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A DAC that crushes price vs. performance ratio

I felt strongly that I wanted to inform the Gon members about a new DAC that ranks with the very best on the market regarding performance, but costs around $2,000.00.  The Lab12 DAC1 SE was compared to three reference level DACS that retail for over $12.000.00 in my review for hometheaterreview.com and was at least on the same level sonicly, if not better.  This DAC from Greece is not just "good for the money" but competes with virtually anything on the market regardless of price!

For all the details about the Lab12 DAC1 SE performance and what other DACS it was compared to take a look at the review.  If you are shopping/looking for a new digital front end to drive your system, you owe it to yourself to check this DAC out, unless you like to spend tons of more $ without getting better performance.
teajay
rbstehno
1,492 posts
 
Teajay- I can’t believe what you said in your response: “This NOS Phillips DAC chip is extremely held in high esteem by many listeners/designers because if used in the right way”. So you are saying that only 1 manufacturer can perform magic on a budget/cheap chip to make it sound much better than all the more common chips used in 99% of the other well known dacs. 

I didn’t make my comments up, if you do a search on your chip, you will find a lot of people indicating it’s a cheap budget chip.

when I did audition many dacs years ago, most of the top manufacturers used a common set of chips.

Like I said, if a dac doesn’t use FPGA, I won’t even look at it, so no, I didn’t review your dac and I didn’t claim I did.
dvavc
81 posts
 
It’s been a long time since I read and/or reply on all of this A-n b.s.)))  I actually surprised to see that in 2018 so many people still wasting their time reading all this b.s. by paid writers/reviewers instead of listening to YouTube audio/video samples that proves such claimsof “ and  disregarded those “legends” that are not supported by said samples.
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,098 posts
 
dvac,
Let me understand this...are you actually saying that listening to audio systems on your computer speakers is a good way of evaluating their sound quality? 
shakira
149 posts
 
Try the Mojo Audio Dac 
seanheis1
630 posts
 
Also in 30 years of professional sales experience we have seen products that have performed well for less money like the Auralic Vega but again that was a $3,500 dac that matched in some ways a $7,000.00 Meitner but again, not a $2k dac that is sounding close to a $10k one.
Pardon my ignorance, but I’m having a difficult time trying to figure out how we are getting to 10k with a DAC. A $20 chip, a nice $200 case, maybe another $100 for a special power supply...sorry just not understanding the parts breakdown in relation to the final cost.

Seems that 2k could get you a top shelf product. I realize that we are talking very small batch products. I imagine a company making a 10k DAC might only sell 20-30 of them. Defining better might just be defining different. 
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