dCS Elgar (late 1990s)
Documentation on the dCS Elgar is thin in the Archive. No original spec sheet or manual has been located, and most of what survives comes from a couple of late-1990s period reviews. Those reviews make one thing clear: the Elgar was Data Conversion Systems' entry into the consumer market, the home version of the professional dCS 952 D/A converter. Audio (July 1998, p.56) described dCS as a leading supplier of digital equipment to recording studios and mastering houses that, until the Elgar, had little presence outside that world.
In his Audio review, Anthony H. Cordesman found the Elgar capable of 24-bit/96kHz operation. It feeds 24-bit resolution into the DAC, which yields the equivalent of a 20-bit output. He compared it directly with a Mark Levinson No. 30.5 and praised its imaging and localization. He also noted that upsampling ordinary 44.1kHz CDs to 96kHz made most of them sound better, though dCS itself didn't have a firm scientific explanation for the improvement. The unit was firmware-upgradable. Only 20% of the EPROM's capacity was occupied at launch, and 192kHz support was said to be forthcoming. His main ergonomic complaint was the remote control, which was large, metal and clunky, but perfectly adequate.
The Elgar also saw professional use. In 1997, a pair was used for monitoring a 96kHz recording session on Nagra-D digital open-reel machines, where its precision digital volume control made it a convenient choice over the studio dCS 952s.
Known specs from the period record:
- Consumer version of the dCS 952 D/A converter
- 24-bit/96kHz conversion; 24-bit into the DAC, ~20-bit equivalent output
- Upsampling from 44.1/48kHz to 96kHz (192kHz planned)
- Firmware-upgradable via EPROM
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