Orchid vs TUBADOUR III - Help me choose

@wal

Txs for the upgrade info

Hello to everyone of you guys. I feel like I need to clarify a few things about Tubadour III DAC compared to Orchid. I've been building audio for more than 30 yrs. I tried all the DAC chips possible. Out of that I picked TDA1541A S1 - Philips and AD1865N-K as the most musical and analog sounding ones. I liked best AD chip and second TDA chip. Of course this is my personal opinion and it's not necessary to agree with me. TDA is limited to 96khz, AD can do 192khz, if that matters to you. It is not a coincidence Audio Note uses AD chip. Orchid employs TDA chip, Tubadour - AD chip. Now the rest of the design is:

Orchid:
- one pice pc board
- one power supply
- op amps in IV conversion
- one tube, dual triode used as a buffer, not as gain stage
- Chinese coupling caps in the signal path
- USB - hard to tell from looking at the board

Tubadour:
- 4 pc boards, separate digital, separate analog and separate power supplies using MOSFET
- 2 separate power supplies for digital and analog sections
- tube IV 
- tube output gain stage
- Clarity caps CMR series, British made caps which are way better than Chinese caps. Base model Tubadour come with Clarity caps
- USB - Amanero upgraded with better clocks

Upgrades which improve the sound are Duelund caps and Z-foil resistors. Each Duelund cap is $238 before shipping
Z-foil resistors are around $13-22 a piece. 8 pieces total.

The whole design and architecture of Orchid are not meant for upgrades.
Tubadour is designed with all possible upgrades in mind.
Audio Mirror offer 2 weeks for audition and return.
These are my 2 cents.

This morning, Vlad, who is Audio Mirror's owner/designer sent me an Email if I would be interested in reviewing the Tubadour III DAC for Six Moons.com.  My response was this would be a great project to work on and explained the procedure to set this up.

I shared I would like to review the piece with all his upgrades to see what his ultimate attempt can sound like.  Furthermore, since I just reviewed the Orchid, which is a great DAC in its own right, I could help shed light on how the two DACS compare to each other in my review.

Hope, Vlad would want to pursue the review in the future.

It's a little too late, would have loved to read the review. But I just ordered the Orchid.

I figured that it was 400$ less and since I couldn't compare them I went for the cheapest one (:

But I will read the review if I dare.

Hey martin-anderson,

Rest easy tonight!  Congrats on purchasing the Orchid.  I just stopped a listening session of four hours with Orchid driving the system with beautiful tonality and air and space around each player without a hint of digital dryness or flatten of images that so many hi-rez DACS create when used in my system.

I'm sure the Audio Mirror is an excellent DAC in its own right, but that does not necessarily mean its better then the Orchid.  Enjoy, and let us know what you think when you finally get it.