Single Ended DAC vs Dual Differential XLR DAC

@soix Thank you very much for directing me to the Teajay review of the Balanced Pagoda that's the heart of my mental devices these days! He claims the Balanced Pagoda is magic precisely because it's balanced that way and the RCA outputs don't sound equally well. The RCA outputs of the Balanced Pagoda should be comparable to an unbalanced Pagoda. It's a great indication, thank you!

@lordmelton I've listened to the Sonnet Morpheus MK2 R2R DAC that's one of the best regarded XLR DAC's today and I think it has monster resolution but it largely misses the magic (again!) of the BurrBrown PCM1704 + buffer output tube of the MHDT Pagoda. I've just listened to the unbalanced Pagoda. You're perfectly right about good cables!

At present I'm moving towards the Balanced Pagoda thanks to Teajay's rave review...

Gianluca

@lordmelton 

audiosciencereview.com is full of retards that can barely scrape 50 bucks together for a headphone amp. Total wankers that just measure the resistance of cables. I've said enough.

haha, +100 

could not have said it any better...

I often like a lot what Amirm of audiosciencereview.com REJECTS in his tests 😄 It's happening again in spectacular fashion for the Pagoda! He'd throw it in the trash (and I'll buy it)

Gianluca

This hobby would suck if I didn’t trust my ears enough and to the point where I had to rely on measurements to tell me what’s good or not.  Sad.  Truly sad.  I look at measurements too, but Jeez. 

I don't see what beef people have with ASR or Amir. I think he's doing a great service for the community measuring all this gear.

If you like gear with crappy measurements, so be it. The conclusions / recommendations are his opinion so you're free to reject it.

Personally, I like to buy products that are well engineered *and* sound good. Usually if you have the former, then you've got a good chance for the latter.