Distinctly Digital Forever?

@hickamore

N200 is pretty awesome….no need to look elsewhere. Your timing for considering a pre and DAC couldn’t be any more perfect. I suggest a hard look at offerings from Lampizator before picking up LS28. Even a mid-range DAC with volume control from Lampizator will blow LS28 out of the water. I have owned quite a few pieces from ARC, like LS28, DAC9, VT-80, GS150, Ref6 and LS28 was the least impressive! 

I am inviting @charles1dad to weigh in on Abbas 3.2SE DAC. I am not sure if they can be ordered with VC.

@tomic601 @lalitk you guys are great. Enough info to play with for quite a while! Thank you to all contributors for so much stuff I didn't know and wouldn't otherwise have known where to look for.

@lalitk 

I am inviting @charles1dad to weigh in on Abbas 3.2SE DAC. I am not sure if they can be ordered with VC.

To the best of my knowledge the Abbas DACs aren’t available with an on board volume control. I will report that the Abbas 3.2SE  DAC I recently acquired is stunningly good sounding. If the desire is naturalness and sonic purity this is a fabulous choice.

Charles

If you’re looking for a very natural R2R/NOS dac that is capable of reproducing great detail without being overly sharp/harsh check out the Aqua HiFi products.

I’m using the La Scala Optologic MKII with a Naim source and ARC amp/pre and it’s really very good. I can’t make the “equal to/better than analog” statement because I haven’t owned a record or turntable in over 30 years BUT I love the way it sounds as a system and never get tired of it!

So, just to further my understanding: assuming price no object, does there exist any DAC, or DAC/Pre combo, capable of making my streamer (or the best streamer in existence, for that matter) sound indistinguishable from an FM radio signal,

That FM radio signal comes from a digital source at a low bit rate and is compressed/limited to boot. So, if you’re only getting FM quality from your digital gear, something’s wrong. It should be very easy to better an FM radio signal. There are people who prefer low bit rate music into ear buds over CD quality or hi-res digital on a good system, though.