Interesting as a friend of mine has done the same thing. He bought my Chord Qutest as a stand alone DAC to pair with his MS6i. I must admit after a listening session we concluded it made quite a difference. The MS6i is one hell of an amp only let down by the internal DAC. Also once you upgrade the DAC then other components like the streamer become the weak link. We also used my Diretta streamer to play local files and Qobuz via MPD and upmpdcli and Roon. Then you started to see what the system was capable of. Onwards and upwards.
Standalone DAC upgrade from onboard integrated
It’s about time I posted, I’ve been following long enough. I want to bypass the onboard DAC (Burr Brown) in my new Musical Fidelity M6si integrated with a standalone DAC to drive my Magnepan 1.7x’s. Budget is $1-2k. First issue: can I realize an appreciable improvement over the onboard DAC in the M6 with a unit in that price range? Second issue: I love the detail, clarity and imaging I get from the Maggies, but I don’t want them to get too clinical with a new DAC. Hence, I’ve been looking mostly at R2R typology to keep the “musicality”, perhaps at the expense of some precision. My listening tastes are mostly jazz, classical, with some vocals thrown in. Sources are about 50% streaming, 30% vinyl and 20% CD. Other components include Blusound Node, Marantz TT-15/Clearaudio Virtuoso and a 5 year old Marantz CD player. All insights or suggestions welcome.
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- 38 posts total
- 38 posts total