Is there any high end DAC that can sound as good as turntable ($10,000 budget for each)

[ecwl]

20 hours ago, quanghuy147 said:

I currently have a DAC and streamer setup which cost about $3000. Recently, I bought a turntable with phono preamp, which cost $600. 

 

I compared the sound by some familiar songs and found that the turntable combo sound 90% detailed as the DAC combo but it is more emotional, involving and better soundstage...

 

I have a friend, ...He also has a Wavelength DAC cost $3000 but he said there was a big gap between his digital and his analog sources. 

 

My question is if there is any higher end DAC and streamer combo  that can beat turntable and phono preamp combo (let's say the budget for each combo is $10,000)?  Or there is always something that is limited only to analog sources like turntables, reel to reel and this makes no DAC can replace them?

It is always hard to know because some people just really like vinyl even when presented with state of the art digital sound which I personally think sounds far superior.

Wavelength DACs were great when they first came out... They might have been one of the first asynchronous USB DACs out there. Not sure how competitive they are nowadays.

I find for people who are looking for digital sound that surpasses their expectations of vinyl, most people are not happy with DAC chip DACs. Some people prefer Chord DACs, others DSD DACs, e.g. PS Audio DirectStream, while many actually prefer ladder DACs such as your Schiit Yggdrasil. It is always difficult to guess what you’re looking for.

It is also difficult to know why you found vinyls being more emotional or with better soundstage. Yggdrasil probably has more low-level signal linearity issues even compared to most ladder DACs which are more prone to this issue so maybe that’s where your soundstage issue comes from. It is possible that if you bypass the Yggdrasil upsampling and use HQPlayer to upsample and noise shape the 384kHz signal into the DAC, you might get the sound you want? Or maybe you’ll be happier with the next-level ladder DAC? Some people prefer ladder DACs with no oversampling (unlike Yggdrasil) and personally I think it’s because non-oversampling filters introduce euphonic harmonic distortions.

But as @seeteeyou said, it is definitely possible that your digital streamer/server power supply is introducing too much noise into your DAC, undermining the performance of your DAC.

Unfortunately, without auditioning a new DAC at your home (or trying those power supplies recommended), it’ll be very difficult for you to know whether you’ll be able to get the sound you’re looking for. But if you’re mostly using Tidal and have a digital setup, I don’t think you should switch to LPs. Best to invest your time and money into digital audio.

The other issue is about bang for the buck. Not sure if you’re a headphone listener or speakers. Simple digital parametric EQ for DSP/room correction all the way to more complicated convolution filters can dramatically improve the speaker sound (which would be much harder to do with vinyl). And the cost for that would be significantly less than thousands of dollars in upgrading to a new DAC. Just something to think about, perhaps