October 2025
Most people, I imagine, have looked skyward and wondered about our solar system and beyond. For soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, what’s out there has been a lifelong source of fascination and musical inspiration. The 70-year-old Boston native has not just been pondering the planets and stars; she has also been drawing inspiration from them to fuel her art. Bloom’s passion for the celestial has been recognized and rewarded: she took part in NASA’s art program and even had an asteroid named after her.
The emergence of the soprano saxophone as the lead instrument in jazz is credited to New Orleans legend Sidney Bechet. The instrument’s later development in the genre was greatly influenced by the works of John Coltrane, who began using it extensively in the early ’60s, and Steve Lacy, who memorably brought it to the music of pianists Cecil Taylor and Thelonious Monk. Bloom’s work, beginning with her 1978 recording debut We Are, has established her as the fourth key musician in the evolution of the soprano sax in jazz. Her music swoops dramatically, spins gracefully, and leaps effortlessly, delighting the ear with its distinctive style and sound. Several of Bloom’s albums feature cover art that beautifully complements that unique sound. Her 2007 release Mental Weather accomplishes this particularly well. Her 2003 album Chasing Paint features one of my favorite Jackson Pollock works where skeins of paint flow horizontally across the cover.
The cover art is about the only thing that disappoints in Bloom’s latest recording, Songs in Space (Outline Records OTL 146). This album was recorded at the Clive Davis Institute in Brooklyn, NY, by renowned engineer Jim Anderson, who has worked with Bloom on several previous recordings. It is available in high-definition stereo, 5.1-channel surround, and 5.1.4 audio in a variety of formats. I evaluated the stereo 24-bit/88.2kHz WAV version. The full recording details can be found on the album page on NativeDSD’s website, as can a pithy, spot-on evaluation: “audio science and improvisational art collaborate to make this recording a one-of-a-kind musical experience.”
I believe Anderson and Bloom would have approved of my including the Volumio Preciso DAC (US$899, £699, €799, including shipping, duties, and sales taxes) in the system I used to listen to their work, which also included the Focal Alpha 50 EVO studio monitors (which I reviewed in October 2021).
Measuring 10.6″W × 2″H × 5.9″D and weighing just under 5 pounds, the low-profile Preciso is wrapped in brushed aluminum and would not appear out of place in the instrument panel of a spacecraft. I loved how it looked among my other components.
The front panel is spare: a central display (a low-resolution dot-matrix display that, to me, jars with the sleek aesthetic of the design) and two flanking push knobs. The left knob lets you cycle through input sources as well as to select and adjust various settings and apply one of eight digital filters with different degrees of rolloff. The right knob turns the device on if it’s off and then toggles between the on and standby power states (a long press turns the device off). It also adjusts the volume in increments of 0.5dB over a 99dB range.
The Preciso doesn’t come with a remote control, but an optional remote is available from Volumio (US$49, £34, €39).
No bones to pick with the rear panel. It provides both balanced (XLR) and unbalanced (RCA) analog outputs and four digital inputs: coaxial (RCA) and optical (TosLink) S/PDIF, USB, and I2S digital over HDMI. The S/PDIF inputs accept PCM streams of up to 24/192. The USB and I2S inputs accept PCM up to 32/768 as well as DSD512 (native) or DSD256 (via DoP). Also on the back are 3.5mm jacks for 12V trigger input and output and a 5V/2A DC jack.
Inside, the Preciso employs two discrete Sabre ESS ES9039Q2M DAC chips, driven by a single MEMS clock capable of providing “impeccable timing of coherence,” according to Volumio. A built-in dual power supply with independent power regulation for the analog and digital paths “reduces interference, lowers the noise floor, and enhances dynamic range,” the company claims. The specified THD+N is −122.5dB.
As Bloom’s music and Anderson’s sound transported me to realms far and away, I wondered what other sonic marvels awaited me with the Preciso.
In addition to five user-selectable digital filters, the Preciso has a non-oversampling (NOS) mode, which disables resampling. Testing playback with different digital filters, I was unable to discern any difference, which led me to question whether this function had been implemented on my review sample. I returned to the default minimum-phase filter and took off to explore Songs in Space, a collection of four duets with pianist Dominic Fallacaro, a frequent bandmate, and seven trios featuring bassist Mark Helias and drummer Bobby Previte, two of Bloom’s favorite collaborators.
The album opens with a duet, “Better Starlight,” showcasing Bloom’s sax as it pans across the stage to good effect and leaps spectacularly in a grand display of musical range. In “I Could Have Danced All Night,” a deeply contemplative rendition of Frederick Loewe’s beautiful melody, Bloom’s sax glides gracefully over Fallacaro’s agile piano foundation.
In the closing track, the wistful “My Foolish Heart,” Bloom and Fallacro embrace Victor Young’s romantic tune, transforming it into a musical expression of the endless wonder experienced when gazing out into space with an open heart and mind.
The trio pieces are likewise skyward-looking, reflecting the vast, open, soundless space through prolonged silences that intersperse musical statements and improvisational flights. On three central pieces—“Escape Velocity,” “Song from Stars,” and “Current Events”—Helias takes the pilot’s seat, and the spotlight, with his extraordinary purity of tone, particularly evident during his arco passages in the last of the three songs.
Songs in Space, with its disparate musical temperaments—from the spare simplicity of the tuneful “I Could Have Danced All Night” to the improvisational fluidity of the tone-stretched “Escape Velocity”—proved to be an ideal union of contemporary music and modern recording technology for testing the limits of my system, as it would indeed test any other.
I still wanted to find out how the Preciso compares to other DACs I’m familiar with, especially the iFi Audio Zen DAC V2, which I use daily, and the Ferrum Audio Wandla DAC, which I reviewed in April 2024. Priced at US$199 and US$2795, respectively, these DACs cost $700 less and nearly $2000 more than the Preciso, a wide price spread that makes one wonder how the three differ from one another.
I found that while differences in features and finish between these DACs do exist and are apparent, the difference in sound, at least to my ears, does not reflect the price disparity. Prospective DAC buyers typically base their purchasing decision on a careful evaluation of features available in relation to cost. In this respect, the Preciso is a standout. It punches well above its cost.
. . . James Hale
jamesh@soundstagenetwork.com
