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Thread: Your favourite DAC?

  1. #201
    Join Date: Jun 2011

    Location: cardiff

    Posts: 266
    I'm Tristan.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gazjam View Post
    Loving my current dac, a PS Audio Directstream.
    More musical than a very musical thing, its good.

    Free ongoing upgrades to the FPGA code, this one will see me out I think.
    Yes, that one is very well reviewed too and well worth consideration. What does it do better than the Young and by what margin? What is the system that separates the signal from transport to DAC called again and are you using it?

  2. #202
    Join Date: Aug 2009

    Location: Staffordshire, England

    Posts: 37,779
    I'm Martin.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dalek Supreme D L View Post
    Transports and the quality of the digital cable used, can make a massive difference.

    Current DACs in use AMR DP777 and a Veracity Mystra. The Esoteric D5 I consider part of the Esoteric player (P5 Transport) but it is a stand alone in its own right. Only other DACs kicking around, unused at mine, are an MSB Link DAC and a Luxman DA100.
    I agree the transport makes a difference. There's no mystery there. That's why I mentioned it. As for the cable I am sceptical but I'm not totally unconvinced that it matters.
    Current Lash Up:

    TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.

  3. #203
    Join Date: Oct 2008

    Location: Glasgowshire

    Posts: 9,656
    I'm Gary.

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    Quote Originally Posted by clap View Post
    Yes, that one is very well reviewed too and well worth consideration. What does it do better than the Young and by what margin? What is the system that separates the signal from transport to DAC called again and are you using it?
    Was the first Dac I heard Tristan that significantly improved on the Young in all areas.
    Looked at upgrading the Young a couple of.times and nothing was enough of an improvement tbh.

    Had to live on toast n beans for a few months and save up hard to get that improvement I was looking for.
    It did what the Young did.(and I liked) but much more of it, as well as adding much more musicality and a feeling of instruments sounding and 'feeling' real and in the room.

    Timbre, air, texture of different instruments...all that good stuff.
    Never heard anything like it.
    Its different from other dacs in that it converts everything you feed it to 20 x DSD, does its digital magic thru its FPGA then low pass filters it through an output transformer as double rate DSD - so no traditional output stage.

    For reference I'd modded my Young and powered it with a linear power supply, had it up against a Naim Dac (was prepeared to buy one as an upgrade) but didn't feel I was missing anything.
    The Naim dealer was a bit shocked and wanted to put an expensive Naim power supply on it to bring out the best it could do.
    Sorry...no thanks!

    Had been curious about the Drectstream since it first came out because of the DSD thing, but couldn’t afford it at the time.
    Loved my Young, pissed all over the MDac back in the day and was quite happy, until I started going on American hifi forums and got a different perspective.
    Directstream Dac kept coming up...when I read that Mastering Engineers like Steve Hoffman, Gus Skinnas and Kevin Gray had one in their home system I sat up and paid attention.
    Good enough for them...etc...absolutely.

    The Directstream Dac makes the Young sound bit like a toy to be honest, still have mine in the 2nd system and did a comparison recently.
    Think Brian and Grants Chinese valve output stage dac is very good..very musical and the one I'd be going for if starting afresh.

    The connection your thinking of is i2s I think?
    The Directstream has two i2s inputs, will be using one of those when I get the i2s output board for my Oppo 203.
    Last edited by Gazjam; 24-07-2018 at 17:18.
    AC POWER
    Hardwired 10kVA balanced mains powering entire system
    AMPS
    Meridian 557 power Amp (Modded) / PS Audio BHK Preamp (Modded)
    SPEAKERS
    Wharfedale Evo 4.4
    DAC
    PS Audio Directstream (Modded)
    TURNTABLE
    Pro-Ject X8 balanced output via XLR / Ortofon Quintet Blue cartridge
    PHONOSTAGE
    Pro-Ject DS3 B balanced Input (TT and Phonostage powered by Pro-Ject Power box RS2 linear psu)
    DIGITAL
    OPPO 203 (Modded: Linear PSU, i2s output to Dac) - Roon Endpoint, HDMI input used for all things Streaming/ PS5 /AppleTV ... also good for movies apparently?
    MUSIC PLAYBACK
    Tweaked AP-Linux based Roon Server into Oppo 203 as Roon endpoint
    Ipad Roon Remote.
    Apple Music/ YouTube via AppleTV, fed to Dac via Oppo HDMI input/i2s output to Dac.
    SPEAKER CABLES
    Biwired: Duelund DCA10GA (Bass) Duelund DCA16GA (mid & treble) Duelund 12DCA used as jumpers (On
    "Blackcat Cable" Chris Sommivigo's advice - yup, even with biwire it sounds better - and it does)
    INTERCONNECTS
    All Balanced: Ghost+ recording studio XLR cables

  4. #204
    Join Date: Nov 2008

    Location: North Down /Northern Ireland/ UK

    Posts: 19,484
    I'm Neil.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Macca View Post
    I agree the transport makes a difference. There's no mystery there. That's why I mentioned it. As for the cable I am sceptical but I'm not totally unconvinced that it matters.
    I wish everyone who is sceptical, or closed minded about transport importance could have been in my listening room the day I compared an Esoteric P3 to a P5, the P3 destroyed the P5, anyone, and I mean anyone should have been able to hear that, the improvement on inserting the P3 into the disc spinning duty was massive. The elephant in the room though was the ridiculous amount of noise the transport made while spinning SACDs, so loud I decided not to keep it. I just don't understand why very few SACD transports can't spin a disc siliently, particularly considering the cost of many of them.
    Regards Neil

  5. #205
    Join Date: Aug 2009

    Location: Staffordshire, England

    Posts: 37,779
    I'm Martin.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dalek Supreme D L View Post
    I wish everyone who is sceptical, or closed minded about transport importance could have been in my listening room the day I compared an Esoteric P3 to a P5, the P3 destroyed the P5, .
    Anyone sceptical about the transport affecting the sound needs to read up a bit. Doesn't just apply to cd transports, anything feeding a DAC - like a laptop - has the potential to transmit noise along with the 'digital' signal (which although it is 'digital' is still just variations in voltage the same as any analogue signal is).
    Current Lash Up:

    TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.

  6. #206
    Join Date: Oct 2008

    Location: Glasgowshire

    Posts: 9,656
    I'm Gary.

    Default

    Synergy, synergy, synergy...
    AC POWER
    Hardwired 10kVA balanced mains powering entire system
    AMPS
    Meridian 557 power Amp (Modded) / PS Audio BHK Preamp (Modded)
    SPEAKERS
    Wharfedale Evo 4.4
    DAC
    PS Audio Directstream (Modded)
    TURNTABLE
    Pro-Ject X8 balanced output via XLR / Ortofon Quintet Blue cartridge
    PHONOSTAGE
    Pro-Ject DS3 B balanced Input (TT and Phonostage powered by Pro-Ject Power box RS2 linear psu)
    DIGITAL
    OPPO 203 (Modded: Linear PSU, i2s output to Dac) - Roon Endpoint, HDMI input used for all things Streaming/ PS5 /AppleTV ... also good for movies apparently?
    MUSIC PLAYBACK
    Tweaked AP-Linux based Roon Server into Oppo 203 as Roon endpoint
    Ipad Roon Remote.
    Apple Music/ YouTube via AppleTV, fed to Dac via Oppo HDMI input/i2s output to Dac.
    SPEAKER CABLES
    Biwired: Duelund DCA10GA (Bass) Duelund DCA16GA (mid & treble) Duelund 12DCA used as jumpers (On
    "Blackcat Cable" Chris Sommivigo's advice - yup, even with biwire it sounds better - and it does)
    INTERCONNECTS
    All Balanced: Ghost+ recording studio XLR cables

  7. #207
    Join Date: Jun 2015

    Location: London/Durham

    Posts: 6,869
    I'm Lawrence.

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Gazjam View Post
    Synergy, synergy, synergy...
    Exactly what I've been going through. Was very much enjoying my Olive 04 through a Metrum Octave recently, then got a Liv Zen at the same time as my Tri Vista came back from repair and hooked them up (via an m2tech hiFace 1). The sound was broadly similar so I put the 2 dacs on a par with similar sound. A few weeks later decided to go back to the Octave - horrible, flat and lifeless. For a while I thought I had previously overestimated the Octave, so went back to the Tri Vista. The next week changed the source back to the Olive. Sounded brash and harsh. Changed dac to the Octave again and I was back to the lovely sound I remembered. I suspect the Octave likes a good source while the Tri Vista can flatter a poorer one (in terms of the usb/hiface interface).

    Sent from my BLN-L21 using Tapatalk

  8. #208
    Join Date: Jan 2012

    Location: Norfolk

    Posts: 298
    I'm Chris.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Reffc View Post
    There seems to be a plethora of really good DACs around for reasonable cash these days and even the excellent Young DAC seems to be getting pipped to the post by rivals at half the price. Are things really progressing that fast with audibile improvements or do you think that there's other reasons such as a shift in sampling philosophy or the growing fashion for tubed buffer stages (which certainly sound good if well implemented to my ears)?

    What would you offer as the top 5 DACs out there sub £1000 at present and why?

    My list would include the following:

    Musical Fidelity M1;

    Jolida FXII Tube DAC;

    Simaudio Moon 100D;

    Rega DAC;

    Eastern Electric Minimax DAC

    Of that list, the MF DAC is possibly the leanest sounding up top but over-all quite neutral and flexible. The Simaudio seems to have been voiced similar to their other kit, slightly fuller than some in the mids and very smooth, not unlike the Rega in some ways (that seems to have slight emphasis on upper bass/mids) but for me, in my system, it'd have to be the Eastern Electric or the Jolida. DACs in general seem to vary only slightly between manufacturers (as you'd have every right to expect) until something comes along and punches your ears with sheer musicality and involvement with "nothing missing". I'd put the last two in that category. Not tempted to venture into DAC territory yet personally as I like what the droplet CDP does but for the cash, a cheap (DVD) transport and sub £1K DAC just seem to make more sense than a high end CDP these days.
    I recently auditioned the JKenny Ciunas ISO-DAC in my own home- this DAC is superb! The highs are incredible with superb delicate but finely detailed treble and a very expressive midrange - just sheer musicality on a level in digital I have not experienced before! It also flies in the face of those that think "all DACs sound the same" - the sound quality improvements are so apparent you can't help but notice! You've gotta try this and find out for yourself; it is however a USB only DAC - in my case I hooked it up to an AURALiC Mini. Seriously, try it for yourself - if you have a DAC that sounds better - I want to know what it is!!

  9. #209
    Join Date: Apr 2008

    Location: Warrington

    Posts: 3,451
    I'm Neil.

    Default Your favourite DAC?

    Still using my Audial Model S. 5yrs now, it’s just incredibly non-fatiguing and natural, but much more open than usual NOS DACs. It beats my vinyl front end by quite a margin.
    Mana Acoustics Racks / Bright Star IsoNodes Decoupling >> Allo DigiOne Player >> Pedja Rogic's Audial Model S DAC + Pioneer PL-71 turntable / Vista Audio phono-1 mk II / Denon PCL-5 headshell / Reson Reca >> LFD DLS >> LFD PA2M (SE) >> Royd RR3s.

  10. #210
    Join Date: Mar 2014

    Location: KY - Scotland

    Posts: 5,465
    I'm Mike.

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    Quote Originally Posted by loonytunes View Post
    I recently auditioned the JKenny Ciunas ISO-DAC in my own home- this DAC is superb! The highs are incredible with superb delicate but finely detailed treble and a very expressive midrange - just sheer musicality on a level in digital I have not experienced before! It also flies in the face of those that think "all DACs sound the same" - the sound quality improvements are so apparent you can't help but notice! You've gotta try this and find out for yourself; it is however a USB only DAC - in my case I hooked it up to an AURALiC Mini. Seriously, try it for yourself - if you have a DAC that sounds better - I want to know what it is!!
    They’re are on discount just now too, €450 instead of €600

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