What's Your Dac?

[struth]

Diversity is still strong. Not many doubles, and some very smart equipment

[struth]

Ran an M2Tech Young for a few years after moving from a Rega and various Beresfords.
Both great dacs, the modded Young bettered the Naim dac to my ears when I did a direct comparison.
Both It and the Beresford responded well to modding and improving the power supply.

Currently enjoying my PS Audio Directstream dac.
Free firmware upgrades of its FPGA, like a better dac for free every year or so.
Has the Bridge II network streamer card, so acts as a Roon endpoint, does Spotify connect, Tidal and Qobuz.

Very unique technology wise in the way it goes about things.
It sounds different...just music playing in the room.
Responds really well to good cables too, particularly balanced into its matching preamp.

I2s into it from the Oppo sounds terrific, great for both music n movies.
Better sounding than Ethernet directly into the Directstream in fact.
Happy with my modded Oppo as transport for all things digital, until PS Audio release their Octave Server.

2nd System I use the Logitech Trnsporter playing my Roon library, great dac in that an AKM AK4396 multi-bit Sigma-Delta chipset. Proper attention paid to galvanic isolation, quality of power supply all that good stuff.
Way better than a Touch, ran both for a few years.
Sounds great.


Never got on with Sabre Dacs, found them edgy and unenjoyable, one of the JKenny ones I heard I think?

i saw a used Nu Wave dac of theres. looks nice

[mikmas]

..... What Dac do you use and how high do you rate it

Currently using a Focusrite Saffire mixer - originally bought to transfer vinyl to digital via the inbuilt ADC but lately find the DAC section as good to my ears as my Quad Vena (and the Audiolab Q-Dac that the Vena replaced)
The various in/out mixer options on the Focusrite also give me a versatility I haven't encountered in other set ups.

[julesd68]

I'm still enjoying my Topping D30.

Cost 90 quid but sounds like a lot more!

[Yomanze]

Using an Audial Model S, which is TDA1541A based, non-oversampling (unless I want to do it in DSP). It just gets out of the way. No haze or grain or fatigue. Transport is the Allo DigiOne Player, running Moode, with a BNC cable. To be honest, the DigiOne made a much bigger difference than I expected, in a good way...

Also have a Theta DS Pro Progeny that needs a minor repair to an RCA socket. Lovely musical DAC.

[Beobloke]

Marantz CDA-94.

It makes some subtle improvements to the CD-94 on its own but, more importantly, they look good stacked together!

[RobsterD]

Yamamoto YDA-01 up and running and sounding very sweet

[Primare]

I have got a Naim V1 DAC, pre & headphone amp as well. Like it a lot. Goes to DSD 128. I use Audirvana+. These combination is very good for my ears.
For the HT system I use Apple TV - not so good in sound but convenient.

[Yomanze]

Marantz CDA-94.

It makes some subtle improvements to the CD-94 on its own but, more importantly, they look good stacked together!

Nice.

[Yomanze]

Yamamoto YDA-01 up and running and sounding very sweet

Looks very well designed inside.

It will respond well to a low jitter source. My DAC uses the same receiver chip as yours, no reclocking etc. Minimal.