Lite DAC / Audio gd / Others

[infinitydreams]

I've heard great things about the LITE DAC and the Audio gd DACs...has anyone used either?

I believe there are some fairly simply tweaks that can be made to the LITE DAC to further improve it, anyone done this?

Any other recommendations for sub £300 DACs?

[selby]

I tried an epiphany e-dac was £100 and was a big upgrade on no DAC but I don't have much to compare it to, I have also heard of the LITE DAC but didn't have the balls to risk it.

[Puffin]

Are you talking about the LiTe Dac Ah?

If so I have one. I modded this years ago as a result of a loooooong thread on HeadFi. This is a non-oversampling Dac with 8 Dac chips used in parallel. There were some mods which enabled you to add up to 64 Dac chips. I recently reversed the passive mod back to active operation. It's not a bad dac for the money (I paid £100 with postage direct form China - Diyclub.biz )

[infinitydreams]

I'll have another look at the LiTe DAC...concerned that it's rather old now and there's more DAC available for the money.

[hal55]

I've used a Dac60 for quite a few years now (Tungsol tubes) and won't be getting rid of it any time soon. Like it a lot, but no idea how the current LiteDacs sound.

Hal55

[Figlet108]

Hi Andrew,

to help with your DAC research you may be interested in this page if you don't already know it.

[infinitydreams]

€123,500 what the f*ck!

You've just added a serious amount of DACs to research...

[pete_mac]

I've heard great things about the LITE DAC and the Audio gd DACs...has anyone used either?

The LITE DAC AH is not as good as the Valab TDA1543 DACs IMHO - I prefer the sound of the latter if you're keen to go down the NOS 1543 road. The Teradak Cameleon is also quite nice.

I'm a big audio-gd fanboy though, so be warned regarding the content of this thread from hereon!!

I've found all of their DACs to represent excellent value for money at their respective price points.

I've owned several, starting with the NFB-3 with dual Wolfson WM8741 chips, then the DAC19DSP with dual PCM1704UK chips (a REALLY nice upgrade indeed), the Reference 5 with 4 x PCM1704UK chips, dual transformers and a nice heavy chassis, and lastly, a DAC3SE with a retro-fitted DSP1V5 digital filter board (like the DAC19DSP/Reference 5).

The DAC3Se is a beast at around 14kg and features three R-core transfomers (one for the digital stage, and one per analogue channel) and full discrete output stages.

The Reference 5.32 and the NOS1704 are the only sub-$USD1k PCM1704UK DACs in their model range these days, which is a shame as the DAC19DSP was a giant-killer.

On a subjective note, the DAC19DSP reigned supreme amongst a suite of sub $1k DACs (including the Rega DAC) in a comparison that I was involved with a year or two ago, and during a recent comparison, the DAC3SE was in the same league as the Metrum Hex and Aurialic VEGA (without the outright transparency of the Hex and VEGA, but with superb tonality and timbral accuracy. There's something inherently 'right' about audio-gd's PCM1704UK implementation.

That said, NFB1.32 is also a superb ES9018 implementation, and like all of the 'x.32' DACs, features the superb USB32 interface if you are that way inclined.

A pic of the Reference 5 (top) and DAC19DSP (bottom).