Thinking about getting a R2R DAC


Dear community,

I currently have a chord qutest DAC. I like it a lot, very full sound, accurate detailed and exciting.  However, whenever I go back to vinyl (with a well-recorded nice pressing) I find the sound so much more satisfying.  There is a warmth, yes, but there is a presence, a 'there-ness' that I just don't get with the digital.  I'm wondering if an R2R DAC would get me closer to that?  my budget would be around the same as the qutest.  I was looking at the MHDT Orchid or the Border Patrol.  Don't get me wrong, I really like the Qutest.  I am thinking of putting it in the upstairs system to pair with the Node2i I have up there.  Any thoughts?  Will analog always just be a different animal than digital?

Currently in the main system I have a Sonore uRendu feeding the Qutest which is going to a LTA MZ2 going to a Pass XA 30.5

thanks!
adam8179
Accusing people of being deaf, especially old audiophiles, is not an argument because too much people are included; and assimilating numbers to phenomenon and reducing them to it dogmatically is more than bad science it is bad philosophy, ignoring the structural complexities of human hearing to reduce it to some very specialized engineering field concerning a very special kind of dac, is not convincing but reflect prejudices....

I make my own controls devices for the embeddings of an audio system with great results, even being old audiophile myself, with success... I bought nothing from the market except after hearing the results.... I devise my own electrical grid device, and my own mechanical control for the speakers, and the many devices i use for active acoustical controls and not only passive one are all homemade, then the "deaf" old audiophile i am smile at your dogmas by the number and this completely free accusation....

All that comes not from super hearing capabilities but from my listenings experiments for 2 years with my ordinary ears....Audio is NOT reducible to some engineering very specialized book about some very special kind of dac....I am perhaps deaf and old but not completely gullible....

Abraxalito made great remarks .... Thanks to him.....

My best to you both....
Most audiophiles are old and here that is just fact. Older people have significantly reduced high frequency range almost as a rule. Again just fact.

You are literally anthropomorphising an electrical signal not to mention interchanging sound and electrical signals which is a false pretence.

When you pass the very significant ultrasonic content of a typical unfiltered or lightly filtered NOS DAC through a non linear system which all audio systems are especially at ultrasonic frequencies and with tubes, that aliases into the audible band. That is not theory that is simple fact. Also fact that noise / distortion can be pleasing to some and it has been shown, again fact that playing with noise and distortion can give a sense of space that is not in the recording. 


Why do want to bad to reject reality.
Also fact that noise / distortion can be pleasing to some and it has been shown, again fact that playing with noise and distortion can give a sense of space that is not in the recording.
All signals that comes from a musician recorded in a studio to the ears of an audiophile(even a deaf one) sitting in his room, are a complex chain of transformations and an imperfect recreation of the original lived event....( and the recording room,the speakers , the microphone,the recording instruments, the electrical grid of our house,the mechanical embedding of our audio system, the acoustical complex setting of the room etc play an enormous role and all this is not reducible to high frequencies rendering by some dac, NOS one or not)

Speaking of the" pure reproduction" of this event without any qualitative transformations and with an alleged and desirable perfect quantitative reproduction is a metaphor that point to an "idealized" situation that can never be realized completely anyway...

Thanks for recognizing the fact that what you called distortion can be pleasing for some...." playing with noise and distortion" is fundamental and the complex trade-off management inherently linked to engineering art....Accuracy is important for correctly using equations in electronic engineering but i hope that all old engineers with experience use their limited ears accuracy also and i hope that they do not always equate pleasing with accurate in the mathematical sense.....Anyway,i know that they do, they are not all dogmatical "religious" zealot character.... :)





My best regards ....
I will add that the concept of "timbre" in acoustic can never in no way be reducible to high frequencies rendering....

Then what is important is the accuracy of the timbre instrument rendering, not only the high frequencies linked to it....Timbre ask for more than 5 complex concepts to be defined and it is not even a total consensus in science about the relation between all these necessary concepts ordering because it is a complex phenomenon.....

The fact that some NOS dac can give a good representation of timbre is a common experience....The fact that some non NOS dac can give also a good representation of timbre is another fact.... This representation/reproduction of the timbre instrument or  voices in a natural way is linked not only to the dac but MOSTLY to a great number of different other factors, some i called embeddings controls, and there are many others also....


« I prefer to anthropomorphize the world than simplifiying it too much»- Groucho Marx after a reading of Goethe

« Including oneself in reality is not rejecting reality, on the contrary, you are right brother»- Harpo Marx

« We cannot speak about a rainbow without including the man into the equation for example brothers» -Chico Marx

« A fact is NEVER only a fact, except for simple mind »- Anonymus
When you pass the very significant ultrasonic content of a typical unfiltered or lightly filtered NOS DAC through a non linear system which all audio systems are especially at ultrasonic frequencies and with tubes, that aliases into the audible band.
Again, misuse of the word 'aliases' - the correct term would be 'intermodulates'.