Affordable DAC That Doesn't Resample High Rate DSD?

[mehrdad]

On 8/17/2022 at 9:20 AM, Jud said:

Also: iFi Pro iDSD signature - Price over $3200, and it has tubes.  Those are a non-starter for me, because I can tell you for certain that the day we decide to have a bunch of friends over is the day one of those tubes will burn out.

no they are not , you can activate or deactivate tubes in just a few seconds , also it has a player ,preamp , native dsd 1024 playback and dsd upsampling up to 1024.

you can get neo idsd for 800 $ , it doesnt have the tubes ,its not fully balanced nor can upsample or do more than dsd 512 but its cheaper.

go for pro signature.

[mehrdad]

11 hours ago, Jud said:

Wound up buying the iFi NEO Performance Edition. (Performance Edition comes with iFi’s “Purifiers” for SPDIF and USB. The SPDIF Purifier is big and has a separate wall wart - I just didn’t want to fiddle with it. I preferred the ISO Regen to the USB Purifier.)

 

Got in balanced cables today and running the NEO direct to amp. Really enjoying the way the system sounds, very musical and clear. Different tracks sound different, instruments sound like themselves.

 

One caution about a decision by iFi regarding the default configuration for the DAC: It is switchable between fixed (no volume control) and variable (analogue volume control) output. Mine was set to fixed out of the box. Since I’m running direct to the amp, I got full volume on initial hookup, and am lucky I didn’t blow out my speakers and eardrums . So if you're planning on running direct to amp, be sure you switch to variable output first. (The fact that the volume control numbers change does *not* mean the DAC is set to variable output. That’s what fooled me.)

Great! i believe Neo was your best choice, now just try MQA with it, it will blow your mind, Neo is extremely satisfying decoding MQA.