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A DAC that crushes price vs. performance ratio

I felt strongly that I wanted to inform the Gon members about a new DAC that ranks with the very best on the market regarding performance, but costs around $2,000.00.  The Lab12 DAC1 SE was compared to three reference level DACS that retail for over $12.000.00 in my review for hometheaterreview.com and was at least on the same level sonicly, if not better.  This DAC from Greece is not just "good for the money" but competes with virtually anything on the market regardless of price!

For all the details about the Lab12 DAC1 SE performance and what other DACS it was compared to take a look at the review.  If you are shopping/looking for a new digital front end to drive your system, you owe it to yourself to check this DAC out, unless you like to spend tons of more $ without getting better performance.
teajay

Showing 2 responses by rbstehno

rbstehno
1,398 posts
 
I read the review and IMO it is way over the top for a review. What top quality dac uses those chips? I went out and reviewed other threads on those dac chips and here is an example of what I found:
The TDA1543 chip is a budget chip and was designed as such back in the medieval times.

This TDA1543 DAC, or any 1543 DAC, really, is only worth considering if you want a cheap, entry-level, non-oversampling DAC to try and are curious about that old school Philips sound. 

The dac that that was used as a reference wasn’t a top notch dac IMO. If he would have compared it to the DCS or ps audio DS dacs and came out ahead without blasting “it crushes” these dacs, then maybe he is on to something.

if the dac doesn’t use FPGA, or support hires/dsd/MQA, then it’s old technology and wouldn’t be on my list to review

rbstehno
1,398 posts
 
Teajay- I can’t believe what you said in your response: “This NOS Phillips DAC chip is extremely held in high esteem by many listeners/designers because if used in the right way”. So you are saying that only 1 manufacturer can perform magic on a budget/cheap chip to make it sound much better than all the more common chips used in 99% of the other well known dacs. 

I didn’t make my comments up, if you do a search on your chip, you will find a lot of people indicating it’s a cheap budget chip.

when I did audition many dacs years ago, most of the top manufacturers used a common set of chips.

Like I said, if a dac doesn’t use FPGA, I won’t even look at it, so no, I didn’t review your dac and I didn’t claim I did.
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