Luxman DA-06 DSD DAC - Stereophile Class A - Immaculate

Up for sale is the widely acclaimed Luxman DA-06 DAC in immaculate condition with original packaging, manual, and driver disc. This is a superb DAC which will destroy everything in its price range. Listed at an aggressive price as I am listening mostly to analog and no longer have room on my rack for a dedicated DAC now that the standalone phono stage has gone in. This DAC is absolutely neutral sounding, like the best of Luxman components, and will please anybody looking for a DAC that adds nothing and takes nothing away. The build quality is gorgeous, it has a plethora of inputs, and it is a fully balanced design.

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From Stereophile:

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Description
But there's more to this product than just one compelling if slow-to-mature format. While the Luxman DA-06 is one of about three dozen converters on the market that can process and stream 2.8224MHz and 5.6448MHz DSD files, it also supports, via its USB input, PCM with word lengths of up to 32 bits and sampling frequencies of up to 384kHz. (Its S/PDIF, AES/EBU, and optical inputs support up to 24 bits and 192kHz.) Additionally, PCM playback through the Luxman DA-06 can be optimized with a choice of three user-selectable digital filters, derived from different 32-bit interpolation functions. (Users can just as easily select between two different high-frequency-rolloff characteristics during DSD playback, but those filters exist only in the analog domain.)

At the heart of all this flexibility is the Burr-Brown PCM 1792A 32-bit converter chip, which also appears in Luxman's D-06 SACD/CD player. According to Luxman, digital inputs of 44.1, 88.2, and 176.4kHz are upsampled by this converter to 352.8kHz, while inputs of 48kHz and its mathematically related frequencies are upsampled to 384kHz. Digital signals arriving through the USB input are said to be streamed asynchronously.

Useful controls abound, and I was pleased to see that Luxman has put them all on the DA-06's nicely styled front panel—and dispensed altogether with a remote-control handset, which I persist in regarding as the devil's plaything. A knurled, six-position rotary switch at the far right of the front panel selects among the various digital inputs—two optical, two coaxial, one AES/EBU, one USB—and a pushbutton toggle to its left can be used to disable the DA-06's digital output, in an effort to enhance analog-output quality. Still farther to the left is a notably clear, seven-segment LED display for sampling rates and word lengths (the latter functioning only with S/PDIF inputs); an adjacent pushbutton offers four levels of display brightness—or, for you empty-glass types, darkness.

At the far left of the front panel, a simple, two-position pushbutton is the sole means of turning the DA-06 on and off—another blessing to the user who sees little point in paying for the complexity of on/off/standby switching, and who prefers knowing, without ambiguity, when "Off" means off. Beyond that, the Luxman's four remaining pushbuttons were those I found most useful: controls for inverting absolute signal phase, selecting the digital PCM filter, and selecting the analog DSD filter, plus an Enter switch, which enables the user's choice in all three functions.

The DA-06's rear panel is straightforward. Single-ended analog output signals appear on a pair of RCA jacks, balanced signals on a pair of XLR sockets (pin 2 is hot). Two RCA jacks, two TosLink jacks, a USB Type B socket, and an XLR socket accept digital inputs of various types, and digital output is available from an RCA or a TosLink jack.

The DA-06's case consists of a hefty, well-finished steel bottom plate to which various thinner steel plates—for both structure and shielding—and the alloy front panel are bolted. A thin steel sleeve, finished in textured paint, covers the works: nicely executed, if a slight notch below what I would expect in a $5000 product. Interior build quality is superb, with most of the circuitry divided among three main boards, for analog output (the largest board), digital processing, and the power supply. Parts quality is good insofar as I can tell, with Luxman's own bespoke capacitors in many positions, and an especially beautiful, copper-wrapped mains transformer at the power supply's electrical heart.

Installation and setup
Being not too big, too heavy, or possessed of controls too inscrutable, the Luxman DA-06 was cake to install. My Apple iMac recognized it the moment they called to one another across a 2m-long WireWorld Revision USB cable—the processor appeared in the computer's System Preferences/Sound window as "Luxman DA-06"—and has never failed to do so in the days since, with no need for rebooting computer or processor.

As for playback software: I normally rely on Stephen Booth's very cost-effective Decibel (v.1.2.11) for all music files, and on Apple iTunes for streaming FM broadcasts, but at the time of writing neither program supported DSD. I deferred to the DSD enthusiasts among my colleagues and friends, who all pointed me toward Audirvana Plus ($74), v.1.5.12 of which has now imprinted itself on the magnetic dust of my hard drive (which is not quite the same as saying "I own it," but please humor me and play along). I suffered, early in the review, some concern that either Audirvana Plus or the Luxman DAC did not support MP3 files, as I was unable to stream music from my favorite Internet radio station; as it turned out, my first attempt at doing so came during one of WCKR's experimental-music hours—I had chanced on a period of extended silence written into a score. Subsequent broadcasts sounded fine.

Except where indicated otherwise, all of the following observations apply to the Luxman DA-06 with its two adjustable filters in their normal settings: P-1 for PCM [see the "Measurements" sidebar—Ed.], D-1 for DSD.

Listening
Reality prevails. And while I'm sure there exist hardcore enthusiasts who acquire every DSD file that's commercially available, and who make those files the predominant if not exclusive medium for all of their listening sessions, the digital-music "collections" of most audio enthusiasts are overwhelmingly dominated by PCM recordings: In the field, those are what most Luxman DA-06 converters will spend most of their time converting.

Consequently, although I laid in a good selection of DSD files chosen specifically for this review, I spent most of my reviewing time using the Luxman DA-06 for everyday listening: mostly 16-bit/44.1kHz PCM files, with a smattering of 24/96 and 24/192 PCM files. Used in that manner, the Luxman suggested an idealized and vastly more flexible version of the affordable and consistently listenable Halide DAC HD, which has become my USB reference during the past year. The Luxman went well beyond the Halide by sounding generously explicit, providing musical and sonic details in abundance and presenting them in a soundfield notable for its openness and general lack of murk. Still, the DA-06 had good substance, with a tonal character that was slightly—almost imperceptibly—warm and round, even with that default filter.

For example, with Elton John's "First Episode at Hienton," from his eponymous second album (24/96 download, Mercury/HDtracks)—a guilty pleasure, I know, but please humor me and play along—the Luxman DA-06 allowed the piano to sound commendably rich and timbrally saturated. John's voice was appropriately fleshed out, and I was pleased that vocal sibilants were slightly tamer than I usually hear from this high-resolution download. I noted an almost identical set of characteristics in "Willow, Weep for Me," from a CD rip of Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely (Capitol/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UDCD 792)—although in this recording the Luxman had even more color to uncover, and a vocal sound more complex in its balance of color, texture, and dynamic nuance. In any event, the Luxman once again did a better-than-average job of taking the edge off of sibilants—although here I did consistently prefer the sound with its P-3 filter.

Purely acoustic music sounded just right through the Luxman—eg, Tony Rice's arrangement of the folk melody "Shady Grove," from his and Peter Rowan's Quartet (ripped from CD, Rounder 11661-0579-2). The lead acoustic guitar came across with all due color and texture, along with Rice's typically supple, limber note attacks. Even more impressive through the Luxman was double-bassist Bryn Davies's remarkable solo, which seemed to push the limits of color and texture ever further, and to add to them a spectacular sense of scale and sheer heft. The very long (but not necessarily lunar) note floated by cellist Pieter Wispelwey toward the end of the sixth of Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, with Daniel Sepec and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen (ripped from CD layer of SACD/CD, Channel Classics CCS SA 16501), was an orgy of texture; even more so was Wispelwey's sound in Bruch's Kol Nidrei, from the same disc, providing the audio-playback ideal of an instrument so well reproduced that it becomes all but visible and tangible between the loudspeakers. And it's impossible to declare which sounded more stunningly real and present: the solo with which alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley follows Bill Evans's own piano solo in "Goodbye," from Adderley's Know What I Mean? (AIFF ripped from CD, JVC XRCD VICJ-60243), or Percy Heath's bowed double bass at this track's beginning and end. During the Luxman DA-06's time in my system, these selections and several others cemented its reputation as a tone beast, which is rare indeed.

The Luxman's spatial performance was more than adequate to satisfy my limited need for same, and I suspect that stereo enthusiasts will find much to like here, with good if somewhat puffy image specificity and really good scale. The latter quality very much enhanced the effectiveness of the award-winning recording, by Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic, of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (CD, Nonesuch 79816-2), in which orchestra, two choruses, percussionists, solo trumpet, and prerecorded voices occupy, in turn, various spaces on the stage and build to an emotional climax. Nice to note the existence of digital playback that can make me cry.

And with DSD?
It is music's job to exist and to be enjoyed and understood; it is not music's job to show off anyone's hi-fi system. But if it were, then I would say that the DSD recording, by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, of Mahler's Symphony 2 (SACD/CD, Channel Classics CCS SA 23506) put the Luxman DA-06 in an especially good light. Working together, that recording and this bit of hardware allowed the big DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/96 speakers to step further out of the way, spatially, than usual, while not robbing the music of its substance. The Luxman also captured the power of the bass drum in the third movement, and distinguished the instrument's timbral character from that of the timpani. And its retrieval of musical detail—for example, the glissando in the violins starting at 4:20 in the first movement—was exemplary.

On the negative side, string tone was slightly smoothed over and bereft of texture (though not as plasticky as the sound I hear from some expensive digital gear), and overall, this recording was among those that, no matter how far to the right I turned the volume knob, I couldn't seem to get loud enough: It did not satisfy. Bear in mind that, as a newcomer to the world of streaming DSD, I don't know if the fault was in the recording, the DAC, or in DSD itself.

The DA-06 did a fine, engaging job with a DSD-encoded DSF file of "Lonesome Tears," from Beck's Sea Change (Geffen B0004372-01, footnote 2). Bass was firm and deep, and the voices, while fraught with the excess sibilance of very close miking, were no less tolerable than from the LP. The song had all the drama and import and impact that it should. The LP was a little less bright—probably just a function of the phono cartridge used for the needle drop—and had a slight advantage in terms of texture. That said, there was no shortage of texture in the sound of Ben Webster's saxophone, in a DSF file of "When Your Lover Is Gone," from Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson (Verve MG VS 6114)—likewise the lovely, rich sound of Ray Brown's double bass. The Luxman also did a supremely analog-like job with "St. Thomas," from Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus (Prestige 7079). The tone of his tenor was indeed colossal, and Max Roach's calypso percussion had surprisingly good impact and touch: an 8 on a scale of 1–10, with 10 being the mono Prestige LP played on my Garrard-EMT-EMT record player

Conclusions
How to put the Luxman DA-06—and, especially, its DSD capabilities—in perspective? It's a bit like my EMT OFD 65 pickup head: a classic, low-compliance phono transducer that's designed to play 78rpm records and nothing else. I trot it out only once or twice a month, yet it's a thoroughly indispensable product, something I would not wish to be without. Yes, I've got five or six CDs' worth of Louis Armstrong's music from before the 1930s—but when I want to hear what "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" or "You're Driving Me Crazy" really sound like, the 78 is the only choice. Similarly, for the listener who possesses a good number of DSD files—that and, perhaps, the faith that it may someday be possible and legal to rip to his hard drive the SACDs he thinks he owns—then something like the DA-06 would seem a borderline necessity.

Still, for everyone else, the Luxman DA-06 is a damn fine-sounding D/A converter with virtually all music: insightful, explicit, substantial, colorful, and as consistently analog-like a digital product as I have heard. That it is also attractive, easy to use, and made by a corporation that will turn 90 next year tips the balance toward an enthusiastic recommendation.

Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/luxman-da-06-da-processor-page-2#wefwIZlYPQz6RdfX.99