Question About DACs

rlb61
but are the newer external multibit DACs, such as the Schiit Gumby and Bitfrost, far superior to what I have now? Or, would any improvement be a slight one? Thanks.

Your MF Nuvista cd runs Delta Sigma dacs PCM1738E’s it was meant to do SACD but there were huge problems at that time with Philips laser drive mechs as the MF Trivista sacd players proved also to be amassive lemon none have survived and can’t be repaired, so it was done CD redbook only with different Sony drive mech.

The Schiit Modi,Gumby, Bitfrost and Yaggy, all in their more expensive option run R2R Multibit dacs, these are the ones getting good reviews.

R2R Multibit is the better dac option to do PCM Redbook with, as it converts "bit perfect", Delta Sigma converts a facsimile of it.

So if your only doing Red book CD then the Schiit ones in R2R Multibit option should be better than your Nuvista, and use your Nuvista as the transport, or sell it and get a Cambridge Audio CXC transport only cd. 


Cheers George

Thanks for the excellent information, George. I'm debating between the Schiit Gumby Multibit and Bitfrost Multibit. Any preference between the two?

Haven't heard those two, but the Yaggy is very good and they all come from the same stables. 
Schiit's  Mike Moffat the designer is no slouch, he made Theta Digital no. in dacs when he was with them.

Cheers George 

Like you I had read about the huge improvement in dacs in recent years and wondered  if my 10 year old Exemplar/Denon player was out of date. I decided to buy a Topping D50 given the excellent measurements
 and reviews, together with an affordable price and assertions that it was as good as any dac costing around $1000. When it arrived and was hooked up I could hear little or no difference between the Topping and my older player. I then tried it against an Oppo universal DVD, SACD ,CD player . Again no real dissernable difference. So what can one conclude from that? Maybe the Exemplar and Oppo players are really good, the Topping is not as good as its cracked up to be or maybe you have to spend mega bucks on one of those stupidly named Daves, Hugos etc to hear a difference and that's not going to happen. I don't know anything about the Schiit dacs but I know if I'm tempted to try other dacs it will only be on a sale or return basis.

The Schiit multibits seem to measure badly.  Here's the $2,400 Yggdrasil against a $500 Topping.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-schiit-yggdrasil-v2-dac.3607/