Questioning the need for a DAC

Hotel rooms usually suck. 

Regardless of dac, how are your room acoustics?? I'd spend money there if you haven't already before any more gear at all.

We audiophiles are all on a question of sonic improvement, me being no exception.  As Jond rightfully observes, I am at a great place to be with my system, more so that I have been in many years.  Still, not to belabor the point, I am intrigued with what folks are experiencing with the addition of a DAC to a system with an already modern CD transport (i.e., an Oppo or something even better).  I will say that the benefit of the modest upgrade that Stereo Dave did to my Oppo 103 was absolutely evident within the first few notes of playing a CD after I got it back.   A profound difference for a modest cost, no question.  However, in contrast, with or without the Schiit Gungnir in my system, I perceived no difference.  Just my take.  Cheers.   

You don't say how you tested nor on what equipment, or music.

I would expect the OPPO DAC to be very good.  I'd also expect the type of speakers (and the ability of the amps to control the speakers) to be fairly critical.  We might be at the dawning of the Age of A-DACiness (an Aquarian analogy where most DACs are pretty durn good; A quality and A+ or A- but no D- DACs).

I did some preliminary testing on a stock Oppo 103 vs. my ancient Cal audio Icon and did not find a different or much difference.  I didn't have time to make up a good A/B set of discs, but RS, Floyd etc. did not sound much different to my 64 year old ears using a Sonic Frontiers Line One > Sunfire Cinema Grand bi-amping Maggie 1.5Qs. I did try hard to listen to the initial attack impulse on drums and perhaps there was something there??

IF I'd used Jazz at the Pawnshop maybe I could have heard a big difference - maybe.  But I don't really like that CD all that much.

Hi Randy, 
My test of the addition of the Schiit Gungir to my system was rather straightforward.  I played the Oppo straight into my preamp and then inserted the Schiit into the system.  My preamp is a Don Sachs 6SN7-based preamp and an upgraded CJ MF-80 amp, with Spatial Audio Hologram M4 Turbo S speakers in a well-treated room.  I had a Consonance tube CD player before the Oppo 103 and the improvement in sound with the Oppo was absolutely immediately noticeable and profound.  I think the inescapable conclusion, to my 63-year old ears, is that the Oppo is a very worthy CD player.   

In defiance of my own logic, I bought a Channel Islands DAC/power supply today to see if I find some improvement with it.  I will report back on this thread if I hear some improvement with the new DAC.  

Two final thoughts.  My frame of reference for upgrades is that if I don't hear a noticeable sonic improvement with the substitution of a new piece of gear within a few notes then it probably isn't worthwhile (allowing for break-in, of course).  Some might see this as an imperious judgment, but I have experienced it with the Oppo and with lots of tube rolling in my system, and with a couple of IC's.  My sense is that if I have to work to hear the "improvement", it probably doesn't exist.  Secondly, I think that current CD players even the price point of my Oppo, and tons come to mind, all have pretty good internal DAC's, for which the addition of an external DAC might be superfluous.

Randy, you note that you don't like CD's much.  My audio pal has $10K Brodmann speakers, VPI TT with a fine tone arm and $2K MC cartridge, and the $20K top-of-the line ARC amp/preamp combo.  His digital source is a ~$5K Modwright-modified Oppo CD player.  We recently did an A/B comparison of the same music comparing the analogue and digital versions, back and forth between the same cuts in real time.  Lots of the music was new analogue Blue Notes issues, 45rpm, and the same PCM recordings and a few SACD's.  We did at least a dozen comparisons and the uniform conclusion we reached was that there was no perceptible difference between the formats... not on one recording, not on any recording.  I have an upgraded SOTA TT, with a very fine tonearm and Dynavector MC cartridge, with a thousand jazz LP's, but I haven't played it in months as I find no sonic improvement over my digital versions of the same music.  

Anyway, that is my take.  Cheers.    

if you are addressing me then you didn't understand my comments