HiFimeDIY Sabre USB DAC 2 vs Epiphany Acoustics E-DAC

[Hypnoboogie]

Hello, I'm new! You'll see just how new I am now… (I'm glad this place looks friendly.)

I, like many people who know nothing, am trying to come to terms with the concept of DACs.

I play mostly MP3s with a bit rate of 320 kbit/s, some FLAC, some MP3s under 320 kbit/s, all with Fidelia player software. I have a computer (an iMac) and a 1970s amp and speakers (Yamaha). I want to find how to connect them for under £100 in the way that gives me the best sound. Please note that I can't build a thing.

I currently use a headphone jack to RCA cable. It seems to me that a headphone output isn't the best step to get to an amp. (I read a review where somebody said the same, that they'd compared a £25 headphone jack to RCA cable with the cheapest one they could get, found no difference and suspected the connection type intrinsically limits the quality.)

I've heard about DACs, which can provide RCA outputs and improve the sound in other ways. (Please note that I have no interest in using a DAC to listen to music on headphones.) The Fiio D3 is currently £30 and has an optical input, which an iMac allows. I've read mixed things about optical inputs, though, and certainly mixed things about the Fiio D3 (genuinely mixed: it's great/you can't take it seriously). The Epiphany Acoustics E-DAC is currently £105 including postage. It's USB powered, though, which I read isn't the best idea. NwAvGuy, the person who helped design the technology on which Epiphany Acoustics bases its E-DAC, wrote this.

People say that the Epiphany Acoustics E-DAC sounds better than the HiFimeDIY Sabre USB. People compare these two not least because they share the same chip. The conclusion is usually that the HiFimeDIY, which is cheaper (it costs £35 including postage), is nearly as good as the E-DAC.

HiFimeDIY sells another DAC, the Sabre USB DAC 2, with RCA output. You can also upgrade to include a TCXO oscillator. I have no idea what a TCXO oscillator is. Google leads me to believe it might keep the DAC cool. The Sabre USB DAC 2 connects with a USB cable, as the name makes pretty plain, but it draws its power externally, which can be a big help with sound quality apparently. You can buy the following from HiFimeDIY: the Sabre USB DAC 2 with TCXO upgrade, USB cable, power supply, power cable. It comes to £85 including postage. The price advantage between this and the E-DAC is less of a consideration than the difference between the other HiFimeDIY DAC and the E-DAC, then.

Is the E-DAC, with its powered USB, the best option?

You'll see the title of this post pits two of the cheaper DACs against each other, and I mention a third (Fiio D3). What I'm ultimately interested in, though, is the best-sounding DAC for a hi-fi that I can get for under £100. It seems likely from what I've read that it might be between the two in the post title, but I'll entertain any idea. When I said hello in the Welcome section and briefly outlined my plan for this post, somebody recommended a Maplin USB DAC.

Does anybody feel strongly that I should spend more and get, say, a Beresford? Or that perhaps I don't need a DAC at all?

Apologies for the stupid length of this post.

(I imagine there's a strong case that the first thing I should do is play more FLAC, that that's the biggest change I could make. My amp and speakers doubtless need a service too.)

[John]

I not done a comparison but the HiFimeDIY Sabre USB DAC 2 is impressive if a bit rough around the edges But using Jplay on River I get some very good sounds from it and can quite happily live with it

[Hypnoboogie]

I'm glad you've said this. The rough-around-the-edges aspect: that impression is part of my worry that the HiFimeDIY might be a bit frontier-like for somebody as hands-off as me. The E-DAC feels like a safer option.

I'm only assuming DACs won't have a compatibility issue with Fidelia.

I keep seeing this letter "J" close to the word "river" with regard to media players. Gonna have a search on this forum, look into it.*A quick Google brings up a player called Audirvana as superior to Fidelia too. Can of wormy worms.

Cheers.

[Hypnoboogie]

OK, a bit more attention brings up what looks like a serious problem with Audirvana: apparently it stops dead when it tries to go from a song at one sample rate to another. That's quite a flaw. Ooh look I've undermined the direction of my own thread three posts in.

[synsei]

I use Foobar2000 to play all my audio files but I should warn you, when I first downloaded it I was a novice with digital audio just like your good self Paul and it took me nearly two weeks, much loss of hair and copious advice and help from the good members on this esteemed forum to prevent me from hoiking my PC and associated digital gubbins out of my third floor window... Beresford DACs punch well above their weight and it should be possible to pick up a used Caiman for around the £100 mark

[Hypnoboogie]

I'll look out for a used Beresford, ta. The other thing that makes life interesting is I have a have a Mac rather than PC, so foobar and JRiver is currently off-limits to me. I'm going through the Mac thread…

[Hypnoboogie]

(I'm auditioning Audirvana. It's early days, it seems a bit too basic in terms of library organisation, but otherwise it seems great. The comments I read - and they were recent comments - about it being unable to switch during playback from a file of one sample rate to another don't seem valid.)

[John]

I had the Caiman in my system it is nice DAC but I would personally prefer the HiFimeDIY Sabre USB DAC 2 The Bushmaster however is a different story
When I am comparing the HiFimeDIY Sabre USB DAC 2 I am comparing it to dacs costing £200 plus. It would prefer it to some of the DACs I heard at this level but lacks the finesse of the really best at this cost. Its a absolute bargain

[Hypnoboogie]

Thanks for clarification. I've had an interesting time looking into this. Quite compelling stuff that an iMac cannot benefit from an external DAC. Stuff about how, even in terms of a DAC giving the option of RCA outputs, that RCA isn't a particularly great way to connect so might as well stick with minijack to RCA (the headphone out on an iMac being "more of a line out" anyway). And what with people swearing that their expensive minijack to RCA cables made zero improvement on their cheap minijack to RCA, all seems to point to me keeping the method of connection that I have. (My speakers have caused nothing but trouble since I got them anyway, so I'd be much better giving them a service: static issues on the one tweeter just developed now!) The media player digression seems more pertinent: if Audirvana Plus continues to perform as it has in this early stage of my tryout, that's where some of my DAC money should go. It sounds better to me than Fidelia. I tried Amarra too actually, but that seemed to sound no better than iTunes. I dunno. Perhaps it's all in my head and there's no difference in audio between any of them, but Fidelia and Audirvana sound different to iTunes and each other. Audirvana has lots of safeguards to help prevent fractional errors, glitches, dropouts, skips, whatever (is this what you people call "jitter"? Yep, I'm an expert), and that certainly does seem to work. Fingers crossed. (My Mac wasn't plagued with these things every minute, but they'd come up.)