DAC shopping thoughts

[nihilist]

Firedog I was on a similar path not long ago. I bought a Hugo tt after comparing against an invicta mirus pro. The two were very close and could of happily lived with either one. Overall it came down to the chord sounding more natural to my ears. My source is a microrendu and I run the Hugo tt straight into my amp. I think the digital volume control on the Hugo tt is awesome. It bested my Wyred 4 sound stp se preamp. The Hugo tt will be a dac I will live with for along time. I seem to forgot about the gear and just listen to music!

 

 

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[bmoura]

For comparison, I'm going to look at the Simaudio 280 and 380, and the dealer doesn't stock the 380. But he told me he'd order it for me at about a 20% discount if I order it unheard from him (and I can audition it when I travel abroad this winter). That's at least someone who understands something about customer service and who I'd feel comfortable working with.

The SimAudio DACs are worth listening to. I'm surprised they haven't received more attention in the market. I was certainly impressed by their top-of-the-line Sim Audio 780D DAC at RMAF 2016 last month.

 

"At RMAF 2016, Sim Audio highlighted their top of the line Evolution 780D DAC and streamer ($15,000) in a system that included Simaudio's Evolution 700i integrated amp ($14,000) and B&W's Diamond Series 802 D3 speakers ($22,000). Simaudio was demonstrating the system with tracks from Shelby Lynne's Dusty Springfield tribute album Just A Little Lovin' using the analog to DSD64 download from Acoustic Sounds. The tracks "Just A Little Lovin'" and "Anyone Who Had a Heart" sounded excellent with plenty of detail and wonderfully reproduced female vocals. This is a system you could easily listen to for hours as your favorite music played. Well done."

 

 

Discoveries at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2016 - Positive Feedback

[bmoura]

Wait... Tidal is going to stream MQA next year? I missed that one, can you elaborate?

Time will tell. I remember speculation that said 2016 would be the year that Tidal used MQA to stream music. Apparently not...

[manuka]

Hello folks I am new. Don't know where you are based Firedog, but Veracity Chrysalis Dac is the touchstone for me now, after some searching. I am a visual artist, inspired by music. The sound from Chrysalis Dac is simply beautiful, revealing, natural, rich. For me it's like opening a window and being surprised by real fresh air instead of just looking through glass; you are there;suddenly feels like reality. It was the source of the sound for Room 711 at the NYAS last week. That room according to a few, including Ken Micallef from Stereophile, had the best sound in show. :NYAS 2016: Ken's Saturday on Central Park South | Stereophile.com. It retails at $7100. There's also Veracity Mystra Dac which retails at $4179. Some interesting reviews from customers as well as official: https://veracityaudio.com/pages/what-people-have-said-about-gregors-dac

[mav52]

Hello folks I am new. Don't know where you are based Firedog, but Veracity Chrysalis Dac is the touchstone for me now, after some searching. I am a visual artist, inspired by music. The sound from Chrysalis Dac is simply beautiful, revealing, natural, rich. For me it's like opening a window and being surprised by real fresh air instead of just looking through glass; you are there;suddenly feels like reality. It was the source of the sound for Room 711 at the NYAS last week. That room according to a few, including Ken Micallef from Stereophile, had the best sound in show. :NYAS 2016: Ken's Saturday on Central Park South | Stereophile.com. It retails at $7100. There's also Veracity Mystra Dac which retails at $4179. Some interesting reviews from customers as well as official: https://veracityaudio.com/pages/what-people-have-said-about-gregors-dac

 

I wonder if there is a distributor in the US for the Veracity Chrysalis Dac ? looks interesting

[bmoura]

Hello folks I am new. Don't know where you are based Firedog, but Veracity Chrysalis Dac is the touchstone for me now, after some searching. I am a visual artist, inspired by music.

If you like the Veracity DACs, you will want to have a listen to the Lampizator DACs as well. Both DAC families are tube based and bring that sound to the table.

[manuka]

I am sure many hold them dear. And I have heard them and many others. I have listened and searched. For me the Veracity Chrysalis Dac is the best I've ever heard. The interior and exterior is beautiful too. But mostly I just forget all about it and just lose myself in the music.

[barrows]

What Jud is referring to is this: All DACs are actually made of two parts, one is the upsampling/digital filter part and the other is the true DAC part. So our CD 16-bit 44.1kHz get upsampled, filtered and converted to say 2.8MHz 5-bit in a dCS DAC, 5.6MHz 1-bit in a PS Audio Directstream DAC, to sort of 8-bit 10MHz for your Mytek Sabre DAC chip or to 352kHz 24-bit? in a Schiit Yggradasil. And then the DAC portion, be it DSD, multibit SDM DAC chip or R2R component takes over.

Lately, there has been more emphasis on the digital filter/upsampling. Chord's Rob Watts and HQPlayer's Miska has been saying that they feel the lack of computing resources to perform the upsampling is a major reason why DACs are underperforming sonically. Others are designing alternating digital filters that still doesn't require a lot of computing resources (such as the apodising filters in Meridien and lots of other DAC designs now).

So what Jud is saying is that Miska's HQPlayer's philosophy is to not do the upsampling within the DAC unit itself but let the computer run HQPlayer to do the upsampling from 44.1kHz 16-bit to 1xDSD/2xDSD/4xDSD or even 8xDSD and then you can just send the data out to a very simple DSD DAC at a very low cost and get much better sound than buying an expensive DAC with its internal upsampling/digital filter and DAC component which may be more compromised. So buying an iDSD Pro or micro-iDSD is not a compromise or a downgrade because you would upgrade your computing side with HQPlayer and maybe a new desktop with powerful GPU+CPU to upsample to 8xDSD to feed the iDSD. The purpose is to mimick what you would get if you have say a Chord DACs with its more powerful FPGA for upsampling.

 

Unfortunately, moving the oversampling/filtering to a computer does not actually produce the cost benefits to the DAC which you are claiming. The oversampling and filtering portion of a DAC, even if one is using a really nice FPGA, does not cost a lot of money in hardware terms. What costs money in DAC hardware is how well implemented the power supplies and I/V (or analog output stage) are. So while it might be nice to think we can save lots of money on a "simple" DAC, which may need to "only" low pass filter a high rate single bit data stream, the reality is that this "simple" DAC still needs SOTA power supplies and analog output stage to perform at a really high level, and these elements are expensive to do well.

Now in no case am I saying anything bad about this approach, I am just pointing out that it does not really save any real cost.

[Ralf11]

if the power supply and analog output stage are the expensive part, then why are they so costly?

 

we aren't dealing with a lot of power, and the designs should be pretty well worked out by now...

[barrows]

if the power supply and analog output stage are the expensive part, then why are they so costly?

 

we aren't dealing with a lot of power, and the designs should be pretty well worked out by now...

 

They require expensive parts, and lots of them. Multiple transformers for well done designs, and many separate isolated power supplies are required to make a really good DAC. Good voltage regulators are required, and many of them, and good voltage regulators need to be incorporated into circuit designs with good capacitors as well, all these parts add up. Quantity of power is not the problem, it is the number of separate supplies required to keep noise to a minimum. Digital circuitry requires very low noise supplies to perform its best as well, and low noise supplies are not simple.

[YashN]

If you like the Veracity DACs, you will want to have a listen to the Lampizator DACs as well. Both DAC families are tube based and bring that sound to the table.

 

And both Gregor and Lukasz pay great attention to detail when implementing.

 

BTW, I find it a bit hard to refer to a single Lampi as the product offering is so varied it's easy to get lost in the catalogue.

 

What's Lukasz's most affordable chip-less DSD DAC today?

[matt68]

Hi folks, I was alerted to this thread & as one of the lucky ones who were at a UK show run by a forum here, HiFi Wigwam, where the Veracity DAC was the outright star of the show, if I may offer my opinion (no connection to Veracity, and sadly I can't actually afford one lol).....but this DAC is one deeply remarkable device. There were many excellent systems to hear that day, and as a Vinyl & Valve amp merchant I went along fully expecting a system featuring both to be my "sound of the show".

 

One wonderful hour listening to the Veracity DAC showed me otherwise, and there were some incredible vinyl rigs present! It simply makes you forget there's a format behind the music, you just immerse yourself in the music itself. During the hour we heard a range of music, I forget the classical piece, but my own request was Nick Cave & PJ Harvey's duet "Henry Lee", I have the vinyl, and this trounced that hand's down, the hair's stood up! Next up was the whole of DSOTM, an album that 5 years in a boarding school in the eighties had pretty much killed for me..... sounding like I've never heard it before. The perfect delineation in space of each part & player, the sheer level of both detail & the overall picture (the money pouring from speaker to speaker effect was simply astounding!), was breathtaking, and even more so if you remember this is under show conditions, strange room etc. The vocal on Breathe was a stand out, perfectly placed slightly to the foreground of the music, just where I suspect the engineer wanted it!

 

I can't compare it to a bunch of high end DAC's, but I can compare to a Weiss DAC-202 & my current DAC, the in built one in my Lygndorf TDAI 2170, and compared to these, it should be on an audition list if you can, it sounds like no other digital replay I've ever heard, it simply sounds like music, and incredibly beautiful music at that

[semente]

Hi folks, I was alerted to this thread

Hi matt,

 

Welcome to CA; could you explain what you mean by "alerted"?

 

R

[Astralark]

Dave do PCM better than Merlot，Merlot do DSD better than Dave，Merlot is cheaper. And both is designed for PCHiFi and have great headphone output.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

[matt68]

Hi matt,

 

Welcome to CA; could you explain what you mean by "alerted"?

 

R

 

Hi, yes sure, there was a group of about 30 of us in that room at the Scalford show, several of us RL friends, and between the 'wam forum & Facebook several of us have stayed in touch, and tried to follow the progress of a DAC that I suspect none of us had even heard off before our encounter there. I hoped adding some real world experience of a product which likewise most of you haven't directly encountered might be helpful, rarely have I seen such a collective shared reaction to a piece as I saw that afternoon

 

All the best

Matt

 

ps, after doing a quick search for Lyngdorf here I'm delighted to find another forum where my beloved amp actually gets a few mentions, off to do some reading now

[firedog]

And both Gregor and Lukasz pay great attention to detail when implementing.

 

BTW, I find it a bit hard to refer to a single Lampi as the product offering is so varied it's easy to get lost in the catalogue.

 

What's Lukasz's most affordable chip-less DSD DAC today?

 

I believe it is the 1800 Euro "Euforia" which is DSD only. He also makes a chipless model called "Atlantic" which employs R2R tech for PCM and also plays back DSD chipless. Costs abouit 4K Euro in basic form.

[YashN]

I believe it is the 1800 Euro "Euforia" which is DSD only. He also makes a chipless model called "Atlantic" which employs R2R tech for PCM and also plays back DSD chipless. Costs abouit 4K Euro in basic form.

Thanks, looks like the Euforia is a great entry point for a chip-less DSD and Tube DAC.

[ElviaCaprice]

I guess if you have the MicroRendu (as Firedog has) you would not need the Intona, right ?

 

As I understand Vbus from the MicroRendu done by the LPS-1 vs separately supply the same 5 Volt direct from a separate LPS-1 will not make any difference.

 

You either have a Vbus DAC, or a DAC with separate PS. Either DC in the range 7 to 12 Volt, or AC.

 

So you probably are saying, do not chose a Vbus DAC ?

I would agree, if you have a MicroRendu, I would hope you won't need an Intona on the USB side downstream. Would be kind of backwards having the Intona after the MicroRendu. I cringe when I see folks doing this in their system. If it was me I would eliminate the MicroRendu and use the Intona/Regen after the CAPS via USB only. More options for playback software and formats/video.

Yes, a DAC that does not require 5Vbus would be best but yet capable of being powered by a LPS-1.

[ElviaCaprice]

Thanks, looks like the Euforia is a great entry point for a chip-less DSD and Tube DAC.

 

Only problem is that is only does up to DSD 128. Looks like it's future proof to DSD 512, but when?