Weiss DAC 202

[alcarp]

A friend loaned me this DAC to try in my system. I wasn't expecting a big improvement over my NAD M51 DAC as I thought my system was somewhat limited by my Rotel RB-1582 amp.

 

I was wrong !!! This DAC was vastly superior to the NAD in every department. It has real presence, more expansive sound stage, is smoother, more musical with no trace of digital harshness in the treble.

 

Its far better than the M51, no doubt, but then it would need to be at a price 5 times that of the M51.

 

The purpose of this post is to ask if anyone has compared this DAC to others in the price range <$10,000? Any weaknesses identified? Compared with the Phasure? ; the Lampi?

[4est]

You might want to demo the Weiss DAC2 then. It has the same digital side with a different output/IV stage. I found the Weiss' digital side as the primary reason why it sounded so, dare I say it, yummy-warm and inviting without being thick and sweet.

[Audio_ELF]

You might want to demo the Weiss DAC2 then. It has the same digital side with a different output/IV stage. I found the Weiss' digital side as the primary reason why it sounded so, dare I say it, yummy-warm and inviting without being thick and sweet.

I thought the DAC2 was completely different from the DAC202.

 

The DAC2 uses a Burr Brown / TI DAC chip where the DAC202 uses an ESS.

 

Eloise

[Matias]

Yes I also believe the DAC202 to be an evolution of DAC2, and also high-end oriented instead of studio oriented.

[Kelly]

I have no doubt that the Weiss bested the NAD and that it likely a much better DAC. But, I am curious, how are you feeding the NAD? Are you using the built in USB? The internal USB interface is poor, and a good external USB-SPDIF converter improves the performance dramatically. (The difference is such that I would not have been satisfied with the M51 using the built-in interface, but I am very happy after finding an external unit that works well.) It might be something to try before chucking the M51.

 

A friend loaned me this DAC to try in my system. I wasn't expecting a big improvement over my NAD M51 DAC as I thought my system was somewhat limited by my Rotel RB-1582 amp.

 

I was wrong !!! This DAC was vastly superior to the NAD in every department. It has real presence, more expansive sound stage, is smoother, more musical with no trace of digital harshness in the treble.

 

Its far better than the M51, no doubt, but then it would need to be at a price 5 times that of the M51.

 

The purpose of this post is to ask if anyone has compared this DAC to others in the price range <$10,000? Any weaknesses identified? Compared with the Phasure? ; the Lampi?

[alcarp]

I'm feeding the NAD with a battery powered Audiophilleo USB/SPDIF converter from a mac running A+ in direct and integer mode.

 

A+ can't run the Weiss in direct & integer mode - Weiss doesn't think its necessary - but the sound quality is way ahead of the NAD. To be fair, the Weiss is a lot more expensive and the NAD is a great value proposition.