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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
teajay OP
1,687 posts
 
Hey lordcloud,

Could you describe in more detail what you mean by, "doesn't sound like a tube at all".  There are sonic differences between the same type of tube and different companies "house sound" (Mullards, Bugle Boys, Telefunkins, TungSol etc), but don't understand what your description means.

MHDT Labs designer recommends his favorite NOS tubes to use his DACS.  You can 396 or 5670 tubes to flavor the sound of their DACS to your personal taste.  However, he does not mention the tube you are using in your DAC.
lordcloud
155 posts
 
The 5670 is close enough to the 6922 that you can use an adapter and use a 6922 in the DAC instead of the 5670. That's what I do currently. 

The Reflektor '75 6N23P SWGP Silver Shields doesn't sound like a tube is in the DAC to me. With the other tubes I used, the sound erred in one direction, or there was something letting me know I had something in the signal path. But with these tubes, they just seen to get out of the way, and the music seems to come through. They're very clear and relatively transparent sounding.
mzkmxcv
777 posts
 
I bet it wouldn’t sound better (more accurate) than a SMSL SU-8 or Topping D50.
facten
2,874 posts
 
@mzkmxcv
" I bet it wouldn’t sound better (more accurate) than a SMSL SU-8 or Topping D50 "
What's your basis for this statement, have you listened to his Pagoda DAC? Have you compared all 3?
mzkmxcv
777 posts
 
@facten

Because those two are only a hair worse then the Benchmark DAC3, and the Benchmark is considered to be totally transparent (John Atkinson of Stereophile even said “Benchmark’s DAC3 HGC offers state-of-the-art measured performance. All I can say is "Wow!"”), and likely more accurate than the Pagoda.

Also, it’s a tube DAC, so it already will be colored, by initial comment was about accuracy. The Pagoda also doesn’t list any specs except of a crappy frequency response deviation, totally a joke for a >$1000 DAC, would be even a joke at $100, Schiit even provides the whole AP report for their $100 Magni 3.

Tubes don’t offer anything that can’t be done with EQ/DSP, so I’d rather have transparent gear and tune their sound to my preference rather than buy colored gear and hope it sounds good. 
 
For those that want to tune but can’t do it upstream and don’t want say a MiniDSP, the RME ADI-2 DAC has a good amount of tuning capabilities and is a good DAC.
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