Review in AUDIO magazine (Germany), Issue March 2007
Accuphase SACD/CD transport DP-800 & digital processor DC-801

Best of ?
by Joachim Pfeiffer

A CD player in two housings which are to make a balance scale indicating
almost 50 kg! What's going on here?
There are phases in the life of a high-ender in which he simply can't getenough. He doesn't want to just read about some noble high-end equipment, no, hewants to own it right away. Eventually, this may become very expensive in particular
if a smart hi-fi dealer has recognised his potential client being acutely infected by thehi-fi bacillus. No, this dealer would certainly not talk you into buying the products
around. He would rather order the absolutely best and therefore most expensive
components while holding them ready until said client would come back to his shop by next Saturday the latest, you bet.
Pure fantasy? Not at all, because exactly this happened to yours truly many
years ago. One day I bumped into some gems lingering about in the shop. "I'veordered them just for you", said the dealer with a smile. "How much?"…."Forget it.
Never in my life. You must be crazy!" And then I saw me carry them home in order tohave them tested over the weekend, without obligation, of course. They really did hit
the spot and various plans for financing them were fully occupying my brain alreadyon Sunday afternoon. Well, that dealer never saw them again….
This episode came back to mind when I borrowed the new SACD/CD
combination Accuphase DP-800/DC-801 for the Christmas holidays to have themauditioned and compared to its predecessor DP-100/DC-101 (tested in AUDIO issue
11/2000). My first impression: the new ones are certainly more pretty than theprevious ones. Like in the old days they are once again provided with a housing
made from noble wood, which is reflecting the design language of the very first
separate components DP-80/DC-81 available ca. 1986. I notice that the weight of theSACD/CD transport has been substantially increased when compared to the DP-100.
For the latter Accuphase had to resort to a CD drive from Sony which was sonicallytuned in one or the other spot. The DP-800 however features a drive entirely
developed by Accuphase themselves.
The somewhat unwieldy top loader, which took an annoyingly long time toread a CD, is of the past, finally. The new drive is now doing its job in a front-loadingarray - very good! The smooth action of the tray reminds me of bygone days when,for instance, Sony launched CD players like the 777, which after some tuning by
Swoboda were not only solidly looking, but musically convincing as well. That's dieda death as in these days nearly all CD players are provided with oh so contemptuous
PC drives.

According to Accuphase, they have been considering their own home-madedrive for ten years, but, eventually, it had been developed only within the past threeyears. The making of the necessary tools alone has generated cost which areprobably on par with those to be spent for the preparation of a one year's production,
whereby the royalties Accuphase had to pay to a specially hired expert are not part ofthis calculation. They take it serious indeed but still would never waste a thought as
to offering this heavy 8-kg component to other manufacturers also.
The converter: good, better, Accuphase.
A lot of things have been done inside the DC-801, which quite like its
predecessor was made to play SACDs in stereo. Certainly not a mass market, but
this niche is still alive nevertheless. We at AUDIO have great respect for theJapanese in view of the consequent realization of this highly demanding task. Inorder to transform the DSD signal generated by the SACD into melodious analogue
signals, it is first routed through an upsampler which is lifting it from 2.8224 MHz/1 bit
up to 5.6448 MHz/1 bit.
Immediately thereafter, at a quite unusual stage that is, the processed signal ispassing the digital volume control whereupon things are getting really complicated:the eight digital D/A converters per channel are headed by a tiny time delay in a waythat the first one is receiving the signal without delay, the second a tad later, the third
twice the tad later, the forth three tads later, and so on. Summing-up the signals after
they've gone through each DAC yields a digital low pass filter which can principally
be found in any other SACD player, yet never before realized with such a perfection.
This highly elaborate signal processing is certainly not necessary for the rather goodnatured CD: its PCM data are neither subject to upsampling nor to a time delay but
are directly handed over to the DACs.
On December 23 the new Accuphase combination could already suckle at themains sockets in my flat, and the first sonic impressions were indeed brought to me
on Christmas Eve. Could it be that this machine has pushed open a new acoustic
window? Could it be that it renders music more analogue in the best sense of theword as well as softer, rounder, with seemingly more relaxed voices and a timing thatwas more thrilling and, simply put, just right? At least, the new ensemble was putting
the predecessors into the shade. No small wonder though, as the old masters saw
the light of the audiophile day already seven years ago.
Christmas all year round
One CD after the other was to rotate in the DP-800. Then on Boxing Day
towards 4 p.m. there was one thing quite clear for me: had I once again borrowed thiscombination from a dealer, he would have never seen it again. The most stunning
thing is the extraordinary pleasure you get when listening to audiophile CDs andSACDs. And then it's absolutely fascinating to feed the transport with rather
questionable sound carriers, like for example my considerable collection of "Hi-Fi
Vision" oldie-CDs which had been produced up to the early nineties. Next to somereally good copies Harald Kuppek, once responsible for the mastering, evidently had
to resort to some cassettes or perhaps worn vinyl for the CD mastering, too.

This is so exciting because you are actually anticipating all this but it doesn't
bother you at all. Via the Accuphase duo it's so easy to recognise the adversities andsimply fade them out. What remains is pure music. The rendered openness willremind you of the very best analogue turntables but it is not paid with a (slight)
subduing towards the higher frequencies (like in the Wadia, for example). These
components should be first choice for any wealthy hi-fi aficionado searching for theultimate in digital music reproduction - that's what I thought to myself and therefore
proceeded to take them back to our publishing house….
A couple of weeks later I met DP-800 and DC-801 again warming up in theAUDIO listening room whilst waiting for the currently reigning champions TEAC
Esoteric P 03/D 03. It's good custom with us that if any component is to claim theNo. 1 position in our ranking, everyone from the team has to follow the call to thelistening test. In order to prevent that personal preferences may perhaps falsify theresults, the blind test is also part of the procedure. And that's how it was carried out:Lothar Brandt and Joachim Pfeiffer were sitting spellbound in front of the challengers
and defending champions. Having been started simultaneously, each transport
played a sample of AUDIO's Super-Tutorial CD-5 (issue 01/07, with Bose). We werelistening to the track "Au Large Du Gueveur" by Louis Capart and the Duo Balance,
rendered via the two competing DACs and Accuphase's preamplifier C-2810 which
was driving the mono amplifiers Marantz MA-9 S2. The unerring JBL Array 1000 (seeAUDIO 11/06) was serving us as monitor speakers.
The verdict by blind test
Bernhard Rietschel joined us and was all ears. My colleague could very wellremember how the TEAC combination was head and shoulders above the integrated
player Accuphase DP-78 and eventually managed to push it from the throne inOctober 2006. Now, is the same fate going to hit the new family members also? Well,
it seemed so in the very beginning because one of the combinations was reallytaking off whereas the other one grew pale in all aspects. If two "dream teams" arecompeting with each other and one of them sounds just a tad better, then objectively
small differences may well be blown up to subjectively big differences. In our case
one combination allowed a bright and very clear view onto the performers whereby
the rendition of the other one was perceived like through a veil. Even more obvious
was a sonorous male voice as well as some softer female singing being rendered bycandidate A nearly lifelike while with candidate B it rather sounded like a meretransfer of this. By comparison the sounds were like original and forgery (Ok, a bit
exaggerating here). Another clue was given when listening to lower registers:
Candidate A developed rhythm and springy movements while B remained more staticand marking time, so to speak…..
It's all quite relative, isn't it? Well, all you need to do is to have candidate B
competing with the lesser sophisticated model C. What you get is a similar
description of the sonic virtues as above, although this time in favour of candidate B.
This is in fact what happened when TEAC's transport & DAC combination gave theDP-78 a run for its money. "Quite as clear as last year" is the remark of colleague
Rietschel. A is beating B, only that this time it was the Japanese model pupil to takerevenge, namely because there was the Accuphase DP-800/DC-801 duo hidden
behind position A. TEAC will now have to clear the top ranking place they'veconquered not so long ago. Well, that's what was going on here.

SUMMING UP
It's not really surprising that Accuphase and the new digital combination are playing
again in the highest league. However the stunning thing is how clearly they
distinguish themselves from the previous reference. In view of all this it may well beassumed that by launching these formidable components the further development ofhighest-quality CD- yet in particular SACD players may have come to an end here, as
Accuphase has definitely got to the very end of the flagpole.
THE AUDIOGRAMME
Accuphase DP-800/DC-801
The superlative combination with the absolutely best rendition of CD to this date.
Sound CD/SACD:
Features:
Operation:
Craftsmanship:

outstanding 140/140 (score)
very goodvery convenient
outstanding

AUDIO overall rating:outstanding 140
Reference Class (5 ears)
good

Price/performance ratio: