Are all R2R dacs slow and soft?


I've tried a few.
Border Patrol, Sonnet, MHDT, Mojo, and a few others I can't recall. 
They all seem to have a slow, soft rolled off sound that lacked detail. The Mojo being the exception, but was still on the softer side. 

I'm now interested hearing the LTA Aero and the May Audio Spring. 
If anyone is familiar with these 2, is it more of the same, or do either one of these stand out from the rest of the crowd?

The reason I'm looking around is I have a PS Audio DirectStream MK2 with the Airlens, and it's very nice and super detailed, but on some recordings, it can be pretty unforgiving and bright. I'm looking to take the edge of without the sound turning soft and mushy, and lacking detail. 

traudio

LOL, if you've ever owned maggies, you know you find the "perfect" spot every few weeks.....so yes. 

Ok, just checking. wink I have had my 3.6R's for 19 years. 

If a power cable, ethernet, interconnect etc objectively changed the sound (they don't) they would do so for every component they were connected to. The belief that a cable is the cause of an R2R dac soundung "soft" but a different one sounding "hard" is the silliest thing I've read in a while, and I read a lot of silly stuff here.

Try a gustard r26

The reason I'm looking around is I have a PS Audio DirectStream MK2 with the Airlens, and it's very nice and super detailed, but on some recordings, it can be pretty unforgiving and bright. I'm looking to take the edge of without the sound turning soft and mushy, and lacking detail. 

@roadcykler I am a firm believer that "bits are bits".  I was a software engineer for 50+ years and worked on mission critical banking communications systems.  The current estimate is that about 3*10^21 bits are moved over the internet each day, and, with error correction each resulting byte of data is received correctly.

However, the timing of when data is presented to the DAC chip(s) is critical, and with IIS the cable from source to DAC is a critical component (the clock is carried over the cable).  In particular, anomalously, ultra high bandwidth video HDMI cables can interact with the DAC and cause sound quality issues, perhaps ringing in the receiver or odd reflections.

In particular OP's HDMI cable appears to be knows as a potential problem.

 

traudio

I've never heard a single Denafrips DAC (Pontus II, Pontus 12th, Pontus 15th, Venus 12th, Venus 15th, Terminator 12th, Terminator 15th, Terminator Plus) that was "slow, rolled off, or soft". Especially as you go up the line, they are very detailed; but never harsh.

Maybe you don't like the R2R sound, which is certainly reasonable.....I don't like FPGA DACs, the Chord sound, I've hated every one I've ever heard. Doesn't mean they are bad, they just don't sound right to my ear