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Higher End DACs

I am looking for a DAC (potentially streamer&DAC) to be paired in a mcintosh system (c1100/611). Its my first foray into digital streaming and I have no need for a CD player.

I see a lot of love for Esoteric, however, most seems to be around their transports? Are they not as renowned for pure digital streaming and/or standalone DACs? I see DCS (for instance) often referenced for standalone DACs - how does Esoteric compare?
ufguy73
yyzsantabarbara
4,987 posts
 
the Lumin X1 and the new Linn Klimax DSM DAC both take a Fibre Optic cable as a streaming input.

New Linn Klimax DSM With Organik DAC - Bits and Bytes - Audiophile Style

Anybody on this thread have a listen to the new Gustard X26 Pro DAC. I own one and think it is  great DAC using a Sonore OpticalRendu for streaming. I am not looking to change it but was curious as to how it compares to more expensive DACs.
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@rower30   Great points and perspective.
dsper
663 posts
 
@rower30
...Audio is like the stock market, a commodity price has been set with the weaknesses boiled in. If a $2,000 level technology DAC was really as good as a $35K DAC, the answer would not stay a secret for long...
Well said, with the caveat that rich DAC buyers have good ears.

Thanks for listening,

Dsper


dmance's avatar
dmance
45 posts
 
Recently,  REMASTERO (https://www.remastero.com/pggb.html) announced PGGB offline remastering with sinc filter reconstruction using hundreds of millions of taps and advanced noise shaping. The process is offline ...meaning a source file is converted to a ultra high resolution WAV file and fed to DACs capable of 8fs, 16fs or higher sample-rate USB/DX input.  I recently evaluated this with my Chord Dave and compared it to Chord MSCALER or HQPlayer upsampled source files.
No contest ... the PGGB version was stunningly better and points to the possibility that essentially infinitely wide filters can achieve optimal Nyquist-Shannon reconstruction. And since all the intellectual property is offline, I think this opens the door to inexpensive end-game DACs.

Its worth your own eval and listen using the free 30-day trial.
griff500
7 posts
 
I am using an Auralic Aries G2 streamer and it works very well, has galvanic isolation on the output and a very good app. Auralic are good at providing updates to the app and firmware and I've known them to continue providing updates for discontinued products for some years.

This goes into a Chord M-Scaler and then on to a DAVE.

I am very pleased with this streamer/DAC setup.

I did try an Auralic Vega G2 all-in-one streamer/DAC and it was exceptionally good.
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