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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
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maplegrovemusic's avatar
maplegrovemusic
1,113 posts
 
If you are just looking for a dac that measure flat you can get a Topping dac for a couple hundred bucks new . If you want a dac that boosts frequencies there are dozens of " Audiophile" dacs on the market to choose from . Unfortunately you will have to try them all to see what frequency boosts go good with your system . I prefer to go neutral on the dac and go from there as far as adding colorations I prefer .
celander's avatar
celander
1,503 posts
 
I don’t understand all the pushback regarding the use of a DAC chip simply because it’s inexpensive. It’s not like Redbook playback warrants the use of expensive DAC chips to justify a DAC purchasing decision.  
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
8,018 posts
 
A chip doesn't need to be expensive to be good, and if it wasn't good, I don't think that the designer at Lab 12 would have gone to all of the bother to design an entire DAC around it.
almarg's avatar
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almarg
9,670 posts
 
To add to the foregoing comments, it’s worth noting that the DAC uses eight of the TDA1543 d/a converter chips (each of which can handle two channels), in "a complex parallel configuration." And eight chips are used even though the DAC only provides single-ended outputs, with just one output signal having to be generated for each of the two channels. Assuming good design, that will result in considerably better performance than if only one chip was used.

Regards,
-- Al
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