Member Teajay did a review of the balanced Pagoda for Stereo Times that would provide some valuable insights for you. Best of luck.
Single Ended DAC vs Dual Differential XLR DAC
Hi,
will a dual differential XLR DAC (with i.e. 2x Left DAC chips + 2x Right DAC chips) always sound better than a Single Ended DAC (with i.e. 1x Left DAC chip + 1x Right DAC chip) assuming that they have the same DAC chip model and same board design (except the dual circuitry of the XLR version)?
The XLR has twice the output voltage, but will pure audio quality be certainly superior to the Single Ended version?
Thanks for your opinion!
Gianluca
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- 26 posts total
@gkg2k Hi Gianluca I feel your pain not being able to demo gear, however as I see it the single ended dac is $1.5k and the balanced $2.5k. I would definitely go for the single ended and spend the extra $1k on good cables but DEMO the cables first, don't just buy them because they are expensive. Otherwise loads of Chinese R2R DACs available around $2-3k. Hope this helps. |
@soix Thank you very much for directing me to the Teajay review of the Balanced Pagoda that's the heart of my mental devices these days! He claims the Balanced Pagoda is magic precisely because it's balanced that way and the RCA outputs don't sound equally well. The RCA outputs of the Balanced Pagoda should be comparable to an unbalanced Pagoda. It's a great indication, thank you!
@lordmelton I've listened to the Sonnet Morpheus MK2 R2R DAC that's one of the best regarded XLR DAC's today and I think it has monster resolution but it largely misses the magic (again!) of the BurrBrown PCM1704 + buffer output tube of the MHDT Pagoda. I've just listened to the unbalanced Pagoda. You're perfectly right about good cables!
Gianluca |
- 26 posts total