Benchmark Dac3

Frankly, gdhal, your concerns about ModWright mods to your 205 are unfounded. Turnaround time is a couple weeks, workmanship is first rate, and Dan stands behind his work. Dan’s mod designs promote slow aging of the tubes, so even that is of minimal concern.

If your main goal is to eliminate the digital sound character (more than likely also being completely SS is a contributor) of your system, there is likely no better solution as the tube output section and tube power supply included in the mod will get that done and replace it with a natural, sumptuous, and extremely involving sound that you may not have yet even imagined.

No matter how good my other digital front end is now or may get, my MW5400ES will remain my digital source of choice when I wish to simply experience music.

BTW, if you decide to stay with an external DAC approach, the MW Elyse I just spent time with as a loaner from a friend would be a top choice IMO. Among the best build quality of any component I have had in my system and the sound quality is surreal. Great deals to be found for mint used ones right now.

Dave

@dlcockrum 

Thanks Dave. You're given me something (tubes) to consider. 

@gdhal

It ultimately depends on your setup and what works for your amp and speakers. I compared both the DAC2 and Gustard to Audioresearch DAC 8. In the end it was too hard to pick a winner. The sound was excellent from all sources - not possible to call a clear winner. Differences were not significant enough to worry about. If anything the Audioresearch seemed slightly more dynamic.

As for DAC3, all I can say is it works for my setup and is the best I have heard from digital. Blacks are very black and clarity of individual instruments is better than I have heard in the past - a huge step up from DAC2. I have not compared DAC3 with Gustard or Audioresearch but from my comments you can gather the DAC3 is significantly better versus DAC2.

Good luck in your search - I don’t think you can be disappointed with any of the latest DACs.

If that is true (ahem...) and all "recent" DACs sound pretty much the same, then buy the cheapest one.

Perhaps a hearing test is in order...

Dave 

@dlcockrum / @shadorne 

I sincerely appreciate your candid feedback. At face value, Dave's point regarding digital sound being somewhat tied to solid state, which conceivably could be eliminated with tubes likely has validity. I'm biased toward the Schiit Yggdrasil, however, as it costs *less* than some of the other options and is R2R multibit, and is specifically oriented to LPCM. I'm reading so many positive things about multibit R2R versus delta sigma.

Here is something that will interest the group. I posed the question (Schiit vs DAC3) to a Benchmark sales rep. The following is his response. And I do give credit and value the fact that a Benchmark sales rep took the time to speak with me and respond in writing. 

"I’ve forwarded your email to engineering in hopes that they will comment. I can tell you that looking at the specs, the noise floor is higher on the Schiit model. With a low noise floor, as in the DAC3, low level details in the music and reverb tails don’t get lost. We want the SNR to be better than the maximum dynamic range of the music, which with 24 bit, while theory would be 144dB, reality is 122dB. Our SNR of the DAC3 is 128dB. The other thing that I notice not mentioned is inter-sample overs. This is a huge problem as most of the recordings we listen to are 16/44. Our DAC sounds detailed, yet smooth, transparent."