TEAC UD-701 vs NT-505 vs ?

Thanks for listening reports, and discussion! I will probably stick around with my NT-505 for a while, before an eventual upgrade. I still need to "get to know it" better, even after a year of use. This is so also because I mainly play music from LPs. As I stated above, there is still a considerable gap, in my system/to my ears, between the superior analog sound, and the not-bad-to-quite good digital sound. Some have found the 505 bright and glassy. In my setup, compared to the Lyra Atlas cartridge, it is not very bright, nor very glassy, but it is clear that the treble air and resolution is greater with the Atlas, and thereby, the "thereness" of the music. I find it somewhat surprising that the AKM chip should sound "glassy", but I will check it more, myself.

I agree with many other observations: yes, standard cd format through Qobuz etc often sounds surprisingly good on the 505. The hi res takes are maybe not so much of an improvement as one should expect (I get varying results),

DSD sounds best to my ears also, and for DSD, the best formula seems to be to keep as close to 'native DSD' as possible. So I have not experimented much with filters.

I have no idea regarding the merits of adding a clock and suspect small gain vs $$$ , but might be wrong. Any thoughts?

I bought the CG-10M clock for one of my NT-505s and consider it the biggest waste of money I've made in the hobby.  There might be a little more something that it adds, but whatever it is, it's barely, if at all detectable to my ears.

The NT-505 at times sounded bright and at moments glassy.

I have to wonder if that's not a system or room issue.  Looking at your system, it doesn't seem it would be due to your system components, but there appear to be a lot of hard surfaces in the room.  I have two NT-505s and have used them in 3 different systems and found them to be more on the warm side, certainly in comparison to my current DAC - an Aqua La Voce S3.

Thanks, big-Greg. Saved me some $. 

Onto to notes from DAC shootout at my dealer, HiFi Buys in ATL.

First session compared dCS Bartok to Chord Hugo to HiFi Rose RS150.

Setup:

Not sure about how streaming was set-up. Selected music using Roon. I used same set of tracks to test DACs as I did at home.

Believe that pre-amp was D'agostino Momentum. Amp was Parasound JC5. Speakers were Vandersteen Kentos. ICs and power cords were higher end Audioquest products.

Okay. The results from this listening session were weird. Perhaps they reflect bad taste on my part, a problem with my ears, or a problem with the set-up. (However, in my experience the folks at HiFi Buys know what they are doing.) Hence, I will use terms like and dislike as opposed to better or worse.

I did not like the sound of the Bartok. The soundstage and sounds were large but the individual sounds were diffuse, as opposed to precise and intense. The sound was also somewhat dull and grey to my ears.

I did not like sound of the Hugo. Although notes were precise, the music just sounded wrong and lacked some life. Digital. I had the impression the end of notes were being cut off. (Sustain and decay is supposed to be a strength of the Hugo, so this was also strange.)

I liked the sound of the Rose RS150. Notes were defined. Sound was colorful and live. Engaging. A negative feature was that the translation of the bass notes in Beyonce's Partition. Just sounded weird/wrong.

To circle back to my comments at top, my impressions here are strange. At odds with the glowing reviews of the Bartok and Hugo by many both pro and user reviews and hence my own expectations.

In my defense, when David White of HiFi Buys played a record on the $12K turntable that is part of the set-up in that listening room I could immediately hear what analog fans cherish- big soundstage with big notes with both precision and intensity. Emotive, engaging sound. (I had not listened to a record since I was a kid listening to my father's Bang & Olufson straight arm, lateral tracking turntable so this experience was a revelation.)

There is also some consistency in my preferences. The RS150 employs an AKM DAC, as does the TEAC NT-505. The two units sounded very similar, which speaks well for the NT-505 since it is less than half of the cost of RS150 (<$2K vs $5K).