Consumer alert!

       Whatever else you get out of this review, you won't come away with the slightest idea how the Shigaraki performs relative to other outboard DACs. The simple truth is I have less experience with these things than most other audio writers, given my 17-year reliance upon one-box CD players. (There's a scary thought: My relationship with the compact disc is old enough to drive.) That doesn't mean I'm a complete idiot, but it does mean that, as far as the Shigaraki DAC is concerned, all I'm qualified to tell you is how it plays music and what makes it tick.
       The latter may be the most interesting part of the story anyway: In a field which has never interested me too terribly much--partly because most DACs are so brain-calcifyingly similar to one another with regard to their parts and technology--the Shigaraki is wildly different. It uses no oversampling or digital filtering (the two are tied together, of course, inasmuch as it's the digital filter that does the oversampling in most contemporary players and DACs). It contains no analog filter, either. And it's built into a ceramic box rather than a metal or plastic one.
       There are more and finer differences than these. And while none are exclusive to 47 Laboratory (Audio Note, too, has built their DACs without oversampling or digital filtering since around 1998), it must be noted that the Shigaraki's distinctions are all kittens in the same barn. And that barn is called Simplicity.
       So whereas the signal paths of most products are measured in inches, those of the Shigaraki DAC can be counted in millimeters. And while most of us think of digital audio products as inscrutably complex, the Shigaraki DAC contains a grand total of only 20 parts: 7 resistors, 3 capacitors, 6 inductors, 2 voltage regulators, and 2 chips. Everything is soldered together on a circuit board that measures 1.25 by 1.4 inches, and if you remove the working parts from their elegant shigaraki ceramic housing (hence the name) you can easily cup them between your hands and no one would see what you're holding.
       One of the Shigaraki's two chips is the Philips TDA1543T, a 16-bit dual DAC which its manufacturer describes as their "economy" model. The other is the ubiquitous Crystal CS8412, which serves as the Shigaraki's self-clocking input receiver. And that's it: there are no other active parts at all. Even current-to-voltage conversion is done without an op-amp-remarkable given that 47 Laboratory founder Junji Kimura is one of the few designers on the planet who knows how to make the little buggers sound good. For I/V conversion in the Shigaraki DAC, though, he uses a couple of resistors(but I don't have the slightest idea how this works), and suggests that his approach results in better transient performance, with less ringing or overshoot.
       Simple? You bet. But since most people take a different view, I'm compelled to ask: Is it too simple?
       Given that the Shigaraki's biggest departure from the norm is its lack of an oversampling digital filter, let's start by asking why you'd want one of those in the first place. And that's a good question, since it so happens that oversampling is so commonly misunderstood by consumers (and, if a recent in-store experience is any indication, salespeople): To wit, it isn't done to increase resolution. The additional samples created by an oversampling filter don't contain new information. Rather, oversampling is used to shift the inevitable digital spuriae or image noise--which occurs at multiples of the sampling frequency--high enough in the spectrum that it can be removed after the fact with a relatively benign, gently sloped analog filter.
       All right, then: Where's the harm in that?
       I'll let Ryohei Kusunoki answer that. Kusonoki, a Japanese audio writer and engineer who has influenced Junji Kimura's work in digital audio, uses mathematical distribution to compute timing error threshold, which is the amount of timing error or jitter allowable before it corrupts the waveform that's being reassembled. Given a 44.1kHz sampling rate and a 16-bit word length, Kusonoki predicts a timing error threshold of 173 picoseconds (1 �E44.1kHz �E216 = 173). In other words, you can have up to 173 ps of jitter in a 44.1k, 16-bit system before the music begins to suffer.
       However, if you apply the same mathematical distribution to an 8-times oversampling scheme with its 20-bit (pre-dither) word length, you will see the timing error threshold drop to 1.35 picoseconds. And that's unrealistically low: virtually unachievable with present domestic equipment. In other words, if you send Mr. Oversampling into the henhouse to gather eggs, he will have stepped on a hundred by the time he succeeds at picking up a single one.
       Now let's be fair: As with so many things at the cutting edge of contemporary home audio-ranging in peculiarity from single-ended amps and unipivot tonearms all the way to cryogenically treated speaker cable supports and the pricking of one's listening room's walls to exorcise it of unpleasant Rayleigh waves-theories such as the above either will or will not convince you. And neither you nor I nor anyone else can prove or disprove the rightness of any such approach as it pertains to musical enjoyment. Thus it is also fair to say that if the above didn't faze you, neither will you faint to hear why the Shigaraki lacks both a metal enclosure (non-conductive boundaries contribute to a smoother, more open sound) and an analog filter (they produce smearing in the time domain-and besides, our ears provide all the low-pass filtering we need). Nope: All we can do is listen.
       And that's what I did.
       On The Jayhawks' "A Break in the Clouds," both the Shigaraki and the DAC built into my Sony SCD-777ES SACD player* deliver the sonic and emotional goods, albeit in slightly different ways. In a nutshell, the Sony sounds more detailed, and its stereo imaging has a more precise and etched quality. (It is also louder, incidentally, in spite of specs that would seem to predict the opposite, and so slight volume adjustments are needed for comparison's sake.) On the Sony, transient attacks are more audible, such as one hears in the sound of a nylon rather than wood drumstick tip hitting a brass ride cymbal, or a plectrum on metal strings, or the plosives in speech and singing on certain consonants.
       The Shigaraki, for its part, is more "relaxed" in its sound and music-making. It has a softer and somewhat less bright presentation, and in terms of spatial perspectives on stereo recordings, performers seem farther away, and their positions have less of that etched-in-space quality that I find rather too fiddly anyway.
       But there's also a slightly more natural quality to the way musical lines play out through the 47 Lab DAC: It is similar to the altogether superior and downright realistic sense of flow that I hear from SACD and, for that matter, analog.
       Here's something interesting: On Leonard Cohen's "Take This Waltz," while the Sony's own DAC has inarguably more spatial detail, there is more of a sense of "real" distance between the various performers in this ineptly recorded, phoney-baloney studio creation via the Shigaraki. The same is true, to an even greater extent, on Lenny's live "Suzanne"-and there's the kind of cut where the 47 Lab DAC really shines. It relaxes you like Codeine (sorry: just getting over a lung infection and that happens to be on my mind) and takes you on a very sensual ride (ditto).
       The Sony, by comparison, sounds precise but plastick-y, and a bit less interesting. With the Sony you can't hear quite as well how gentle and disturbing this song really is.
       I tried "Driveby" from Neil Young's Sleeps with Angels album, and while the things I heard were hard to quantify, I was left with the impression that the Shigaraki renders the song somewhat more hypnotic and sad, which I believe is what Neil had in mind. Likewise, Procol's "Piggy Pig Pig" (my four-year-old daughter's favorite song) sounds a little more ominous through the Shigaraki. And when I break from my reverie and think about it, I realize that the Shigaraki is more dynamic sounding overall than the Sony, inasmuch as its dynamic pallette is broader: quiets are quieter and louds are louder, that sort of thing. And some elements-the studio horseplay and sound effects at the end, for example-pop out of the mix much more with the 47 Lab DAC than the Sony.
       The denouement came courtesy of the "Capriccio d'apres Le bal masque" from Volume III of Naxos' very good series of Poulenc's chamber music-where I heard something that seemed to give meaning to all the other things I'd heard from the Shigaraki up to that point in time: On this recording of two pianos, the Shigaraki has the effect of moving the listener away from the instruments a little bit (physcially), and it ultimately does to the sound what moving your seat away from a large horn loudspeaker does: It makes more sense out of it. Farther is closer, if you see what I mean.
       Much the same thing is true of the woodwind pieces that appear later in the same collection: The Sony has lots of realistic color, bless its heart; the Shigaraki is less richly hued-again, more distant-but at the same time the latter seems to make the musical essence more accessible and understandable overall. It's also interesting to note that, even though the Sony has that loudness advantage I referred to above, the Shigaraki renders the second clarinet's line obviously louder and clearer.
       From what I can tell, the Shigaraki is Peter Paul Rubens to the Sony's El Greco: slightly less vivid, but for my money it offers a much more pleasing, flowing line. I wish I could add something clever like, "The Shigaraki is Peter Paul Rubens to the Sony's El Greco, the DCS Elgar's William Turner, the Wadia's John Singer Sargent, and the Theta's Anonymous Islamic Artist." But I can't.

                                       *******

       In terms of sound and music-making ability and sheer gut-level involvement, the differences between my Sony's built-in DAC and the 47 Laboratory Shigaraki are consistently audible but not huge. I admired, even preferred, the latter for its somewhat softer-toned and pleasantly distant presentation, and for its more natural sense of musical flow-even as I determined to carry on happily enough with the former.
       But during the past few months I've had the chance to try the Shigaraki with other transports-to be precise, with the transport sections of two other single-box 16-bit CD players, both of which sold for less than $1000. In both instances my findings were qualitatively similar to the ones I've already described, but somewhat greater in degree . And I would add that the DACs of the less expensive machines seem to add a sonic tizz to the proceedings that the Shigaraki very definitely does not. On Tom Petty's "Lonesome Sundown," which admittedly has a few high frequency issues it needs to work out, substituting the Shigaraki for the onboard DACs of either of the players in question resulted in a marked decrease in edginess: Vocal sibilants (especially on the chorus) remained realistically "there" yet became easier to take. I winced less. I also noted that the 47 Lab DAC seemed to make the melody a little easier to follow, too-or, to put it another way, a little less difficult to make sense of.
       Assuming I already owned and wished to keep one of those machines, I would give serious thought to buying a Shigaraki DAC for my system: Given a digital system that teeters on the edge of musicality, the Shigaraki seems capable of making a pronounced push in the right direction. It is better at making music.
       And finally there's the question of the forthcoming Shigarki transport: Just weeks ago, 47 Laboratory unveiled prototypes of a whole line of "budget" Shigaraki series products, including a $1750 disc-spinner. Given the potential for synergy, a $3000 Shigaraki CD "system" might nip the heels of 47 Lab's own Flatfish CD player [Vol.6, No.3], and could even give SACD a run for its money in terms of smooth, analog-like, downright "organic" digital sound.
       Okay: Now I really am starting to get interested.

Quality: N/A (see text)
Value: N/A (see text)

*The Sony offers a choice of five different digital filter settings for standard CD playback, corresponding to five different sets of roll-off characteristics. During this review, whenever I listened using the 777's onboard DAC, I relied exclusively on its "Standard" filter setting. Incidentally, I tried a few different digital interconnects during the review, and although I never heard what I personally think of as "significant" differences between any of them, I did slightly prefer the Green Hornet Digital cable from Creative Cable Concepts, which seemed to be the quietest of the bunch. It is also reasonably priced for a handmade cable: $295 for a one-meter RCA-to-RCA, with each additional foot priced at an additional $30.