Exogal Comet DAC Review

The listening experience

The sound of the ExogalComet is a bit alien to ears accustomed to typical Oversampling and Upsampling with digital filters. An alien encounter is not necessarily negative. A run in with a Predator from the Sci-Fi movie series would be an encounter of the worst sort. However, if you were to be approached by a Biblical angel, once you got over your shock you might consider it a high point in your life.

Earlier, I described Exogal’s unusual process of signal replacement for its own contoured, smoother one. This is what makes the Comet an alien DAC, the transformative aspect that separates it from the field of more Earth-bound $2-3K DACs. This unparalleled performance became strikingly clear to me as I took possession of a new pair of speakers, the first pair of the new Vapor Audio Joule White 3, replete with upgrades and enhancements. It is built with a no-compromise philosophy, and results in performance that can relentlessly reveal weaknesses in components. When I paired the Comet with the Joule White 3, the brilliance of the replacement signal scheme shone even more brightly, as the music was seamless, as if woven from top to bottom with a single acoustic thread.

Other DSD-capable DACs I have used include the exaSound e22, iFi Nano iDSD, and Eastern Electric Minimax DAC Supreme. The weakness of such DACs lies in the inability to maintain a sense of suppleness as the system’s absolute resolution rises. These all were able to render to one degree or another a very “accurate” sounding image of the music. That is, until compared to the Comet. DACs with 32 bit processing had not struck my ear as minced or choppy, but the Comet’s waveform sounds superbly analogue-like. My ears perceive it as being utterly stress-free, organic and complete in a fashion the others cannot achieve.

Is there a limitation to the Exogal Comet’s waveform, a point at which there are added so many highly resolving components in an audio system that it begins to sound insipid, thin or bleached? I never reached such a point. I presented the Comet the most precise, hyper-resolving rig to date incorporating the Signalyst HQPlayer software upconverting 16 bit/44.1 files to 32 bit/6.1MHz (Surprise! The Comet accepts such signals, even though the specs indicate top performance of double DSD!), the silky and powerful Red Dragon S500 amps in Mono mode, and the singularly robust TEO Audio Liquid Cables feeding the Joule White 3. The Comet seemed utterly at home, as even when pushing levels well in excess of 90dB the system simply could not be made to sound harsh. There was so much action in the music, so many subtleties occurring that parsing the sound was much more difficult than normal; the ear simply wanted to hear, not critique the performance. Often, to retreat from analysis to a more relaxed form of listening, I will read while listening. However, this time the inner critic was silenced as I listened.

Conjure One is a musical group which presents a strange blend of ambient electronic backgrounds and pop/Jazz flavored vocals. “I Dream in Color” is an appropriate song to convey sheer vividness of the Comet. Leah Randi sings, “I dream in color; yes I dream in color. When the world’s in black and sepia tone, or in sleepy monochrome, I dream in color.” Just as a daguerreotype image seems to float in space versus sitting upon a surface, so also the images created by the Comet seem to occupy a different plane than those created by revealing, but less well fleshed out DACs. Randi’s voice is heard so intimately, yet so measured, so paced that she seems to be communicating from the realm of dreams.

Yet, the hues and tones of the Comet are anything but monochromatic. Indeed, they seem as vivid as HDTV, and somehow more forgiving. Perhaps a comparison to a Plasma TV is more in order. The last time I checked, Plasma TVs were still available, and some without the special non-glare glass were quite inexpensive. There is rub, however, as any light source would reflect badly off such a TV. The advent of LED TVs with less glaring surfaces meant far more viewing friendly placement options for the home.

The ear gets used to the nature of sound produced by the technology of the day, but when a new technology is heard, the glaring mistakes of the older technology are heard. Similarly, the Exogal Comet is to audio what a fine LED screen is to a Plasma TV. When Kyle Eastwood plays “Cosmo,” his bass seems pure enough, until heard through the Comet. Through the Comet my ear searches the listening room, locating each note, like an astronomy enthusiast viewing a meteor shower. With a DAC like the Exasound e22 or the ifi Micro USB DSD, the task is like viewing the meteor shower while only a few miles outside a major city. One does not realize how much glare there is in the night sky until moving farther out into the country. The Comet nestles me in a remote viewing location, silent and dark, where my ears can be unhindered to catch every last nuance of the shower.

Wide open spaces

The sense of extension of space and the power to fill the space completely with the notes of the music is a hallmark of the Exogal Comet. The public is rapt with awe at images from the Hubble Space telescope, the various gasses identified by their colors. It’s all fake, as the images are colorized, the gasses being invisible out in space. But, which would you rather see, an image of black and white stars, or one with the colorized gas? Of course, we enjoy seeing the invisible elements of the universe displayed before our eyes.

Consider the Comet to be doing audibly for our ears what the colorized images do for our eyes. There are simply “invisible” passages in music, unable to be revealed, until the Comet “colorizes” them. Mind you, this is not a cartoonish rendering, but an honest fleshing out of the music more like the way our ears perceive in live music. My ears enjoy the musical skies filled with more than just data points, the equivalent of stars represented by dots of white. With the comet, I get a palate of hues, the heavens shimmering with iridescent brilliance.

Listening to transients through the Comet is fun, because previously drum thwacks and cymbal strikes, saxophone fingering and piano notes, all had a truncated quality. Again, one does not easily notice this until the disturbance of the air, the diminution of the note as it dies, is brought out by the additional information conveyed by the Comet. Jeff repeatedly stated that the waveform of the Comet does not have sharp edges, the cliff-like digital stops associated with most signal processing today. Rather than shrinking the cliffs and steps, the waveform of the Comet is authentically smooth, like analogue waveforms, and it sounds like it. Instruments, too, sound smooth and extended, as they do when they fill a room with live music.

That is what the Exogal Comet represents for me, a sizable step toward a sensation of living sound, not a reproduced electronic production. Though we still cannot completely capture the nuances of a live performance, the Comet is superb at rendering a sensation good enough to fool the ears. The Comet is my favorite DAC in the under $4K space, and should be heard by anyone seeking a no-compromise digital experience. Especially for those with lesser digital file playback systems, this DAC can save your system, and revolutionize your listening experience. It is the only digital treatment to best the reigning 32 bit high frequency scheme.

The best news is that Exogal has just gotten underway. The Comet blazes a wide and bright path toward future products, and the savvy system builder would do well to own the Comet, and pay close attention to Exogal’s future components.

Associated Components:

Source: Macintosh Mac Mini; Sonos Digital Music System; Musical Fidelity M1CDT Transport

Playback Software: HQPlayer; Amarra 2

NAS: Buffalo Linkstation 500G

DAC:  BMC PureDAC; Eastern Electric Minimax DSD DAC Supreme with Burson, Dexa NewClassD and Sparkos Labs Discrete Opamp Upgrade; ifi Micro USBPower and Micro DAC

Preamp: TEO Audio Liquid Preamplifier; VAC Renaissance Signature Preamplifier MkII; Pass Labs XP-20; Cambridge Audio 840E

Amps: Red Dragon S500; VAC Phi 200; First Watt J2 (two); Wells Audio Innamorata

Integrated Musical Fidelity M6i

Speakers:  Kingsound King III; Legacy Audio DSW Clarity Edition; Kings Audio King Tower omnidirectional; Vapor Audio Nimbus White, Vapor Audio Joule White 3

Subwoofers: Legacy Audio XTREME HD (2)

IC’s: TEO Audio Liquid Cable Splash-Rs and Splash-Rc; Clarity Cable Organic RCA/XLR; Snake River Audio Signature Series Interconnects; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Speaker Cables: TEO  Cable Standard Speaker; Clarity Cable Organic Speaker; Snake River Audio Signature Series Speaker Cables; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Digital Cables: Clarity Cable Organic Digital; Snake River Audio Boomslang; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

USB: Verastarr Nemesis; Clarity Organic

Power Cables: Verastarr Grand Illusion; Clarity Cable Vortex; MIT Oracle ZIII; Xindak PF-Gold; Snake River Audio Signature Series; Silent Source “The Music Reference”

Power Conditioning: Wireworld Matrix Power Cord Extender; Tice Audio Solo