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Does a Tube Dac make sense?


I’m  in the market for a dac since I bought a Musical Paradise MP701MKII Tube Preamp few months back, does it make sense to buy a tube dac? The seller Garry is suggesting to get the Musical Paradise MP D2 MKIII which is a tube dac with a AK4490 but can be upgraded to AK4499 but I’m leaning towards the RME ADI2 which is almost the same price as the MP tube dac. I’m finding it hard to justify a $1k dac but I have read a lot of forums that suggests the RME or the SMSL M400 and Denafrips Ares II but I’m a sucker for vu meters and spectrum analyzers but if the MP tube dac is a good match for my MP tube preamp I’m willing to give it a go.
stibin
djones51
4,947 posts
 
The question was, do tube dacs make sense, not can I buy a dac with a tube to distort the sound to my liking. The whole engineering concept of a DAC is to convert the digital to analog as precise without distortion as possible. From that perspective adding tubes and other filters to mess with the output makes no sense. If you want colorations, to me it makes more sense to buy a transparent dac for $200 and do the signal degradation with preamps or amps or EQ. It’s cheaper and in the OPs case it makes even less sense he's already using a tube preamp.
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,230 posts
 
This is why when discussing an audio product the final arbiter is "how does it sound" and do I like it. Tube colorations? Sure, either that or one may prefer transistor coloration. Both active devices have their inherent distortion profile and character. Either one used thoughtfully in a well designed analogue output stage of a DAC can be successful. The listener decides which device distortion characteristics they are more pleased with.
Charles
djones51
4,947 posts
 
In properly designed DACs there is no audible inherent distortion profile. 
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jjss49
6,609 posts
 
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mapman's avatar
mapman
21,846 posts
 
Technically probably not. I probably would not. Used to have one. But practically sure why not if a particular tube dac sounds good to you. I am a mhdt dAC fan. Mostly tube DACs. Mine is SS though. I found I was trying to get the mhdt tube dac to sound like the SS one by rolling tubes. Rolling tubes to change the sound is a feature of many tube DACs. .
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