Editor's Note: This is the first article in a new series from CA contributor austinpop. I'm sure the anti-pseudonym crowd is already up in arms, but that's OK. I've personally met autinpop on a couple occasions and we've exchanged enough communications that I'm extremely comfortable with his credibility, experience, and knowledge.
I recently had a manufacturer email me to say he couldn't find a single review written by austinpop online and was concerned about credibility. Releasing a product to someone unknown to him could be a recipe for disaster. This was comforting in a way because the manufacturer really cared about who would write the review and wouldn't just supply products to anyone who could type better than a monkey and supply accolades. I told the manufacturer, and will tell the CA Community here, that I stand behind austinpop as a very credible person who will write his unbiased opinion and correspond with the Community in his usual professional fashion.
We may no agree on everything when it comes to audio, but that's part of what makes his new series of articles even better and what makes this hobby so wonderful. Plus, people have to be sick of me by now :~)
Enjoy this introduction from austinpop and the followup coming later this week.
- Chris
My Quest for a New DAC - Introduction to the Series
Earlier this year, Chris and I discussed the possibility of my writing an article (or series of articles) for CA's front page. I told him I wanted to be true to my voice, and write about gear the way I did in my forum posts: in the context of my own audio journey. To my surprise, he agreed! He also said it would pay handsomely, enabling me, and several future generations, never to work again. Ok - that second part never happened.
While I've been active on CA forums for a couple of years, most CA'ers probably don't know my background. I'm your classic computer technologist, with a long career as a software architect and senior executive in the computer industry. My area of expertise is the performance and scalability of distributed computing systems, so tuning and optimization is in my blood. Despite my techie background, my approach to music and audio is subjective. My goal is to enjoy music in the deepest and most satisfying way I can afford. I trust my ears, and they are always the final arbiter in my decisions.
If you've seen my posts here on CA, especially in the monster A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming thread, you know I've been spending a lot of time, effort, and money on optimizing the digital chain upstream of the DAC. If you'd asked me 2 years ago what the most important piece of digital gear in my audio chain was, I would have said - the DAC. What I wouldn't have said - since I had no idea - was that the chain leading up to the DAC matters too. Profoundly.
My Gear
For many years, my audio setup languished, as the demands of my career and raising my kids took up most of my time. A couple years ago, I became an empty nester, and made a career change to part-time consultant. This finally gave me the time to refresh and enjoy my audio setup. I wanted to build a high-end headphone setup - my home situation doesn't allow me the luxury of a speaker-based setup that I can drive to realistic levels. I started with the following system:
- all my music on a Synology NAS, running minimServer as the UPnP server
- Auralic Aries Mini streamer, as UPnP renderer, over USB to
- Ayre Codex DAC
- Cavalli Liquid Gold headphone amp
- Sennheiser HD800 headphones, with Super Dupont (SD) mod
Of course, this system took several steps to assemble in its own right, but followed what I would term a conventional path - of selecting or upgrading transducers, amplification, and the source (DAC). As far as I was concerned, the NAS, the network gear, and the streamer provided enablement, with no audio impact or consequence. After all, with a PhD in computer networking, I thought I knew a thing or two about CSMA/CD, TCP/IP, sliding windows, flow control, the lot. Bits were bits, after all. 
Fast forward to today, and the conventional part of my system has not changed, from the DAC downstream. I still have the Codex, the Cavalli and the HD800 (now joined by an Audioquest Nighthawk). But upstream of the DAC, there have been major change. Here is a picture of my current system.
How I upgrade - where should I spend my next $?
If you stare at this chain long enough, and start adding price tags, you'll see the upstream components dwarf the DAC itself in cost - in MSRP terms, by a factor of 5x or more. What madness is this?! Yet I can honestly say that I got to this point by asking myself at each point of upgrade: where should I spend my next $? And time after time, I found that the biggest sonic bang for buck came from upstream changes. Not only that, with every increase in refinement, my trusty little Codex scaled right up. Every sonic upgrade was truthfully reflected by the little guy.
In fact, with a recent major upgrade - the addition of the Innuos Zenith SE server - I wrote in my CA review:
It occurred to me that with the loaner (Ayre) QX-5 sitting in my room, I actually had the makings of a very interesting experiment - i.e, compare these two (approaches):
- Upgrade the DAC: replace the Codex with the QX-5 in my current chain
- Upgrade the music player: replace my current chain with the SE chain in finding 1, keeping my Codex DAC
Cost wise, these are in the same ballpark, depending on whether you factor in retail vs. used cost, and the resale value of superseded gear. Not perfect, but an interesting comparison.... Upgrading to the SE chain yielded more bang for the buck - to my ears - than upgrading the DAC. Now of course, upgrading both was to be transported to a divine plane, where you recline on a cloud, caressed by sunbeams, while angels sing.
With my current system, I am well and truly in the realm of diminishing returns in my upstream chain, so I am finally at the point where the answer to "where should I spend my next upgrade $" is resoundingly: the DAC. Which brings me - about time, they groan! - to the point of this article series. What DAC is a worthy successor to my beloved Codex, in my system?
Picking my next DAC
In my experience, modern DACs almost universally sound good. Very good. I have personally heard great sonics all the way from a $99 Audioquest Dragonfly Black to a $13k Chord DAVE in my system. As I evaluate DACs in this series, the question will not be whether they sound good or bad, but whether they speak to my soul. My focus will be on synergy - with my system, my ears, and my preferences.
If there's one DAC that I consider my reference, it would be the Ayre QX-5 Twenty. I've had it on loan from my friendly dealer a couple of times, and with it, my system really sings. It elevates everything I love about the Codex to a new level of refinement and physical authority. At its $9k price point, it's just too rich for my blood, but it sets a bar against which to gauge other DACs I evaluate.
So what am I looking for in my next DAC? First and foremost, a significant improvement in sound quality, within about a $5k price budget. Next up, I'm interested to include DACs with full MQA decoding in my evaluations. I know MQA is a format that engenders strong feelings in audiophiles, across the spectrum from hyperbole to paranoia. My question is simply this - how does it sound? And to determine that, I need to hear a full MQA DAC in my system. The other question is: how important is MQA to me? Everyone has different musical tastes and habits. Some people amass vast libraries of music they own, while others rely almost exclusively on streaming from Tidal and Qobuz, etc. I wanted to explore Tidal for MQA content, and gauge not only how it sounds, but how much content is really out there.
My Musical Tastes and Habits
I listen predominantly to classical music, mostly orchestral and choral. Beyond that, I dabble in progressive and classic rock from the 60s and 70s, jazz, and Indian classical music. When it comes to formats, I may be atypical. While about 70% of my collection is redbook CD, in terms of what I actually listen to day to day, high-resolution formats predominate: DSD, various 24-bit PCM formats, followed by 16/44.1. This may be easier to understand when you consider that in classical music, SACD, i.e. DSD, is alive and well. I have 300+ SACDs in my collection, which have been ripped to DSF files - and my collection size is probably on the smaller end of the spectrum for classical fans.
What this means is that DSD and 24-bit PCM performance are both equally important to me.
Without further ado...
With that background, let's dive in. In the first installment, I evaluate the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+, along with the Uptone Audio JS-2 power supply.
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