Advice on DAC upgrade

[buonassi]

On 6/27/2018 at 3:04 PM, Dr Tone said:

Don't decide what DAC to buy by it's measurements alone.

 

Wise words.....   

[buonassi]

Greg, there's this phenomenon that many of us have experienced:  You think you know what you want (warm, relaxed, soft, analytic, energetic, forward, ect) until you hear a DAC in your chain that is the opposite.  Lo and behold, you thought you wanted XYZ, but you really like ABC.

 

As much good advice as I received on this site, I ultimately had to try for myself to discover what I liked the best.  It's a fun exercise/journey actually, and can be done for pretty cheap if you buy used and resell.  Or buy something not terribly expensive and new, then resell.  I did both!

 

This requires that you are familiar with how to list and sell equipment.  I've had great luck on head-fi.org.  You wouldn't believe how big DACs are in the headphone world and they are traded/sold constantly.  Everything from a Topping D30 to a Metrum Pavane or Holo Spring Level 3 can be had there.  Getting set up in the buy/sell world of used equipment is VERY easy.  Monitoring the listings now, is another thing.  You have to act fast sometimes.  I have some tips for this as well. 

 

Using paypal to send money for "goods and services" covers you as a buyer.  So the risks are low that you get ripped off.  Also there are feedback blurbs about sellers on these types of sites so you can transact with more confidence. 

 

This was the route I took - Audiogon and of course Superphonica are also other great places to buy (or sell) a DAC.  

 

 

[buonassi]

9 hours ago, Nordkapp said:

Metrum Audio makes nice sounding R2R DACS in your price range

 

a solid rec!  I'm still elated with my Amethyst.  But they are exclusively NOS (not that it's a bad thing - I'm definitely in the NOS camp now).  Relaxed and less etched without fatigue, while retaining excellent clarity and detail.  Sort of warm in that sense, sure.

[buonassi]

SBAF also likes the Airist DAC that's on massdrop.  

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-airist-audio-r-2r-dac

 

A bit more than the modi multibit (Schiit) - and that says a lot given they are definitely Schiit lovers there.  

 

8 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

SBAF is mostly a Schiit fan club.

 

As much as I didn't want to believe it - I can't deny it.  I'm a "Rando" over there, just joined.  Will probably get banned for this post!   

[buonassi]

50 minutes ago, Richard Dale said:

I'm not sure the audio science review links above are much use in choosing a DAC as they are just a bunch of measurements, with no description of what the DACs sound like as far as I can see.

 

ASR lost me with their entire focus on oscilloscope measurements being the king-maker.  Measurements done this way cannot measure music, which is what a DAC's end goal is.  They measure perfect sine waves, square waves, etc (far from music) because they are known baselines.  With something like DiffMaker you can measure real music, but you have to have a baseline music passage done on a baseline/benchmarked DAC to compare it to others.  But those types of measurements at least pique my interest a bit.  

 

The entire attitude of that site is that everyone should be happy with a topping D30, because that's where measurements top out (and any further improvement from there can't be audible), so that must be the best sound possible.  Even common sense tells you this can't be true.  If there wasn't a real difference in sound with more expensive DACs, there wouldn't be a market for them.

 

The SMSL M8 measured outstanding on ASR.  And it sounds good - I own one.  Fine.  But it doesn't sound right to me.  Too much detail hurled at you with an overly holographic stage.  It's like someone took the "sharpness" on a TV setting and cranked it up to 11.  Sure, things popped, but it didn't sound natural. How do you measure 'natural sounding' with an oscilloscope? 

 

[buonassi]

3 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

If find the Yaggi to be an enigma.  It measures poorly, but gets glowing reviews from paid reviewers.

 

....and non-paid reviewers.

 

sometimes there's just not one explainable reason - usually a confluence of factors and an 'aligning of the stars' that makes something pleasing to so many people.  Take for example campfire audio Andromeda - it just hits everything and is appealing to so many people.  Even its creator, Ken Ball, is having a hard time topping that achievement - which came out years ago.  

 

I think yggy is one of those products.  If it measures with "some" distortion in the frequency domain, but blows away other DACs in the time domain (which there aren't sufficient measurement techniques for IMO) then that may be another reason.  Just an example, not saying that I know what it's time domain performance is (haven't critically listened to yggy, only very briefly at meet).

 

I genuinely feel that hardcore objectivists are missing out on the best possible experience because they've pigeonholed themselves with (again IMO) insufficient measurements. After all... this is (or should be) all about the music - not all about oscilloscope performance.  If both camps would have an open mind, the community would be better served.  

 

 

[buonassi]

On 7/5/2018 at 7:55 PM, Ron Scubadiver said:

Why not an ifi idac2 micro

 

indeed, why not?  I was very happy with it and still think it's a great DAC.  You can upsample to DSD if you so desire.  You can switch to 'bit perfect' mode, which really is a bad label for an NOS setting, plus you have 2 other settings for playback filters.  It's versatile and really does lots of things right.  

 

the only reason to avoid this is if you want to use coax input.