Hi all, 'been watching this forum for awhile and can't hold back any longer. Seen quite a bit of Directstream references and wanted to share what I think is THE FIND regarding DACs. I've been putting "MY" end game system together recently 'cause I'm retiring and honestly just unwilling to compromise any further. I've been researching DACs, preamps, amps, and speakers for the last three years. I looked at 21 DACs (sigma-delta, R2R, FPGA), 43 speaker companies, amps and preamps galore... I settled on the PS Audio Directstream because all of the rave reviews. I took advantage of the 30 day home audition. While I thought it was better than my OPPO BDP-95's internal DAC, it wasn't much better. I ended up returning it. (put over 400 hours on it and was out of time, but was still too dark sounding, perhaps not fully burned in yet?) I tried the Yggy and thought it was better, but still wasn't happy. Thought about other R2R's, but eventually came across Playback Designs and Andreas Koch (owner and designer). After much research, I bought the Merlot and never looked back. It sounded great out of the box, but did take an extremely long time to fully burn in. Fully cooked by 500 hours. This DAC presents the most "real" sounding music I've ever heard from a stereo system. It doesn't get better than "real sounding". Makes 16/44.1 digital sound unbelievably good. Pick your adjectives, transparent, detailed but natural, dynamic, correct timbre & tone(IMO), aliveness, etc... it does it all. FYI, I was/am a musician, play the trumpet. Had a band when young. At retirement age now. But I know what "real" music sounds like and that's my goal in my system. Just wanted to share about this DAC. Please do your due diligence and research Andreas. For example, he was the lead engineer that designed the DSD recording Sonoma workstation. The rest of my system is a MicroZOTL as preamp, Pass Labs XA30.8 amp, and just purchased Vaughn Barbera II speakers with the Dukane Plasma tweeters. Can't wait to get home and hook those up! Might also acquire a single ended class A amp as well. I have purchased a ZOTL40 but haven't received it yet. Anyway, just wanted to share.
P.S. I was looking at the Double Impacts, but had a bad experience with Eric, (Don't ask, I'll leave it at that) so now disregard them.
Thanks for listening.
