DAC Questions

I’ve only ever owned delta sigma dacs in the past in the 1-1.5k range. Had basically given up on digital and recently started “trying” to get into vinyl. Not that the digital sounded bad just kind of flat. Cymbals and highs never seemed quite natural. Been running a Musician Aquarius for 4 days now and this thing is an absolute cracker of a dac! Not looking for one just happened in a trade for some speakers I was offloading. Total system changer, never would have thought a dac could do that. 

@mofojo Congrats on the Aquarius!  I’ve got the Musician Pegasus and am also very happy with it.  Not sure what connection you’re using into your DAC, but I recently added a Denafrips Iris DDC that let me use the i2S input on my DAC and was a considerable upgrade in sound versus using SPDIF.  If I was you I’d seriously look at trying a Musician Pisces (very similar to the Iris) or the Leo (similar to Hermes) with a short HDMI cable as the i2S signal doesn’t like to travel far.  Just my experience FWIW.

Thanks Soix,

Looking at those units it appears it’s usb input not a spdif input? Can you order that as an option? I believe I only have optical and Spdif out of my transport. 

@mofojo Yes, the Iris/Pisces don’t have SPDIF inputs.  You need to step up to the Musician Leo or Denafrips Hermes to get SPDIF, but they also have better clocks so should perform even better.  BTW, the Leo is less expensive unless you can find a used Hermes.  

Wow little pricey. Will definitely look into them though. Thanks!