Last November, US audio magazine The Absolute Sound updated the format of it’s annual Editors’ Choice Awards, splitting the Awards into two parts. While the November issue focused on hi-fi components suited to a home living room, the March issue covers products that best fit into larger systems in dedicated listening rooms – including several of DS Audio’s game-changing optical cartridges and accessories.
This is “the gear that our editors and writers have selected as most worthy of your consideration,” explains the magazine. “These are components that we ourselves would buy.”
“Name another recent technological advance that has changed the audio scene as much as DS Audio’s optical cartridges have,” says reviewer Jonathan Valin. “If you can’t, that’s because there is none. Moreover, the company just keeps on innovating, enhancing its offerings with technology trickled down from its top-of-range masterpieces.
The DS-W3 is a case in point, a ‘third generation’ optical cartridge that’s “quite simply the best sounding ‘affordable’ optical cartridge” that Valin has heard in his system.
Then again, if you’ve got the budget to go higher, DS Audio’s flagship Grand Master phono cartridge “comes closer to the sound of R2R tape than any other phono cartridge on the market” and delivers “the most complete and most realistic reproduction of the music and musicians on LPs” Valin has ever heard.
Higher still? Then you’ll need (and very much want) the flagship Grand Master EX (Extreme), which “offers a portal into a new audio realm of vinyl reproduction”. With its 0.22mm one-piece diamond cantilever that employs no adhesive, it delivers “a continuity of sound that is immediately and pleasurably apparent”, making this “a standout cartridge that is as seductive as it is dynamic.”
But if affordability is key, don’t despair. The ‘one up from entry-level’ DS-003 has already won two coveted awards from The Absolute Sound: a Golden Ear Award 2022 and Product of the Year 2022. And with good reason, since this is another “trickledown masterpiece” that sports many of the benefits of the Grand Master for around one tenth of the price.
Like the Grand Master and the DS-W3, the DS-003 uses ‘third generation’ optical cartridge technology, including a new dual-mono optical/electrical generator with independent LEDs and photodetectors for each channel, delivering greatly enhanced channel separation and hence soundstaging and imaging, while improving tracking and lowering noise to a near-inaudible level, enabling greater resolution and dynamic range. “That difference is startling and advantageous” with “a clarity and transparency akin to digital with a naturalness and lack of artifacts that is the hallmark of analog.”
The ION-001 is The Absolute Sound’s fifth selection from the DS Audio range. It’s a free-standing ionizer that smooths out tracking by neutralising the static charge of your records. “It also (and more importantly) somehow neutralises timbre, in the sense of bringing tonal balance closer to colorlessly natural top to bottom,” writes Valin, making this “a worth-it addition to any ultra-high-end playback system.”
Finally, the ES-001 Eccentricity Stabiliser “is a breakthrough product from a company that seems to specialize in breakthrough products”. This “little marvel of optical technology” reads the concentricity of a record’s run-out grooves via infra-red light and show you what adjustments are needed to perfectly centre your record on the platter, allowing your stylus to track as its intended to. For anyone who’s deeply into analogue it’s “a game-changer and a must-own item.”
Find out more about DS Audio’s pioneering products, and locate your nearest dealer via UK distributor Sound Fowndations.
Discover the complete list of Editors’ Choice Award winners in the March issue of The Absolute Sound.
David Denyer PR | The hi-fi specialist 