Dark Horse DAC

Although very good, the R26 can’t compete with a Doge having 2 Marconi GEC tubes in the power positions along with 6 nos Telefunkens. Listening to Flight of the Cosmic Hippo’s the bass has more impact and plucking of the strings is more insightful. Not true the Doge has weak input voltage. It is the most dynamic dac I’ve heard. Comparing to R26 just confirmed how amazing this dac really is. The Gustard is relatively flatter and less dynamic. Voices and instruments are simply more palpable as if someone is actually singing in the room with a bass player and drummer behind them. The Gustard is still a keeper but I use tubes in my phono stage and preamps/ dac and if I were to upgrade, I think I’d be more tempted to hear a Lampizator than a Terminator given what I’m hearing. Keep in mind though I spent nearly as much on tubes as I did the Doge itself which was cheaper a few years ago. Also, after getting Decware SET amp I got a tube tester and all but one of the original Doge tubes tested bad where only one of my Tele’s did after 3 years of constant use (hardly used those bad Chinese tubes). Also. Doge has ugly display and obnoxious glowing blue light. It can be sensitive to any movement knocking a channel out because one of the GECs pins are fussy. Gustard is probably a better value and in retrospect maybe I should have just spent that tube money on a more expensive dac, but I wanted to hear the best nos tubes could offer and they are amazing. Also, Jay did compare Doge to both Denafrips and Holo models of the time and said Holo was softest and Doge most revealing. Also not fair to discount it as flavor of the month when he also reviewed denafrips and Holo and people don’t level the same criticism. I will agree that from my experience that you get what you pay for provided you don’t get ripped off. Jay also said upgrading the tubes doesn’t make a huge difference but I was in a cramped bedroom with Kef bookshelves at the time and remember being impressed right away even before changing tubes with the 3d soundstage. In particular I remember voices from Roger Waters song sounding like they were coming out of an adjacent wall to the one the speakers were on! Although they image well in between I don’t get that same effect with the Forte’s in my family room but they are so much better in every other way. I wouldn’t give up my Doge/Forte for any other dac/speaker combo I’ve heard (also have Wharfedale linton, KEF R300).

@nniss

Thanks for your candid impressions. My Doge MKII (I think) is getting close to being broken in. While changing things around in my system I also added 10 Synergistic Research HFTs and settled in last night to some interesting Electronica and then some Flamingo/Classical guitar. I know it can always get better, but I had to ask myself just how much better does it have to be. 

just to set the record straight, what i said was the doge 7 had weak output voltage from the rca and xlr jacks in my experience... i had two units, both with the same problem, so my conclusion was this was a design flaw, and not a specific unit defect -- in both cases, in my hands, the units had oem modern production chinese tubes, not os or nos upgrade tubes

this said, if the doge dac pleases others here, then that’s just great...👌

@jjss49 my apologies, I didn’t realize you were an owner. My concern was non-owners dismissing it out of hand. Yes, I think the nos tubes juiced mine up cause mine is louder if anything than my other dacs. I didn’t particularly like the balanced outputs either but it was because it basically made the dac too bright. The unbalanced sound perfect though.

@Brauser I know where you coming from because the Doge 7 mkii is my reference and I too wonder how it could be any better. There’s a guy that reviewed three different tube dacs that preferred one called Audio Note I believe and of course everyone says Lampizator is the best. Another observation I made was the Gustard makes an annoying noise between songs where Doge is perfectly quiet and smooth. The Doge is much better and definitly worth the extra 500 bucks. I’m guessing anecdotally in my case, the tube dacs are the all around more impressive tech than the R2R ones in terms of realism.I should note for full disclosure my interconnects are just blue jeans unbalanced so far for the Gustard and have much more expensive liquid unbalanced interconnects that came in a hazmat case on the Doge. If I switch out interconnects and hear a difference I'll report back.