". . . a harbinger of future preamps."

To Doug Schneider,

Nice review of the Eximus DP1. In my view, its design is a harbinger of future preamps: both digital and analog inputs, with DAC circuitry built in. I note that Peachtree Audio's Grand Pre preamp and DAC is designed the same way. Both digital and analog inputs will connect to the preamp.

Windows Vista got a lot of flack, but it was way better than Windows Me, which on my computer crashed daily. Vista was no prize, but didn’t crash often. Here's hoping a future version of Windows will have native support for USB Audio Class 2.0 so we won't need drivers for high-speed USB-audio connections.

Vade Forrester
Contributor, The SoundStage Network

When it comes to the DP1 and similar units like the new Peachtree Audio Grand Pre, I’m reminded of the saying: “What’s old is new again.” Benchmark Media Systems has had their DAC/preamplifier unit for a number of years, but going back at least a couple of decades you find Theta started marketing the DS Pre in about 1986. If memory serves me correctly, Denon also came out with the DAP-2500 and DAP-5500 preamplifier-DACs just after that, products that were really far, far ahead of their time and still generate discussion today. There were probably others. So the idea of a DAC/preamp isn’t very new, but I do agree that in the future we’ll likely see more of them, as it seems the best way to go for someone whose playback is primarily digital.

As for Vista, I always found the complaints about that operating system kind of odd because it never crashed on me once in all the years I used it for all my office work, and it’s still performing equally well today as the base operating system for my music server. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. . . . Doug Schneider