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You want a DAC that sounds *different.* What factor helps you find it?

I'm thinking about trying a new DAC, adding one to the stable. 

What's most important is that it sound different than my present DAC.

If you were to look for a new DAC to try, what weight would you assign to each of these factors in predicting a different character of sound? 

1. chipset
2. design of DAC --- R2R etc.
3. power supply
4. tube or no  tube
5. ? (some factor or combination not mentioned)

I've become somewhat skeptical of user reviews because of uncontrollable variability related to tastes, system components, and vagueness of language used by reviewers.

So, without some appreciation of the ability for the above factors to affect the sound character, singling out just one or another factor seems like random guessing.

I'd love to learn from you all. I'd be curious to know, for example, that most R2R DACs sound similar, overall. That would help by directing me away from trying another R2R DAC. Or maybe they don't all sound similar; ok, that keeps them in consideration.

Same question with chipsets, power supply, tube/no tube.

So, again the hypothetical -- simplified:

You want to get a DAC that sounds much different than what you have. What factor helps you find it?

128x128hilde45

Showing 2 responses by jjss49

jjss49's avatar
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jjss49
6,601 posts
 

@tvad

happy to see you back and posting, sharing info

@hilde45

to answer your question -- what @tvad says!! 😁

i'm not kidding...but bear in mind the price level of dacs listed, to which i would add several others i experienced in a similar fashion - msb, chord stack, weiss

also, i would add that to achieve this ’convergence’ it is paramount to get the network and streaming noise and clock management done to a high level

jjss49's avatar
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jjss49
6,601 posts
 

@hilde45

i’m not sure if this is at the heart of your original question but i would point out that in my looong road traveled with numerous dacs, high and low, is that i learned alot from what features any dac had (some more than others) in terms of being allowed toggle key variables in and out that affect the sound

as examples, denafrips units have rca and xlr outputs, as well as switchable nos/oversampling, soekris, chord and bricasti have various selectable dsp filters (of course with the chord stack w/ m scaler, the scaler itself can be toggled in and out at various oversampling rates), and a great one, a real sleeper i learned so much from was the audio gd master 7 (a real bargain btw), where os/nos, various os rates, and dsp could ALL be switched in and out, along with xlr/rca outputs, and you can hear the effect of each change on the sound... very very informative

i think a key here is to do experience this with dacs that are at a certain price level ($2000+ at minimum, imo, maybe $3,000) so that one can be reasonably assured that such things as clock management, output section, power supply are not being cost engineered out of necessity such that they hurt sound quality

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