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Battle of the Entry Level DACs escalates
bigbob posted a topic in DAC - Digital to Analog Conversion
Testing, Comparing, Listening, and analysis of the results-- It is the lifeblood of this hobby called Audiophilia. We here at Computer Audiophile on the Cheap are looking for the BEST combination of entry-level DACs, with Vintage Electronics, at a reasonable price point. Our first foray into Hi-Res Audio was an Audioquest Dragonfly v1.2, which I bought for $79 on closeout at Best Buy. The first unit was defective, as it was wanting to shut down after precisely 20 seconds of music. AQ replaced that unit, and it worked well. But, in the interim, I found the Schiit Modi 2 priced at $99. I contacted iFi about doing a test against their iFi iDSD nano LE, which retails for $129. By this test, I realized that the center of any Computer Audiophile system was the external DAC. Afterall, it was the one thing in the replay path, which would have the most impact on SQ--whether compared to an onboard chip DAC in the laptop or a soundcard in your desktop computer. Amplifiers, speakers, and interconnects are all a variable factor, but if the zeros and ones are not turned into an analog signal properly--everything else becomes secondary. My attention turned to what the DAC was doing with the same set of digital data--whether from a 24-192 HDTracks file or a low-res MP3 lossy recording. I determined that while all digital files are binary, the analog interpretation of those files varied greatly. In the head to head comparison, I liked the 'musicality' of the Schiit Modi 2 over the iFi nano LE. I determined that the headphone amplifier stage in the nano was making the sound 'different'. In audiophile listening, different can be better, or it can be worse. Or it can just be different, without it being better or worse. The Schiit sounded better, but I did like the Burr-Brown chipset in the iFi. I hoped that iFi had a DAC, which was not also a headphone amplifier, which also deployed the Burr-Brown chipset. If you threw in the Active Noise Cancellation, which came from the iFi iPurifier2, that would be a dynamite DAC. And the iFi iOne did all that plus has native Bluetooth connectivity. To my ears, comparing the iFi iOne to the Modi 2 was apples and oranges. I still use the Modi 2, with iPurifier2, and I am listening to the iOne right now. The iOne is $199, the Modi 2 is still $99, but the iPurifier2 costs $109--so price wise they are in the same ballpark. My next challenge came from reading about the top-of-the-line Schiit Yggdrasil, which at $2399 was not on anyone's "on the Cheap" list. A fellow CA reader suggested the Modi Multibit (Mimby) which he said compared favorably with the Bifrost Multibit (Bimby). OK, let's through that into the mix. Jason Stoddard, co-founder of Schiit, threw some further light on the subject: "...but one comment: our stuff is true multibit, not some 2-5 bit delta-sigma implementation pawned off as "multibit." If we used that terminology, you could call Modi 2 and Modi 2 Uber "multibit," since they are technically multibit delta-sigma designs. But so is literally everything else out there. Bottom line, if it's not 16 or more bits, it's not truly multibit. In addition, all of our true multibit products--from Modi Multibit on up--also use unique medical/military grade D/A converters (find any other DAC using the Analog Devices AD5547...there are none) and also use our own proprietary, unique time- and frequency-domain optimized digital filter, implemented in an Analog Devices SHARC DSP, not the embedded digital filter in a delta-sigma DAC, so they are really very different than anything else out there." The "Mimby" comes in at $249--still very reasonable for a CAOTC system, if we agree that the external DAC is the key to a good sounding system. The challenge is to pair it with a RasPi server, a refurbished amplifier or receiver, and some reasonably priced speakers for around $500. I think we can do that.- 61 replies
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