Discrete R2R Ladder dac from Soekris, Absolute Sounds review.



Very affordable highly regarded discrete R2R dac from the Dutch. The few that own them here and elsewhere are over joyed at the sound that these dacs can make, and Soren Kristensen is held in very high regard as a digital designer.
https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/soekris-dac1421-dac

http://www.soekris.dk/products.html
https://soekris.modhouseaudio.com/soekris-audiophile-line

Cheers George
128x128georgehifi
I have the Soekris running straight to the amp this morning.

Listening to Bill Evans "Another Time". Eddie Gomez' bass is sounding the best I have heard it with my setup.

Yesterday, I had the preamp in and that sounded good, too. Not better or worse than today, just different....







Listening to Bill Evans "Another Time". Eddie Gomez’ bass is sounding the best I have heard it with my setup.

Tight extended dynamics now, and the rest will be also, once you fine tune the system to this new sound.
And you probably could have got the top Soekris, with the money from the sale of the  CJ 17LS2 preamp.

Cheers George
Just received Soekris dac2541.  Out of the box, without warming up anything, just hooking it up and plugging it in, it is way better than my existing 5 year old, but highly regarded, R2R dac.

Like DSPER said:
"More detail
More contrast between highest and lowest notes
More ambient information - deeper soundstage"
Totally agree.
Okay...

My intent was to listen to a less than $1000 DAC to see if that could make me happy. I found the Soekris DAC 1421 to be an improvement from my Theta ProBasic III as I have shared in earlier posts.

However...I had been reading about the Mojo Audio Mystique V3 along with other roughly $5,000 DACs. With all the recent press about the new EVO version from Mojo Audio, a couple of V3's have come on the used market. I pulled the trigger on one last week even though it was like four times the price of the Soekris. This is a lot of money so it was not a decision I made lightly.

My early listening results are astounding me. While I could debate how much better the Soekris was to the Theta, there is no doubt about the Mystique being substantially better sounding than the Soekris in my system. 

The bass is better and I can hear the 25 HZ test sound on the Stereophile Test CD - 2.  Instruments and vocals are more fleshed out combined with a much better sense of ambient space. Imaging is improved such that I can look directly at a speaker and "see" instruments in front of the speaker. That has never happened before.

Its like my Thiel CS5i speakers have come alive. They have sparkle and are not so polite. You may have noticed that I have been active on a couple of speaker threads as I was/am contemplating a move to higher efficiency speakers and tube amps. That is now officially on hold for at least a while. 

Now, I have to admit that I have been playing with speaker placement, including toe in and distance. I will be reinserting the Theta in my system to hear what happens but am finding it hard to accept that speaker adjustments are making such a difference. I am pretty sure it is the Mystique...

More to come and your thoughts and ideas are welcomed.

Thanks for listening,

Dsper





got a hold of a soekris 1421 and am starting to listen... info in this thread has been useful

soekris manual says there can be remote volume control using an apple remote... will try this out too, as my preferred way of hearing a dac is direct into power amp, if the dac can control its output volume