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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
tweak1
3,563 posts
 
I just watched a YTV review of the Musician Aquarius DAC  - Technically Impressive R-2R Sound

While I am very interested in the Audio GD, this is much smaller, rack friendly


"Only" $2800 and comes in white or black


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pTPCtNJ6M&t=905s
zlone
457 posts
 
While not quite night and day, the upgrade of my Gungnir to Multibit was an immediate and noticeable improvement.

Zlone, what did you upgrade to?

I owned the original Gungnir and later had them upgrade it to multibit version. That upgrade was significant.




georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
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
chorus
976 posts
 
The answers you get here will be - Wow here was my best DAC ever!
With 30 different suggestions. Why? Because DACs have made some serious gains in performance. No one here mentioned Audio Note.
Try an R2R DAC with a tube and no caps.

jjss49's avatar
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jjss49
6,612 posts
 
seems to me the flaw in the op’s question is as much about how bad the prior dac was, compared to the new one

you go from the dull lifeless onboard dac in a bluesound node or a yamaha streaming dac to a decent (but hardly outstanding) high end dac like a denafrips ares or a topping d90, you may go ’wow’ ... maybe

but if we are dealing with 2 legit competent high end hifi dacs, there will be no ’wow’ - differences will be nuanced and subtle, if heard on a well conceived, properly assembled, sufficiently high resolution system
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