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Post by GreenKiwi on Oct 8, 2019 21:48:31 GMT -5
I have the Chord Hugo 2 going into the reference stereo inputs on my XMC-1. For pure 2-channel it can't be beat (IMHO of course). I'll second this... the Hugo2 has really done everything I want it too. I found one used and still under warranty, so the price was in the $1500 range. |
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Post by pedrocols on Oct 8, 2019 23:57:54 GMT -5
The prices on DACs are getting out of hand. Grossly pricey if you ask me.
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Post by viablex1 on Jul 5, 2020 11:56:37 GMT -5
If you have the budget for it I highly recommend the Holo Spring DAC Level 1 being the least expensive. It is an R2R Ladder DAC and to these ears at least for now the best I've heard. Very organic sound IMHO. Regarding the XSP-1 I would keep it. I don't currently own one but did before buying the XMC-1 which replaced it for two channel music as well as doubling for HT sound tracks. Just recently some friends and I compared the XMC-1 in Reference Mode to a pre-amp that cost twice the price of the XSP-1 when new and now sells for 3 times the price of the XSP-1. I wouldn't think there is a nickels worth of difference with the XMC and XSP, but in this case the XMC-1 annihilated the other pre amp and it didn't take long to figure it out either. The performance difference was night and day, not even close. Hope this helps. yep I have the spring in their line. great customer service and it sounds excellent. Alvin and denafrips the low level ares also sounded good when I had it for a while. kitsunehifi.com/ |
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Post by Boomzilla on Jul 5, 2020 13:33:47 GMT -5
Hi rockman85 - Before you part with $$$, you might want to consider the Black Ice / Jolida Glass FX DSD WiFi. It sells for $799, uses a tube analog output stage, and sounds JUST as good (to my ears) as any of the high ticket stuff. Headphone amp built in, high-resolution capable, Burr-Brown DAC chip, and clean, clean, clean. I've owned ladder DACs before (Schiit Gumby and Denafrips Aries II) and a whole FLOCK of Saber chip DACs (Mytek Liberty, OPPO BDP-105, OPPO UDP-205, Audioquest Dragonflies (multiple), Auralic Vega, etc.), but the one I've got now is the Black Ice. Doesn't sound like tubes - just like music. There are cheaper DACs (and a LOT of more expensive ones), but this one hits the spot for me. Boomzilla  |
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Post by leonski on Jul 10, 2020 12:06:47 GMT -5
Let me get this straight?
You are proposing pairing a dr2 amp....500 a side, right? with 95db sensitive speakers?
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Post by novisnick on Jul 10, 2020 14:01:53 GMT -5
Let me get this straight? You are proposing pairing a dr2 amp....500 a side, right? with 95db sensitive speakers? The DR2 may be a whole lot of power for those speakers but the headroom makes for better sound IMHO (let the argument begin) Also, you just never know which speakers will come next! Having that much power allows you much bigger options.  how to upload pictures on the internet |
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Post by leonski on Jul 10, 2020 14:24:53 GMT -5
The idea is 'system', not a collection of 'stuff'......
IF 95db is a correct number, than 100 a side will still blow you out of your house. 4 watts will provide roughly 100+db constantlly with OVER +20db peaks.
How much of that will the speakers take, IF you crank it up?
Better watts are better than MORE watts......
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Post by viablex1 on Jul 11, 2020 9:51:40 GMT -5
Hi rockman85 - Before you part with $$$, you might want to consider the Black Ice / Jolida Glass FX DSD WiFi. It sells for $799, uses a tube analog output stage, and sounds JUST as good (to my ears) as any of the high ticket stuff. Headphone amp built in, high-resolution capable, Burr-Brown DAC chip, and clean, clean, clean. I've owned ladder DACs before (Schiit Gumby and Denafrips Aries II) and a whole FLOCK of Saber chip DACs (Mytek Liberty, OPPO BDP-105, OPPO UDP-205, Audioquest Dragonflies (multiple), Auralic Vega, etc.), but the one I've got now is the Black Ice. Doesn't sound like tubes - just like music. There are cheaper DACs (and a LOT of more expensive ones), but this one hits the spot for me. Boomzilla Interesting I always wondered about those!! Thanks for posting!! |
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Post by pedrocols on Jul 11, 2020 13:47:29 GMT -5
I prefer a DAC which conveys the music and allows you to enjoy your favorite tunes. A lot of folks are too concern about "being able to hear the pin drop" and as far as I am concern hearing a pin drop is meaningless. By the time the pin drops you already missed the song. In fact, I find super detailed DACs to be distracting and takes away from the musical experience. I am ok with missing all the nuances of music and all that "audiophile" rubbish.
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Post by leonski on Jul 25, 2020 11:59:13 GMT -5
I prefer a DAC which conveys the music and allows you to enjoy your favorite tunes. A lot of folks are too concern about "being able to hear the pin drop" and as far as I am concern hearing a pin drop is meaningless. By the time the pin drops you already missed the song. In fact, I find super detailed DACs to be distracting and takes away from the musical experience. I am ok with missing all the nuances of music and all that "audiophile" rubbish. I'll skip the 'audiophool' stuff, too. As long as it has enough buttons and knobs. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 25, 2020 15:11:36 GMT -5
Interesting... I agree... and disagree...
I absolutely agree that I want a DAC that does the best job of conveying the music... However, in order to get that, I want a DAC that conveys ALL of the music to me... Not just some of it...
I want my DAC to play the ENTIRE recording for me. If there is a sound on that recording, but the DAC FAILS to include it its output, then it is NOT conveying the music to me... It is editorializing... It is playing PART of the music - but NOT all of it... I most certainly DO NOT trust a piece of audio gear to decide what belongs there and what doesn't or what things I do and don't want to hear. And, unless you've got a truly awful recording, if it includes the sound of a pin dropping, then I guess the musicians and engineer want it to be included.
I would mention, however, that it is also possible for a DAC to OVEREMPHASIZE certain types of details...
(This is a typical characteristic of many - but not all - implementations of the Sabre ESS DAC chips...) And overemphasizing details is just as much a matter of editorializing as omitting them... And a DAC that emphasizes certain details is just as inaccurate as one that omits details. Over many years I have encountered lots of amps, and preamps, and DACs, and especially speakers, that added colorations... And, sometimes, those colorations made CERTAIN recordings sound better... But there's always been a price... And that price is that, while they made some recordings sound better, they made other recordings sound worse... In all that time I have never encountered a coloration or distortion that made ALL recordings sound better.
And, for obvious reasons, it's always the recordings that were really good to begin with that suffer...
(Sort of the way those yellow sunglasses make the world look bright and sunny ALL THE TIME.) (And, yeah, you could have a dozen little black boxes, and keep track of which ones sound good with which recordings, but... yikes!)
If there's a funny noise in one of my favorite recording that really bugs me... Or if a certain recording has a tonal balance that I'm absolutely sure is just plain wrong... Then I use an audio editing program to fix the specific problem with that specific recording...
That way I have complete control over what's changed - and I can avoid mucking up anything else... The detailed control you get over things with modern editing software makes anything hardware can do a joke... (And that includes things like increasing dynamic range and lots of other stuff that used to be just plain impossible.)
I prefer a DAC which conveys the music and allows you to enjoy your favorite tunes. A lot of folks are too concern about "being able to hear the pin drop" and as far as I am concern hearing a pin drop is meaningless. By the time the pin drops you already missed the song. In fact, I find super detailed DACs to be distracting and takes away from the musical experience. I am ok with missing all the nuances of music and all that "audiophile" rubbish. |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 25, 2020 17:15:00 GMT -5
I think, before anything else, I would ask a few simple questions.... What are you starting with? What are you hoping to improve? (Or are you just hoping to "widen your horizons and experience new things"?
I've heard several of Schiit's DACs... I had a Bifrost several generations ago... And I had a few chances to listen to different generations of Yggy... (And let me take this opportunity to say that Schiit Audio makes nice products, that are made well, and do what they say they do.)
I've also owned, shall we say, far too many other DACs as well... from quite a few different manufacturers.
And most of them also worked pretty well... (Although, just to be fair, a few of them didn't work all that well at all.) But the bottom line is that a lot of DACs sound a little bit different in one way or another... But that isn't exactly the same as saying that they sound distinctly better...
And DACs are one of those things where you need to be really careful about not confusing those two things... Does that $5k DAC, with the tube output stage, and the fairy dust infused transformers, really sound better? Or does it just sound a tiny bit different in a way that, at least for now, sounds interesting in a nice sort of way? I owned a rather well-regarded non-oversampling multibit DAC for a while once... (This was one of those slightly expensive models, that didn't measure very well, but that the critics always managed to like anyway.)
And it actually sounded quite interesting... And interesting in a way that made a few specific recordings sound really good... It took me several weeks to figure out that what it really had was a few unusual flaws that sounded interesting with a few recordings... (And, in fact, maybe it really did do certain very specific things really well, but at the expense of other more important things.)
But the bottom line was that it didn't sound very good with MOST recordings.. especially if they were good recordings to begin with. Not as good as my DC-1... or the DACs in the XMC-1... or a few other DACs I had at the time... some of which cost a lot less than it did.
My point here is that, if you already own a piece of equipment that has good DACs in it, consider carefully what you're hoping to GAIN... (And do it before you spend the money or audition potential replacements or additions to your system.)
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Post by Soup on Jul 25, 2020 20:26:37 GMT -5
I have the Chord Hugo 2 going into the reference stereo inputs on my XMC-1. For pure 2-channel it can't be beat (IMHO of course). I'll second this... the Hugo2 has really done everything I want it too. I found one used and still under warranty, so the price was in the $1500 range. Still loving my Chord 2Qute |
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Post by novisnick on Jul 25, 2020 20:42:49 GMT -5
I have not listened to anything Chord has to offer, wish I had that datum. I’ve listened to the Gumby along with a few other DACs of various prices. Im enjoying my Mytek Brooklyn more today then I ever had! Wonderful sound/music and more versatile then it’s size or first look reveals. An extremely reasonably price pice of gear IMO.
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Post by bolle on Jul 26, 2020 10:14:43 GMT -5
Regarding bang for your buck, have a look at Topping! I am very happy with their DX3 Pro and if you want more, the D90 is a pretty neat DAC for the price...
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Post by leonski on Jul 26, 2020 13:35:55 GMT -5
GOTTA have a lot of buttons and knobs. Otherwise? How could you know you got your monies worth?
My DAC has a button (4 clicks) for inputs
Also? A button for Filter type, with 3 positions.
Indicator for sample rate from 44.1 to 192
Headphone out with configurable level control AND a phase switch which I've never messed with. You can even configure the outputs
with level control, so you can use as a minimum function preamp....
All I do now is turn it on and off. I use ONE of the inputs for TV / Game and the USB input from a computer.....For music.
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Post by rockman85 on Nov 23, 2020 17:20:16 GMT -5
Let me get this straight? You are proposing pairing a dr2 amp....500 a side, right? with 95db sensitive speakers? I just picked up a used DR2 and thought I would pop back into the forum. Just seeing this comment now... So my goal of getting the DR2 wasn't to get more watts necessarily, but I had to see for myself if there was a quality difference between the A300 and the DR2. Your comment seems to imply that you think my amp is overkill for my speakers, and from a power perspective, yeah? Sure... probably. But I have to say that I am enjoying the sound of the new amp quite a bit. I find it to be more resolving and generally more pleasing to listen to. I think the amp sounds a great deal more open and transparent than the A300 while maintaining the grunt in the low end. I am not sorry I purchased it. I will probably do a more extensive write up on comparing the two amps later on. |
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Post by leonski on Nov 23, 2020 20:37:56 GMT -5
The DR amp SHOULD be 'better' watts than the 'A' Series. That is what you have found out.
In general, and Especially for such high sensitivity speakers, Better will almost always beat 'more'......
So many choices in the 100->200 a side race as to be nearly mpossible to keep track of. It wouldn't have even surprised me to learn that the now-gone PA-1 would have done well, too.
I'd be surprised to find you actually used more than 8 per speaker with 80 watt peaks.....a 10db 'crest factor'....Something I suspect even my Parasound A23 could do with ease.
If your speakers really ARE as specified, than 8 watts will be OVER 100db continuous with well OVER 110db peaks. You'll impact your hearing within a coupld months.....
Post back if you every try a 'better' amp from another manufacturer. they are out there in droves and sometimes available Used.
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Post by Boomzilla on Nov 24, 2020 5:33:56 GMT -5
...I was considering either the Schiit Gungnir Multibit or the Yggdrasil... You better listen before you buy - Some like the sound of ladder DACs like the Schiits, but others don't. I seem to be in the latter camp. Also, this is the GOLDEN age of cheap DACs. Companies like SMSL, Audioquest, and others are offering better and better DACs for less and less money. Said another way, the performance spread between the best and worst DACs is narrowing, as is the price spread. Shop till you drop! Boomzilla |
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Post by metaldaze on Nov 24, 2020 10:42:22 GMT -5
Boomzilla is right on about cheaper DACs and the narrowing gap. As another poster said earlier Topping ( a subset of Shenzenaudio) is a good place to look. I started out using the DAC in my Integra receiver, then moved to an SMSL M100. A compact and capable USB DAC with a modest price tag of $79 at the time.
A while after that I moved up the SMSL line to the $249 M300 MKII with balanced outputs. This was a big step forward, not having balanced outputs before. But I had some troubles between that DAC and my computer, but the troubles were more than likely driver related and only gave me hiccups with DSD playback.
My 3rd and current DAC which will probably be my last for a long long time is the RME ADI 2 DAC fs. A whole lot of letters for the name, and the biggest price tag of the three at $1149. But it has the cleanest sound, excellent output from low to high voltage, and a feature set which is almost bar none. The 1/4 and IEM headphone output are a bonus and very clean. You can even disable them in the settings and have the unit just be a converter. It does everything perfectly & quietly.
These are the only external DACs I have first hand experience with but I've been the most pleased listening to my system with the RME as my outboard converter.
Cheers!
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