What DAC upgrade made you say “DAMN, that sounds SO MUCH better than my last DAC”?


As the title suggests, what was your overall system and DAC at the point where you bought only a new DAC and said “DAMN, that sounds SO MUCH better than my last DAC”?

I’m a novice and so many people talk about improvements from new equipment as if they were only listening to varying degrees of static until they bought more and more new equipment which added up to them finally being presented with music. It’s like Salome and the seven veils. But when does the last veil get peeled away? 

So what system did you have and what DAC did you swap in that made you say “DAMN!!!!”?

I guess I’m looking for night and day differences, not gradual progressions……


pip_helix

Showing 3 responses by georgehifi

chorus Try an R2R DAC with a tube and no caps

Very interested to know which R2R dac has a tube output stage with no coupling cap in the signal path??
Unless it uses a transformer, then I’d op for a good quality cap, to sound better, least colored, more dynamic and more transparent.

Cheers George
Can you please elaborate on ‘best DCS and MSB’ since they have different tiers of reference. I would like to know which models you’ve tried that were bested by K-01xd?
Depends also on what your playing, streamed DSD the DCS and your Esoteric would be the one to go for being bitstream (delta sigma) based dacs.
But if you use PCM RedBook 16/44 24/96 or DXD then "bit perfect conversion" of R2R Multibit like the MSB would be the one to go for. As delta sigma dacs can only give a "facsimile conversion" of PCM RedBook 16/44 24/96 or DXD

Cheers George

pip_helix
What DAC upgrade made you say “DAMN, that sounds SO MUCH better than my last DAC”?

For converting PCM RedBook 16/44 24/96 or DXD
Going from "chip based" R2R dacs eg: tda1541, pcm1702, pcm1704 etc, then going to MSB’s "discrete" R2R dac. Just like the best analog rig but with far better channel separation from top to bottom, and no noise.

Cheers George