What DAC upgrade made you say “DAMN, that sounds SO MUCH better than my last DAC”?


As the title suggests, what was your overall system and DAC at the point where you bought only a new DAC and said “DAMN, that sounds SO MUCH better than my last DAC”?

I’m a novice and so many people talk about improvements from new equipment as if they were only listening to varying degrees of static until they bought more and more new equipment which added up to them finally being presented with music. It’s like Salome and the seven veils. But when does the last veil get peeled away? 

So what system did you have and what DAC did you swap in that made you say “DAMN!!!!”?

I guess I’m looking for night and day differences, not gradual progressions……


pip_helix
Adding the Naim nDAC and Pardo T-XPS.  I tried several others, the nDAC/Pardo are staying.  
Moving from Schitt Yggdrasil gen2 and Auralic Vega G2 to the Mola Mola Tambaqui  was a major WTF experience. 
Well of course I would never start a sentence with that particular word...  
i am very impressed with my tambaqui after having many well regarded dacs over the years.  But I do say “WOW” when I play a record.  Just something on vinyl with a nice setup that digital misses. It is almost as if there is another layer of detail that digital misses.

The very new line to the U.S  from Underwood Wally is
Audio GD , I recently bought their New totally redesigned line as of late April 2021 the R8  MK2.
it is a very beefy 25 lbs using 3  Rcore transformers operating  in pure class A on the analog stages, and servo controlled FPGA on the digital end ,full R2R dac with 5 user adjustments . At $2k it’s  class leading IMO and I have owned 
Denafrips Pontus 2 , Schiit Yggsdrasil 2, Belcanto , Lampi  Amber 3
it took 500 hours to fully settle in having dual Femto clocks , and New firmware port on back for future upgrades which is very good to know.

@ivan_nosnibor 
Isn’t the Burl solely a A-D dac for mastering purposes? Or does it convert both ways, that wasn’t clear to me. I use the RME-ADI-FS with the Teddy Pardo power supply connected by a Synergistic Research Atmosphere Reference USB cable and balanced SR Atmosphere Level 2 cables going into my Octave V70 Class A.
The RME is stunning to me and my Audrivana files.