Ready For Digital Source...Computer?

sns - Thanks, auxinput really does know what he is talking about. Yes, I will check out those recommended DACs. In the past, that is exactly what I had, a Roon Nucleus USB’d to my W4S 2v2 SE DAC (9038 Pro).

auxinput - Thanks Sherlock! Lots & lots of investigation, and yes, I do remembering playing around a bit with the DSP in Roon.

Great info on the Evo & Denafrips too. It would be nice to hear all this stuff first, but tough to do, so, at present.

How about the Pegasus Musician DAC, are you familiar with it?

I don't know anything about Pegasus Musician DAC.  I looked at internal pics and it looks like an okay small format R2R resistor ladder DAC at $1k retail.  Not the best, but okay.  This next is a complete guess, but from youtube videos and what I see inside Pegasus, I think you are better off looking at the Audio-GD R-1 if you want a good resistor ladder DAC in the $1k price point.  I think the Audio-GD R-1 is going to be more open and transparent sounding.  The Pegasus might sound a little flat/sterile if you do a side-by-side comparison.

The Wyred 4 Sound Dac-2V2 is a good neutral sounding DAC.  Single ESS and good power supply, but uses op amp for output stage.  It's very nice sounding at $2k, but it's not going to have the "magic" that these other DACs have.  In fact, I think even the Lumin T2 is a lot better sounding and more open with more "magic" than the W4S 2V2.

    
auxinput - Thank you! sns recommends this DAC, the "Musetec 005" , even over some of the more recommended (by you and sns). Getting pretty up there price wise. Any thoughts?

Border Patrol DAC?

https://www.borderpatrol.net/dac/

I actually did recommend the DAC that sns did. I mentioned the LKS MH-DA005. Musetec is the company that makes this dac, so he just says "Musetec 005" instead. It’s the same exact dac. Yeah, it’s expensive at $3300, but I think this shoots higher than other $3300 dacs. It’s also available in silver (hint, hint, lol).

I have the previous version MH-DA004, which retails for $1600. I chose the 004 because if I were to design a DAC, they do almost everything exactly as I would. That being said, the parts chosen in the stock 004 were not the best choice and, as a result, the stock 004 had a harsh bright forward type of sound. I have massievly rebuilt this DAC and it’s extremely excellent now. There is a 290 page thread on this 004 DAC over at head-fi.org full of engineers like me who have done significant mods to the 004.

The 005 is a much needed upgrade and design change. He focuses on supercapacitors for all the power supplies for digital sections (which are almost like batteries). Dual ESS9038PRO dacs with fully discrete Class A I/V output stage. Better 100MHz clock for the ESS chip. You can read the two threads about this 005 dac on this forum:

MH-DA005

holo may vs musetec 005

I looked at the Border Patrol. It’s a radically different design and I’m not familiar with this type of architecture. It uses a old school 16-bit R2R chip dac. Based on youtube videos, it sounds very analog and very smooth/clean. Apparently, you can play 24 bit music files through, but they are going to be down-converted to 16-bit because the R2R dac chip can only do 16-bit. I listened to the Guttenberg video and one thing he said was other dacs, such as Denafrips, will be higher resolution. The one thing that sticks out on the Border Patrol is that is sounds so organic.

In the end it really depends on what kind of sound you’re after. Guttenberg said the Border Patrol are kind of for people who are "music first" for music that sound rich and organic, but the Border Patrol is not as high resolution and transparent and revealing of details as the other dacs in this list. It really depends. It’s not a tube sounding dac, but it carries that type of mentality.