A DAC that ought to be better known: RME

Thanks for the suggestions. I do run it directly into the amp. Will definitely get the power supply after a while. 

jjss49, I don't find RME "zippy" in my room. I also have a highly modded MHDT Labs dac to compare it with and the RME is far from zippy when played side by side in the same system. I do have the Teddy Pardo on the RME with JPS Labs digital cable and Acoustic Zen silver ref 2 going out to preamp. You would think the silver wire would make it zippy but that's not the case. I find RME is very transparent and warm but in no way "zippy". I did find it took over a month to break in, I leave Teddy Pardo and RME on 24/7 and notice even being on 24/7 it take 20 or so minutes of music running through it before it sounds right. 

Paul,

don’t keep us hanging brother. Comparison!!! Appreciated. 

adg101, paulcreed:
Which model Teddy Pardo did you use with RME?

@paulcreed

maybe my use of the word ’zippy’ is getting us hung up a bit... i found the voicing of the rme to be somewhat treble forward and i would not call the midrange or bass warm... neutral and fast i would say, but not bloomy or warm in the least to my ears (there are significantly warmer-voiced dacs - metrums, ayre codex, mhdt’s in stock form, esp. with the we 2c51 tube come to mind)

i currently have a number of mhdt units (orchid, stockholm, istanbul), the stockholm i have is modded with pcm56k chip, vishays diodes and mundorf silver oil caps, other two are stock... i do find the modded stockholm to have the most highlighted treble and the best drive of the 3 mhdts, so i am not surprised your modded mhdt plays slightly brighter than the stock units - of course, the mhdt units’ sound can be further shaped with choice of tube, options are plentiful and the range of ’adjustment’ is fairly substantial

to me, i don’t fault the tonality of the rme... voicing is a matter of taste, and many systems and listeners like more ’effortless’ detail that a forward treble voicing affords -- my personal feeling is that the weakness of the rme is its relatively flat and narrow imaging... tonally i find chord dacs similarly detail oriented but their imaging is vastly superior, wider deeper bigger stage, simply more holographic, leaving aside tonal balance - the mhdt’s really excel at imaging and dimensionality...

this being said, i had the rme for about 6 months (before selling it to a good friend who is a headphone listener, for which i think the unit is really ideal), and i did not use an upgraded ps with it, so maybe i have not heard it at its best -- then again, i was using the chord qutest at the time with its own factory supplied switching ps as well...