Pješčić for their kind visit!

Update of 28/12/2011

The Vklop system was based on Avant Gard horn speakers and Blacknote/Goldnote electronics.	The prototype of the balanced BFA DAC. The tube boards were two, as were the main transformers...

Yesterday night we went to Ljubljana to hear also the prototype of the balanced BFA DAC. Unfortunately the system set by Vklop was much more oriented to reach a great sound pressure (110dB SPL?) and dynamic than a 3D soundstage with realistic musical texture, so for me it was quite difficult to judge the effect of this balanced DAC. The only important information that I can add is that Boško told me that -at least in this DAC- there are no capacitors in the signal path and that seems extraordinary in a tube based circuit. Maybe this is the secret of this wonderful machine and it must be related to the “virtual ground” effect that can get rid off the DC output...