I was a vinyl guy for nearly 40 years with a SOTA vacuum TT and an excellent tone arm and a Dynavector 20x2 cartridge. None of the several sub-$1K dacs owned could match the fidelity of my analogy playback... until I bought a Ayre QB-9 dac about 10 years ago. Within a week of getting the dac, I sold the analogue rig and have never, even for a moment, looked back.
I upgraded to the Ayre Codex, which was a sideways move. Then I got an Aqua La Voce dac which I thought was a pleasant, but not honestly a very noticeable improvement in SQ. Last year, I bought a Gustard U18 DDC for the hell of it and I kinda think it yield some degree of SQ improvement but I can't say for sure.
I got the well lauded Laiv dac and its performance, after a couple of weeks of run in, was indistinguishable from the sound in my system with my Aqua La Voce dac.
You can view in two different ways. The Laiv dac matched the performance of my Aqua DAC, and the Aqua dac was far more expensive. But, given my listening comparison, I was certainly not inclined to keep it so I returned it and remember nothing about restocking fees being so punitive. It is a stellar dac, but with their current restocking fee, I'd be dubious about trying one.
I heard the Topping D90SE dac in a friend's system and was super impressed with it so I came back and we compared my Aqua DAC to his Topping Dac and to both of our 70 year old ears, the delta in SQ was far too narrow to draw any conclusions -- both sounded outstanding, analogue-like.
Yes, my Gustard, at the margin, seems to yield a quieter background, but honestly, I am doubtful that I could discern its benefit in an A/B test.
A well-designed dac I think ought to allay the need for a DDC. And now that musical performance can be had in several dacs for under $1K. Cheers.
